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For all the attacks that Ukraine has been forced to withstand, it has also found ways to strike back. Ukraine’s deep-strike drones wreak havoc almost daily on Russia, sometimes a thousand miles behind the front lines, pummeling Russian energy infrastructure, military depots, and airfields.

But while these drones can be disruptive, they are also often thwarted by Russia’s smartest defenses. Missiles provided by the United States or Europe are more effective at breaking through, but Ukraine has never had as many as it needs.

For all the attacks that Ukraine has been forced to withstand, it has also found ways to strike back. Ukraine’s deep-strike drones wreak havoc almost daily on Russia, sometimes a thousand miles behind the front lines, pummeling Russian energy infrastructure, military depots, and airfields.

But while these drones can be disruptive, they are also often thwarted by Russia’s smartest defenses. Missiles provided by the United States or Europe are more effective at breaking through, but Ukraine has never had as many as it needs.

Germany, for instance, has long declined to deliver its best air-launched cruise missile: the Taurus KEPD-350, a German-Swedish product. And Ukraine’s shortages are now even more acute amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran: U.S. Extended Range Attack Munitions—essentially a hybrid between a cruise missile and a bomb—are no longer arriving in Ukraine, to say nothing of the U.S. Tomahawks that the Trump administration initially promised and then refused to send.

The Ukrainians have responded by becoming even more enterprising, setting out to make their own equally capable missiles. Those fruits are now being harvested.

The Ukrainian method for expedited missile production has involved learning from the internet, relying on simple technology, and truncating production processes.

“We found the technology on YouTube,” technical director Iryna Terekh of Fire Point, a Kyiv-based defense manufacturing firm, told Ukrainian media. “Not entirely, of course—we had to run experiments, and we have in-house chemists. The formula itself [for rocket propellent] is widely known: ammonium perchlorate, butadiene rubber, spherical aluminium and several other components. It’s not much more complicated than mixing concrete.”

Late last year, Ukraine started launching its own ballistic missiles, most notably one known as the Sapsan, and testing jet-powered cruise missiles called Flamingos. The latter—a private-sector product, unlike the Sapsans—hits targets as far away as 3,000........

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