As Russia turns to jet-powered drones, Ukraine scrambles for new interceptor tech

For residents of Kyiv, it was a particularly dark day. Already reeling from a massive Russian aerial bombardment overnight on Aug. 20 that killed 15 people, the daylight hours saw a steady stream of drones target the capital, claiming the lives of a further two.

A grim soundtrack of air raid sirens and periodic explosions marked what appears to be one of the latest stages in the ever-evolving air war — Russia's escalating use of jet-powered Shahed-type drones.

"In July, there were five times as many as in June," Colonel Yurii Ihnat, head of the Communications Department of the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Independent.

"Sometimes, two-thirds of all drones launched during the day are jet-powered," he added.

Russian drones over Ukraine are nothing new, and the country's military has become the global pioneer of downing piston-engine versions using first-person view (FPV) interceptor drones.

But equipped with jet engines and in ever-increasing numbers, Russia's attack drones are now outpacing Ukraine's interceptors.

The evolving threat

As the threat changes, Ukraine's drone producers are scrambling to develop newer and faster models of the interceptor drones that proved so effective in neutering Russia's older and slower drones.

Simultaneously, Russia is racing to scale production of newer versions, redirecting resources once poured into production of piston-engined models into faster but more complex jet-powered models.

Russia first started importing assembled piston-engined Iranian Shahed 131 and Shahed 136 one-way attack drones in 2022, which were known in Russian service as the Geran-1 and Geran-2 respectively.

Production was quickly localized and scaled at the Yelabuga drone factory in Tatarstan, where Russia employs child labor to produce the suicide drones en masse. Assembly lines in Yelabuga were soon churning out thousands of drones per month.

"Russia's use of Geran-2 drones started to escalate massively from the summer of 2024," Kyle Glen, a researcher at the Centre for Information Resilience who monitors the drone campaign on both sides, told the Kyiv Independent.

"The Ukrainian Air Force went from reporting around 400 drones a month to around 700, and then around 1,300, 2,000, 2,500. This escalated up until May 2026 when nearly 7,500 drones were launched in a single month," Glen said.

May represented a peak of Russia's use of the piston-engined drones against Ukraine. Despite the massive numbers launched at the country, the combination of Ukraine's new interceptor drones and years of experience in downing Russian drones helped interception rates peak around 95%.

"Interceptor drones are the main focus," Ihnat said. "Ukraine has achieved high shoot-down rates for conventional Shahed-type drones,"

A Ukrainian innovation, drone interceptors turned cheap commercially available hobbyist drones — a typical Ukrainian drone interceptor, such as the Wild Hornets STING, costs around $2,300 — into extremely effective air defense systems.

"We’ve established mobile fire teams and equipped them with modern systems, which have significantly improved our effectiveness. Automated systems have even begun to appear," Ihnat added.

Ukrainian effectiveness in dealing with Russian and Iranian drones was starkly demonstrated during the continuing war in the Persian Gulf. As Iranian drones penetrated sophisticated American air defenses, causing billions of dollars' worth of damage, Ukrainian interceptors and Ukrainian anti-drone specialists were called in to help bolster the defenses of U.S. bases in the region.

Jet power

Facing the decreased effectiveness of its piston-engined drones, Russia has pivoted toward producing ever larger numbers of jet-powered drones. In a statement on June 4, then-Ukrainian Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed Russia planned "to increase the share of jet strike drones to 50%."

"This poses new challenges for us that require a timely response," he said.

Ukraine's Military Intelligence (HUR) assesses Russia produces "around 3,000" jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 kamikaze drones per month, Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported on Aug. 12.

HUR also assesses that by August 2026, production of Russia's jet-powered one-way attack drones had surpassed production of the piston-engined Geran-2 model.

The newer jet-powered models are significantly faster than piston-engined models, making them much more difficult to shoot down with FPV interceptors and mobile fire teams.

While the piston-engined Geran-2 has a maximum speed of around 185 kph, the jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 can reach 500 kph and 600 kph respectively.

Jet-powered drones are more expensive and more complex to build than piston-engined variants, leading to an overall drop in the numbers of drones being launched against Ukraine, according to Glen.

"The total number of Russian drones reported launched at Ukraine by the Ukrainian Air Force has dropped off in recent months," he said. "Less than 6,000 for June, less than 5,000 for July, and less than 2,500 for August so far."

The defensive arms race

"Interceptors capable of intercepting jet-powered drones are currently being developed," Ihnat told the Kyiv Independent.

"Ukrainian developers are aware of this problem; jet-powered drones and the Banderols (a small, low-cost Russian cruise missile) didn’t just appear yesterday, but their use has now increased," he added.

One senior engineer working on one of Ukraine's interceptor programs, and who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of his work, told the Kyiv Independent the slow introduction of Russia's jet-powered drones had given Ukraine's engineers advance warning of the threat.

The engineer said his team had already been modifying their existing drone interceptors to increase their flight speed, and that they already had prototypes that were capable of reaching the speeds necessary to engage jet-powered drones.

"It's an engineering problem, to which there's an engineering solution," the engineer said, pointing out that their newer prototypes were not significantly more expensive than their current interceptor models that were in serial production.

Meanwhile,  the jet-powered drones they were designed to intercept were significantly more expensive for Russia to produce than piston-engined drones.

This favorable economic differential is important for the long-term sustainability of Ukraine's air defense, the engineer said, as relying on expensive, mostly Western-sourced surface-to-air missiles to defend against jet-powered drones would be unsustainable, both due to the cost and the limited production of such interceptors.

Ukraine is also developing jet-powered interceptors. On August 14, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced the first jet-powered interceptors which can reach speeds of 600kph are "undergoing combat testing."

A few days later, on Aug. 21, the first jet-powered interceptor, the Alexa Spatium, officially entered Ukrainian service, Ukraine's Defense Ministry announced.

The manufacturer of the small and sleek turbojet-powered aircraft has not been disclosed, but the interceptor is capable of "high speeds" and can be reused if no target is engaged.

The aircraft can also engage ground targets and helicopters, the Defense Ministry said.