Ukraine is leveraging its powerful – and cheap – new drone killers for air defense
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The icy ground crackles beneath their feet. Ukrainian elite drone hunting team established for a long night.
Antennas and sensors are clipped to a light stand. Monitors and controls are unboxed and a game-changing new weapon becomes ready for use.
Shaped like a flying thermos, the Sting is one of Ukraine’s new domestic fighter planes.
The unit’s commander says the interceptors can effectively counter Russia’s rapidly evolving suicide drones, which now fly faster and at higher altitudes.
“Every target that is destroyed is something that does not hit our homes, our families, our power plants,” said the officer, who is known only by the call sign “Loi” in accordance with Ukrainian military protocol. “The enemy does not sleep, and neither do we.”
Nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure have forced Kiev to rewrite the air defense rulebook and develop discounted drone killers costing as little as $1,000.
The interceptors went from prototype to mass production in just a few months in 2025 and represent the latest evolution in modern warfare.
Effective defense in Ukraine depends on mass production, rapid adaptation, and the embedding of low-cost systems into existing defense systems, rather than relying on a few expensive, slow-to-change weapons.
Models like the Sting and the emerging Bullet, made by the volunteer-led initiative Wild Hornets, can gain speed before hitting enemy drones. They are flown by pilots who watch monitors or wear first-person view glasses.
The economy is very important. The drones they destroyed cost between $10,000 and $300,000, says Andrii Lavrenovych, strategic council member of the fast-growing company General Cherry, which developed the Bullet.
“We are causing serious economic damage,” he said.
Russia supports the Iranian-designed Shahed suicide drone and, in a constant struggle for innovation, has produced multiple variants of the triangular-winged vehicle equipped with jammers, cameras and turbojet engines.
“In some areas they are one step ahead. In others we come up with an innovative solution and they suffer from it,” Lavrenovych said.
Federico Borsari, a defense analyst at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, says the interceptors are a valuable addition to Ukraine’s and Europe’s anti-drone arsenal.
“Cheap interceptor drones have become so important and so fast that we can see them as the cornerstone of modern unmanned air defense systems,” he said. “They are rearranging the cost and scale equation of air defense.”
Their mobility and low cost allow them to defend more targets, but Borsari added: “It would be a mistake to see them as a silver bullet.”
He said their success was down to sensors, rapid command and control, as well as skilled operators. They are available in a menu of options that starts with multimillion-dollar missiles and ends with nets and anti-aircraft guns.
Defense planners in Ukraine and NATO expect the extreme scaling of drone production on both sides of the conflict to continue into 2026, adding urgency to Europe’s plans to create a layered air defense system known as a “drone wall.”
The network, which runs along Europe’s eastern borders and will be available within two years, is designed to detect, track and intercept drones; Ukrainian-style interceptors will potentially play a central role in eliminating threats.
Ukrainian drone manufacturers are preparing to expand joint production with US and European companies next year. Combining battle-tested designs and valuable data with Western scale and financing, the collaboration will increase production and place Ukraine within NATO member supply chains.
Another inevitable trend, according to Lavrenovych, is the increase in automation.
“Our mobile groups should not approach the front line where they will become targets,” he said.
“Drones should turn into fully autonomous robots” artificial intelligence “To help our soldiers survive – as scary as it sounds.”
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Volodymyr Yurchuk and Efrem Lukatsky contributed to this report.
