Ukrainian defense firm SkyFall said on Wednesday that it has developed an interceptor drone capable of taking down Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds, a much faster class of attack drone that Moscow is using more regularly.
The P1-SUN JetKiller is designed with a top flight speed of 370 kmph, or 230 mph, at maximum altitudes of 9,000 meters, or roughly 30,000 feet, SkyFall said in a statement.
The drone can remain airborne for 15 minutes with a 500-gram explosive payload and can be configured with cameras for day or night operations, the company added.
Speed and maneuverability are major requirements for an interceptor hoping to catch and destroy a jet-powered Shahed.
Ukrainian interceptor drones were originally built to counter the Geran-1 and Geran-2, Russia’s versions of the Iranian propeller-driven Shahed. These fly at top speeds of about 115 mph, but newer models with jet engines, called Geran-3s, can cruise at 200 mph.
Making cheap drones to counter these faster Shaheds has been an uphill task for Ukraine. As Business Insider previously reported, souping up an interceptor drone, which has to be mass-producible and often uses propellers, to reach such speeds requires copious fine-tuning.
The sheer amount of power needed to push quadcopters to 200 mph and above risks overheating the drones, which SkyFall said wouldn’t be a problem with the JetKiller in straight-line flight.
SkyFall said the JetKiller is also equipped with an AI-based terminal guidance system, which essentially is a targeting algorithm to guide the drone just as it’s about to hit its quarry. Such tech has increasingly been appearing in Ukrainian drones this year.
SkyFall added that the system “allows the interceptor to detect and lock onto enemy targets faster than the human eye at ranges of up to 1 kilometer.”
“What’s notable is that it’s been used already with confirmed intercepts and is reaching mass production,” said a company spokesperson, identified only by his call sign, Ares, for security purposes.
Ares told Business Insider that the JetKiller has destroyed over a dozen “jet- powered threats” on the battlefield, and that SkyFall intends to start mass production of these interceptors in August with a monthly target of 50,000 drones.
Kyiv has repeatedly said this year that it’s prioritizing low-cost interceptor tech to counter Russia’s jet-powered drones. Moscow fields at least three major types of attack drones with jet engines, including the Geran-5, which Ukrainian intelligence warned in January can fly at up to 373 mph.
The JetKiller is now one of the few interceptor drones that Ukrainian manufacturers say can fill the role. The Wild Hornets, another drone maker, told Business Insider’s Jake Epstein in May that it’s testing a new version of its Sting interceptor designed to destroy jet-powered Shaheds.
