Air defense runs on reloads. Ukraine ran out.

Air defense is an arithmetic problem, and once the arithmetic tips, no tactics can save it. A country intercepts ballistic missiles at the rate its reloads arrive, and it loses when the other side fires faster than interceptors can be resupplied.

The overnight tally from EUobserver, citing the Ukrainian General Staff, captures the tipping point: 0 of 24 Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles intercepted, 0 of 4 Zircons, and 98 of 115 Shahed drones. The drones are still catchable. The ballistic missiles are not, and the gap is structural.

AMK_Mapping_ on X puts the running Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast count at roughly 150 ballistic missiles fired since July 1, with about 7 intercepted. That is not a string of bad nights. It is the steady-state output of a Patriot inventory that Russia can outspend missile by missile. The only somewhat reliable weapon against Russian ballistic missiles is the Patriot, and Ukraine does not have enough reloads.

The three paths on the table run into the same constraint. More Patriot interceptors are bounded by US, German, and Polish stockpiles. A sustained campaign against Russian launchers requires operations the West has not endorsed. The Starlink-in-Russia proposal floated by an analyst is a long shot. The mechanism earns the closing line: a country that runs out of interceptors before its adversary runs out of missiles does not have a tactical problem to fix. It has a supply curve to bend.