He called for 3,000 “cruise missiles or missile-drones” to be manufactured in 2025.Traditional missiles are tricky. Ukraine’s notable successes in scaling up drone production were to a large degree a workaround of the country’s limits in defense industry autonomy. Russia and the West gutted Ukraine’s weapons factories after the fall of the USSR, with the help of local corruption. Those that remain are subject to constant Russian bombardment.As a result, analysts call Zelensky’s figures and the claimed features of traditional missiles made at home an oversell.“If Ukraine can only deliver half of what Zelensky promised at the end of 2024 in terms of missile and drone production, I will be very content. But that's going to be challenging,” says Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert and research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project.Ukraine’s budding missile program joins a long tradition of metaphorical and literal saber-rattling between hostile armies.