About a year into Russia’s war, a Ukrainian drone instructor pitched what sounded to troops like science fiction: flying quadcopters into Moscow’s scout drones midair.
The soldiers thought it was impossible. It would be too difficult to maneuver a quadcopter, or small drone, into another fast-moving target, they said. They joked that he’d been watching too much “Star Wars,” recalled Yeti, the co-owner of Drone Fight Club, a privately run combat drone school in Kyiv.
What once seemed laughable has since become a low-cost and critical pillar of Ukraine’s defense. While Russia hurls growing waves of explosive drones at its cities, Ukraine is increasingly flying cheap interceptor drones to stop them. These weapons downed 150 attack drones in one recent bombardment. Ukraine is now aiming to manufacture 1,000 interceptors a day.
The ripples of this technological breakthrough extend beyond Ukraine, showing how future wars involving mass drone attacks can be fought with cheap defenses.
NATO is taking note. “Hit-to-kill” interceptor drones are one of the most “promising” solutions for European allies to defend against Russian drones, said Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, who oversees modernization.
Business Insider interviewed Ukrainian insiders, including drone manufacturers, pilots, and designersabout how interceptors have evolved from a scrappy experiment into a top defense priority.
“As the number of aerial drone threats grew, so did the pressure on the defenders on both sides to use counters that are relatively cheap and simple,” said Sam Bendett, an advisor in the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a US research institution. Both Ukraine and Russia are now using a range of interceptor drones.
Knocking drones out of the sky
Interceptor drones, like many Russia-Ukraine battlefield innovations, were born out of desperation.
Ukrainians first considered the technology in early 2024 as a cheap way to counter Russian reconnaissance drones, or uncrewed systems that typically cost upward of $100,000 and quietly cruise at up to 23,000 feet to surveil the battlefield. Urgency grew when winter came and Russia began unleashing waves of Shaheds — Iranian-designed attack drones that fly toward a target and detonate.
Ukraine was running low on expensive surface-to-air missiles, partly due to dwindling US arms support, and was relying heavily on truck-mounted machine guns to take down Shaheds.
Those defenses couldn’t keep up. Attack drones were slipping through, knocking out power grids and forcing rolling blackouts as temperatures dropped below freezing. Hospitals worked in the dark and often without water, and civilians scrambled to stockpile firewood and coal.
Ukrainian drone engineers kicked into action and started redesigning their quadcopters into drones that could take down Shaheds.
The Come Back Alive Foundation, Ukraine’s biggest crowdfunding organization, joined the effort with Dronefall, a program aimed at destroying 5,000 Russian drones with piloted first-person-view drones. Dronefall’s project lead, Taras Tymochko, said the program now works with 12 to 15 manufacturers and has sponsored drones that have intercepted more than 3,000 aerial vehicles.
He said it took nearly a year to build a low-cost interceptor capable of downing the Shaheds, which can fly as fast as 115 mph. Once they did, they quickly got them into the field.
Drone-on-drone warfare is evolving fast
Interceptor drone designs are now quickly evolving. The Sting, for example, carries a warhead that’s propelled up to 213 mph via four rotating blades. The sensor-guided interceptor, produced by Ukrainian drone maker Wild Hornets, resembles a handheld missile and is small enough to fit inside a duffel bag. Other interceptors look like small gliders.
The crews that deploy them must react instantly to threats. A pilot flying the Sting said his crew races out at night on tips from reconnaissance teams, with only 10 minutes to catch incoming Russian drones before they slip out of range.
The operator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons, said his crew has been downing Shaheds since June.
The interceptor’s night vision camera can see the Shaheds, but “it’s hard to actually get it on the screen in the first place and requires a lot of maneuvering,” the pilot said.
A successful hit relies on teamwork. A radar operator must locate and track the Shaheds, which often fly at high altitudes of up to 16,000 feet, and then relay data to a pilot so they can steer the interceptor onto target. It’s a much tougher job than striking anything on the ground.
A new pillar of air defense
Andrii Hrytseniuk, the CEO of the Ukrainian government-backed innovation driver Brave1, said that interceptor drones could be the next big breakthrough in war tech, “just as FPV drones and naval drones reshaped the battlefield in 2023, and fiber-optic drones did in 2024.” Brave1 works with about 60 manufacturers, offering grants, testing support, and help scaling production.
Interest in interceptors has surged as Russia invests heavily in long-range drones. Last month, Moscow launched more than 800 in a single strike, and Western assessments warn the Kremlin could soon send up to 2,000 in a night.
A single missile in the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, one of the air defenses provided to Ukraine, costs roughly $1 million. Interceptor drones, which cost a few thousand dollars each, let Ukraine save its missiles for faster, deadlier cruise and ballistic threats.
NATO allies are starting to consider interceptor drones as a viable air defense option. The UK, for example, said last month that it would sponsor and jointly develop thousands of low-cost interceptor drones with and for Ukraine.
Wild Hornets said their Sting drone was recently used to eliminate drones in a test over Danish airspace as the alliance looks for cheaper drone-killers than fighter jets and Patriot missiles.
“Each day, the two stakeholders in Ukraine are learning something and adapting themselves — if they don’t, they die,” said Vandier, the NATO leader who oversees the alliance’s modernization efforts. “The challenge for NATO is to be on this horse, which is going very fast. We need to be on the horse and to drive it properly.”
The drone arms race over Ukraine
An interceptor must be fast, maneuverable enough to catch a Russian drone while carrying a large warhead, and resistant to jamming.
MaXon Systems, a company working with Brave1, makes semi-autonomous models with cameras that home in on their targets at speeds of 186 mph, cofounder Olekseii Solntsev said. The drones carry a standard 2.2-pound warhead.
The Wild Hornets reported that the Sting has downed more than 400 Shaheds and Gerberas, decoy versions of the Iranian drone made of plywood and foam that are estimated to cost about $10,000 each.
“The drone itself was very complex to make,” said Alex Roslin, a foreign support coordinator for the Wild Hornets, said of the Sting.
The group has shared videos of the Sting screeching like a turbocar across fields and thermal footage of the interceptors racing behind Russian Shahed-style drones, offering a glimpse into the high-stakes drone hunting that Kyiv’s defenders perform every night.
The Wild Hornets say the Sting costs $2,500. Most interceptors in Ukraine are sold for $6,000 or less, depending on their components and whether they already come with an explosive payload and technical support.
Success rates vary, ComeBackAlive’s Tymochko said, from 30% hit rates for some interceptors to as high as 80% or 90%. Success can depend on variables such as the types of targets, the time to intercept, and pilot skills.
“If the drone is not automated, the most crucial part is the skills of the pilot,” Tymochko said. “If the pilots are trained well, if they have lots of experience with drone interception, they demonstrate 9 out of 10 results.”
Yeti, the lead instructor for Drone Fight Club, said only the best drone pilots can master interceptor piloting. Of the roughly 5,200 students the school has trained, only several dozen have completed its interceptor exams, which have a 30% pass rate.
Part of the reason for the low uptake and pass-rate is because Ukraine’s troops are stretched thin and can’t afford to send drone pilots away for extended training periods, Yeti said. His students often have to rush through courses to return to the battlefield.
The next phase begins
The war is a cycle of constant and deadly innovation, with solutions that work today potentially obsolete within months. Russia’s next move may already be here.
In recent months, the Kremlin has increasingly been launching jet-powered Shahed drones. Dubbed the Geran-3 by Ukrainians, the new loitering munitions are rumored to fly at speeds of up to 310 miles per hour — essentially a piloted cruise missile that’s 100 mph faster than top interceptor drones.
Behind the scenes, Ukrainian engineers are already working toward defenses for what could be the air war’s next phase.
“At this point, nothing is going to be announced. But I think that someday we will find them on the market and all of this will become public,” ComeBackAlive’s Tymochko said. “It’s going to be the next stage of the competition.”
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