Ukraine Military History Institute
The asymmetry that defined the early war has narrowed
For most of this war there was a simple imbalance. Russia could strike deep into Ukraine. Ukraine could not meaningfully strike deep into Russia. That gap shaped what each side could risk and where each side could put anything valuable.
Rob Lee's assessment is measured rather than triumphal. There may not be parity. But Ukraine has certainly narrowed the gap, and it is no longer an occasional event.
On a daily and weekly basis, larger and larger drone packages are going into Russia. In some cases, more than 1,000 drones in a single night. The targets are not symbolic: refineries, Moscow, and St Petersburg, which was struck during its own economic forum.
The last of those is worth pausing on, because it is a political fact rather than a military one. Hitting the city hosting Russia's showcase investment event, during the event, is a statement about reach that no amount of official messaging can undo.
Why Russian aviation stays back
The chapter also explains a constraint on the other side that is easy to miss.
Russia cannot bring fighters close to the front. They do use glide bombs, and a new variant had just appeared, but the aircraft have to release them from well back because of Su-35 losses and Ukrainian air defence.
The consequence is that glide bombs do not reach far past the front line. They are devastating within their band and largely irrelevant beyond it. Russia's ability to strike the operational depth is not delivered by aviation, which is precisely why both sides have been building drones to do the job aircraft cannot safely do.
The drone that does an aircraft's work
Here is the interesting substitution, and Lee names it directly.
The FP-2 carries a large payload, and that changes what it can be used for. An FPV cannot destroy a hardened underground position. Artillery will not either. A 250-pound munition can.
So a heavy strike drone starts performing the role that, in a Western force, would belong to aviation. Not as a metaphor but functionally: something that delivers a heavy munition onto a hard target well behind the line.
Lee's framing is that Ukraine is getting an air force's effect out of UAVs with heavy payloads. And the quantities are going in that direction, which matters more than the capability existing at all.
What is coming, and the honest uncertainty
Lee lists what is in development rather than claiming what is fielded, which is the right distinction.
Ukraine is developing its own cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. ERAM, a cheap American cruise missile, was expected to be delivered within the year. There is a ballistic missile with a much larger payload at shorter range, and reportedly another intended to reach Moscow.
The word doing the work throughout is "supposed to." These are programmes and expectations, not inventories. A great deal of commentary about this war collapses that distinction, and the useful habit is to keep asking whether a system has been delivered, fielded, or merely announced.
Why narrowing the gap matters more than closing it
Parity is the wrong target, and the chapter implies why.
Russia's deep-strike advantage was never only about damage. It was about where Ukraine could safely place anything, from repair depots to training areas to political events. Removing the sanctuary changes Russian planning even when the physical damage is modest, because everything now has to be defended, dispersed or hidden.
A thousand drones in a night does not need to destroy a thousand things. It needs to make the rear a place that requires defending, which pulls air defence backward, away from the front, where it was doing other work.
What to watch
- Whether ERAM actually arrives. It was expected within the year and is the clearest near-term test of whether announced capability becomes fielded capability.
- Russian air defence positioning. If interceptors and systems migrate deeper into Russia to protect refineries and cities, the deep-strike campaign is working regardless of what it destroys.
- Ukrainian cruise and ballistic programmes. Domestic production is the difference between a capability that depends on allied politics and one that does not.