Ukraine’s low-cost interceptor drones rewrite rules of air defense

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The icy ground crackling under their feet, members of an elite Ukrainian drone-hunting team set up for a long night.

Antennas and sensors are clipped to a light stand. Monitors and controls are pulled from hard cases, and a game-changing new weapon is readied for deployment.

The Sting, shaped like a flying thermos, is one of Ukraine’s new homegrown interceptors.

The unit’s commander says the interceptors can effectively counter Russia’s fast-evolving suicide drones, which are now flying faster and at higher altitudes.

“Every destroyed target is something that did not hit our homes, our families, our power plants,” said the officer, known only by the call sign “Loi,” in line with Ukrainian military protocol. “The enemy does not sleep, and neither do we.”

Nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and power infrastructure have forced Kyiv to rewrite the air defense rule book and develop cut-price drone killers costing as little as $1,000.

Interceptors went from prototype to mass production in just a few months in 2025 and represent the latest shift in modern warfare.

Effective defense in Ukraine depends on mass production, rapid adaptation and layering low-cost systems into existing defenses instead of relying on a few expensive, slow-to-replace weapons.

Models like the Sting – made by the volunteer-driven startup Wild Hornets – and the newly appeared Bullet can surge in speed before crashing into enemy drones. They are flown by pilots watching monitors or wearing first-person-view goggles.

The economics are crucial. Andrii Lavrenovych, a member of the strategic council of the fast-growing startup General Cherry which develops the Bullet, says the drones they destroy cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000.

“We are inflicting serious economic damage,” he said.

Russia favors the Iranian-designed Shahed suicide drone and has produced multiple variants of the triangle-winged craft, armed with jammers, cameras and turbojet engines in a constant battle of innovation.

“In some areas they are one step ahead. In others, we invent 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 interceptors are a valuable addition to Ukraine’s — and Europe’s — anti-drone arsenal.

“Cheap interceptor drones have become so important, and so quickly, that we can consider them a cornerstone of modern counter-unmanned aerial systems,” he said. “They realign 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.”

Their success, he said, depends on sensors, fast command and control as well as skilled operators. They can be used in a menu of options that starts with multimillion-dollar missiles and ends with nets and antiaircraft guns.

Defense planners in Ukraine and NATO expect the hyper-scaling of drone production on both sides of the conflict to continue in 2026, adding urgency to European plans to create a layered air-defense system known as the “drone wall.”

The network along Europe’s eastern borders, to be rolled out over two years, is designed to detect, track and intercept drones, with Ukrainian-style interceptors playing a potentially central role in destroying threats.

Ukrainian drone makers are set next year to expand coproduction with U.S. and European firms. Merging battle-tested designs and valuable data with Western scale and funding, the collaboration would boost output and embed Ukraine in NATO-member supply chains.

Another inevitable trend, Lavrenovych argues, is increased automation.

“Our mobile groups shouldn’t have to approach the front line, where they become targets,” he said.

“Drones must become fully autonomous robots with artificial intelligence — as scary as that may sound — to help our soldiers survive.”

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Volodymyr Yurchuk and Efrem Lukatsky contributed to this report.