Ukraine is using powerful quadcopters to destroy nearly a third of all the Russian air threats it hits, commander says

• 30 percent of Russian air threats shot down over Ukraine were shot down by interceptor drones, a senior commander said.

• This is another sign of how new and cheap technology is growing in the country.

• Ukraine announced in December that it was producing approximately 1,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles per day.

A senior official in Ukraine’s unmanned air defense branch said Ukraine’s interceptor drones now account for almost a third of Russian air threats destroyed.

“If we take into account the share of interceptor UAVs in the destruction of air targets, we have already reached 30%,” Colonel Yuriy Cherevashenka said in a video interview published by the Ukrainian air force on Monday.

“So every third drone target destroyed in Ukraine is destroyed by an interceptor UAV,” he added.

His comments mark a turning point in Ukraine’s use interceptor drones. These are generally small, inexpensive quadcopters optimized to fly fast enough to catch Russian one-way attack drones.

These air defense drones were an innovation in the early years of the war, but Ukraine began accelerating their development in late 2024 as a cost-effective response to Moscow increasing regular drone attacks on Ukrainian cities.

A year later, Ukrainian officials said in December that the country was producing. 950 interceptor drones per day.

Russia launches thousands of long-range UAVs into Ukraine every month and has been known to sometimes amass more than 800 of them to attack in a single night. The most common attack aircraft is a locally built version. Iranian Shahedi stray ammunition.

Interceptor drones are built to destroy these aerial threats by ramming them or deploying an explosive warhead. Much of a successful interception depends on the skill of the pilot and crew, who must quickly detect Shahed, approach his orbit, track his location, and then fly their drones toward the Russian device.

Not all interceptors are quadcopters, but many are designed with four propellers and a dome-like frame to reach extreme speeds, as the typical Shahed can reach speeds of up to 185 mph, while more advanced versions can reach higher speeds. It is estimated to reach speeds of 230 mph.

Cherevashenka said Ukrainian officials were initially concerned about dealing with 350 Shahed attacks a month.

But he added that it is now common for Ukraine to deal with 350 Shahid attacks a day.

“Compared to 2022, when the first drone arrived over Kiev in September, it had a 40-kilogram warhead and was a primitive drone flying according to coordinates,” the colonel said. “We now have 14 types of warheads for attack aircraft of the Russian Federation.”

Cherevashenka also warned that Russia’s Witnesses have been known to incorporate artificial intelligence and use mesh networks to guide them.

Earlier this year, Ukraine reported that Russian troops were regularly arriving in the region. Accessing Starlink networks through black market terminals, including guiding Shahed attack drones. The complaints led SpaceX to cut connectivity over the war zone and only allow access to terminals on Ukraine’s official whitelist.

“We understand that this is not the end, they will increase their capabilities,” Cherevashenka said of Russia’s drone industry. “Moreover, this year they invested twice as much in drone production compared to last year.”

Interceptor drones form only one part of Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense network. The country is also widely deployed truck-mounted machine gun teams Shooting down targets, reserving interceptor munitions for higher priority threats such as Russian cruise or ballistic missiles.

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