A top Ukrainian official said Kyiv’s forces already have interceptor drones that can destroy Russia’s jet-powered Shahed, an emerging threat that’s sparking concerns locally for its much greater speed.
“We have interceptor drones capable of fighting the Shaheds with jet engines. The enemy is developing, and we are not standing still,” said Pavlo Palisa, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, in a video interview on Monday with local media outlet Noviny Live.
Palisa said Ukraine is continuing to develop more first-person-view, or FPV, drones that can contribute to an “optimal” air defense system covering various altitudes and distances.
“Russia is also modifying its drones; they are already flying with jet engines, and we also have responses and protection against this in our FPV developments,” he told Noviny Live.
While Palisa did not publicly provide details of these interceptor drones, his statement indicates that Kyiv is pressing on with such tech to counter Moscow’s next generation of long-range attack drones.
The new Russian drones are known as the Geran-3, a domestically produced version of the Iranian Shahed-238 one-way loitering munition.
The Geran-3 uses a turbojet, allowing it to fly much faster than the Geran-2, which is modeled after the propeller-driven Shahed-136 and is now the staple of Russia’s large-scale bombardments against Ukraine.
AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
While the Geran-2 is known to fly at roughly 115 miles per hour and have a range of about 620 miles, the Geran-3 has been reported to fly at 230 miles per hour and have at least equal range.
Countering it reliably could prove a major challenge for Ukraine, which is already struggling against the Geran-2 because Russia launches hundreds of attack drones and decoys at a time to overwhelm air defenses.
That’s why Kyiv is now working in overdrive to scale up production of interceptor FPVs — cheap drones that are fast enough to catch up to the Geran-2 and ram into it with a small warhead. If deployed en masse, the small drones could plug gaps in Ukrainian air defense and free up more advanced systems for countering deadlier threats such as ballistic missiles.
Valentyn Ogirenko/REUTERS
Interceptors have become especially crucial as Russia started flying its Shaheds at higher altitudes to thwart Ukrainian machine-gun crews tasked with downing the drones.
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But the Geran-3’s new speed poses a tall order for Ukrainian interceptor makers, who would need to build FPV drones that fly twice as fast but are still cheap enough to make air defense cost-effective.
And while Russia isn’t known to be deploying the Geran-3 at scale yet, that may soon change.
The new attack drone has appeared sporadically since January, and it’s now been showing up more frequently in Ukrainian air defense reports. It’s unclear if these are prototypes or a finalized version of the Geran-3.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian military intelligence published new details about the Geran-3, saying it is equipped with a new satellite navigation system that makes it immune to radio-frequency electronic warfare, or the most common type of jamming in the war.
At least 50 of the Geran-3’s parts come from foreign countries, the intelligence report said.
The growing presence of the Geran-3 indicates that Russia is committing further to long-range attack drone development, potentially pushing the war’s battlegrounds further into the skies.