On the outskirts of Kyiv, a soldier named Oleksii pauses beside the Dnieper River to eat an apple from his mother’s garden. From this position, his unit engages Russian drones that follow the waterway as an approach corridor toward the capital’s bridges. A crumpled jet-engine drone stored in a sack at the base serves as a makeshift trophy — evidence of a clean intercept. “It felt routine,” says Oleksii, who goes by the call sign Tourist. “I was happy I didn’t waste the rocket.”
Oleksii’s three-person team, part of the Anti-Aircraft Battalion of the Separate Presidential Brigade, confronts one of Ukraine’s most pressing challenges: sustaining the defense of cities against an expanding and evolving Russian drone arsenal deployed alongside devastating missile strikes. The task grows more difficult as Russia intensifies attacks on power stations and civilian infrastructure ahead of winter, while Western weapons deliveries arrive erratically and sometimes with questionable quality, forcing soldiers to ration their munitions.
Ukrainians are increasingly turning to their own ingenuity to boost efficiency and close capability gaps. That effort includes scaling up domestic production of interceptor drones and AI-assisted weapons systems, and blurring the lines between civilian and military responsibility for protecting the skies.
“There is a chain of AI-controlled turrets across the city,” says Vasyl, call sign Raccoon, commander of Oleksii’s unit, which defends a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) stretch of the capital and its power stations. “If they cannot intercept the jet drone and it comes from our direction, then we have to be ready to intercept.”
Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
A Russian jet-powered drone hits one of Kyiv’s bridges, Oct. 2, 2026.
“We Need to Be 100% Effective”
Early in the war, Ukraine developed interceptor drones as a cost-effective alternative to expensive, scarce missiles. But Russia upped the ante in 2024 by fielding faster, jet-powered attack drones, escalating the drone arms race. Few anticipated how quickly Moscow would scale deployment; by summer 2026, these drones were being launched in overwhelming swarms.
Speed and altitude make jet-powered drones far harder to intercept. While conventional Iranian-designed, propeller-driven Shahed drones fly at roughly 180 kilometers per hour (110 mph), newer jet-powered variants can reach 600 kph (370 mph), placing them beyond the reach of most Ukrainian-made interceptor drones and mobile machine-gun units.
Flying low allows jet-powered drones to evade radar detection. At higher altitudes, they operate above the engagement envelope of shoulder-fired missiles and smaller anti-aircraft systems. Their ability to maneuver rapidly compounds the difficulty of shooting them down.
Ukraine has developed its own jet-powered interceptor drones, but mass production is bottlenecked by a critical engine shortage, according to an Odesa-based air defense officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. Like Russia, Ukraine relies heavily on Chinese-made components, but Beijing has restricted their sale.
Efrem Lukatsky/AP
A Sting interceptor drone flies during drills in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, March 19, 2026.
The scarcity places immense pressure on air defense teams to ensure every shoulder-fired missile finds its target — no easy feat when operators have as few as six seconds to engage a cruise missile and under a minute to neutralize a jet-powered drone. “We need to be 100% effective in every shot that we take,” says the air defense officer. “Normally we would have five or 10 Stinger-type missiles at a position. Instead, we just have one.”
Meanwhile, Russia has dramatically expanded production of Iranian-designed Shahed drones at a sprawling industrial complex in Tatarstan. Military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko estimates Moscow currently produces between 2,500 and 3,000 jet drones monthly, alongside 135 regular Shahed drones and Gerbera decoys. “The big player and the big problem here is China,” he says. “China helps Russia solve all its technological and technical issues.”
Russia’s rapid drone output tests whether Ukraine can develop defenses quickly and efficiently enough to keep pace. The pressure is especially acute in Odesa and the surrounding Black Sea region, which defense specialists describe as a proving ground for new Russian drone technology.
Unlike Kyiv, where incoming drones can often be tracked as they cross other regions, Odesa has little warning of aircraft approaching from the sea. Interception rates are improving but remain uneven, says Kovalenko — as high as 75% around Kyiv and as low as 5% in Odesa, where a drone traveling over 800 kph (497 mph) was recently detected.
Air Defense as a Business
In a dimly lit basement in Kharkiv, a different kind of air defense operation is underway.
The underground headquarters of private air defense company Carmine Sky resembles a futuristic urban hideout. Young men and women sit before banks of screens, remotely scanning the skies across Ukraine. Each operator controls three gun turrets assisted by AI, which tracks incoming drones and helps correct gunner aim. They are part of a growing network of automated defenses designed to intercept Russian drones before they reach critical infrastructure.
Dominique Soguel
A woman monitors Russian incoming airborne attacks, ready to intercept them remotely with AI-assisted heavy machine gun turrets, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Oct. 9, 2026.
Carmine Sky is run by Ruslan Dombadze, a Kharkiv native whose eclectic career spans medicine, IT management, policing, and military service. The future, Dombadze says, belongs to artificial intelligence, remote-controlled weapons, and private investment increasingly supplementing conventional military systems. The company cooperates with the government, but 80% of its 70 or so clients are in the private sector.
“Demand is high because of how the war is evolving,” says Dombadze. “The drone component is very high in this war, and it is only going up.”
He says the company’s systems can protect against almost every type of aerial threat short of ballistic missiles — a gap that other actors in the defense landscape hope to close with separate projects to develop domestic equivalents of Patriot missiles.
For Dombadze, the motivation is personal. He tested his company’s service by defending a 4-kilometer stretch of Kharkiv; that line has since grown to 22 kilometers. “My main driver is for all my family, friends, and all their loved ones to have a tomorrow,” he says. “We have lost too many people. I want my city to have a tomorrow.”