Why Are Russian Missiles So Hard to Shoot Down?

Recorded in Kyiv during an air alert in 2026, Tim Mak, founder of The Counteroffensive, talks with missile technology expert Fabian Hoffmann, author of the Missile Matters Substack, about why air defense is so much harder than attack, and what that means for Ukraine and the West. In this conversation, you'll learn: 🔹Why missile attacks will always be cheaper and easier to scale than the interceptors that stop them 🔹What a Patriot interceptor actually does after launch, and why the decision to intercept happens in a window of just seconds 🔹Why roughly 1,000 Patriot interceptors a year have to be shared among almost 20 countries, while Ukraine alone needs up to 2,000 🔹How the war with Iran drained global interceptor stocks, and why the US fires up to three interceptors per missile while Ukraine fires one at best 🔹Why "passive resilience" may be Ukraine's best defense in the short term 📍 Subscribe to The Counteroffensive for human stories behind the news from Ukraine: counteroffensive.news