Amid Russia's winter campaign targeting Ukrainian power grid, Kyiv's F-16 jets ran out of missiles for nearly a month, forcing pilots to fly daytime-only sorties with rotary cannons, Reuters reported on 5 March. The acute shortage, which ran from late November to mid-December and had not been previously reported, cascaded across multiple Western air defense systems simultaneously.
Using cannons against Shahed drones carrying up to 90 kg of explosives and missiles is dangerous, as the blast can damage the aircraft itself. Ukraine’s Air Force has lost four F-16s since the jets entered combat in August 2024, though none have been lost since June 2025. Military sources previously speculated that the use of onboard cannons may have contributed to at least some of those earlier losses.
Nearly a month with almost nothing to fire
Three sources with direct knowledge told Reuters that when deliveries stopped, Ukraine's entire F-16 fleet was down to just a few US-made AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. One source said Ukraine had "nothing to put on its jets for almost a month."
With no missiles available for night missions, pilots flew daytime sorties and attempted to intercept Russian drones using the jets' rotary cannons. Night missions were too dangerous to conduct without missiles, a second source said. Maintenance crews also worked to restore previously misfired missiles to service, and pilots flew with them — with some successes.
The shortage cascaded across three weapons systems
The crisis extended beyond the F-16 fleet. When AIM-9 stocks ran dry, NASAMS surface-to-air battery operations were also curtailed, since both systems share the same missiles. A separate shortage of US-made RIM-7 missiles hit Ukrainian modified Soviet-era air defense systems at the same time.
The Sidewinder stocks Ukraine depends on are decades-old — AIM-9 Lima and Mike variants dating to the 1970s and 1980s. Old as they are, these missiles let Ukraine knock down Russian drones and cruise missiles without burning through its most expensive interceptors. The AIM-120, priced at over $1 million per unit, is too expensive to fire in volume at the mass-produced drones Russia deploys, two sources told Reuters.
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Partners delivered fresh AIM-9 stocks in December, shortly before a major Russian attack, three sources told Reuters. Germany and Canada were among the suppliers, a fourth source confirmed, though the exact delivery details remain secret. Canada's Department of National Defence told Reuters it was donating AIM-9M-8 missiles from its own military stocks, complementing what it described as "past donation of hundreds of Canadian AIM missiles."
Reuters could not establish the cause of the supply interruption, or whether US or European partners were responsible. The first source said the shortage had not coincided with the largest Russian attacks of the winter.
A NATO official told Reuters that the PURL mechanism — under which the US sells weapons to NATO allies for onward delivery to Ukraine — had since the summer 2025 supplied approximately 75% of all missiles for Ukraine's Patriot batteries and 90% of ammunition for other air defense systems.
