More than half of Russian missiles miss their targets, according to US officials

US officials with US military knowledge believe Russia is seeing failure rates of more than half in some of the precision-guided missiles it is using to attack Ukraine.

A month after the invasion, several Ukrainian regions have been besieged and bombed for weeks. The town of Kharkiv has been one of the hardest hit.

In the midst of this context, US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the confidentiality of the information, noted that up to 60% of Russian guided missiles and bombs have suffered failures, that would include from the impossibility of being launched to not being able to explode on impact.

The information was provided and disseminated by the Reuters agency, based in the United Kingdom.

One of the testifying officials said that US intelligence showed that Russia’s air-launched cruise missiles had a failure rate in the range of 20% to 60%, depending on the day.

In this regard, two experts consulted by the aforementioned information agency pointed out that any failure rate of 20% or more would be considered high.

This disclosure would explain, in part, why Russia, despite its military superiority, has failed to achieve what most would consider basic objectives since its invasion a month ago, such as neutralizing Ukraine’s air force.

The war has killed thousands and driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes. Russia announced last Friday that it will concentrate its offensive on the “liberation” of the east of the country, after a month of fighting and bombing that failed to break the resistance of this former Soviet republic.

According to reports, Russian troops were forced to withdraw in regions around Kyiv and were facing a counteroffensive in Kherson (south), the only major city they managed to take since the beginning of the invasion on February 24.