Ukrainian troops have been shooting down Russian aircraft with Polish Pioruns since 2022. Poland's Defense Ministry has signed a framework agreement worth more than $2 billion for several thousand shoulder-fired systems in the largest order ever placed for these launchers and missiles.

The money comes from SAFE, the European Union's 150-billion-euro defense loan facility created in response to Russia's war. Poland holds the largest national envelope at 43.7 billion euros, ahead of 18 other participants, TVP World reports.

Four countries split the order

The systems will go to the armed forces of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway, the last of which is not an EU member. More than 80% of the missiles and launchers are earmarked for the Polish army, with the implementation agreement for Poland financed from SAFE funds, according to the ministry's release.

The contract also covers simulators, training, and logistics packages. Mesko, part of the state-owned PGZ defense group, manufactures the system.

"Piorun is our export hit," said Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, state secretary at Poland's Defense Ministry, adding that other EU countries showed interest in them during talks on the SAFE mechanism.

The seeker head does the work

The Piorun is a modernized Grom that remains in Polish service. The upgrade brought a modified launch mechanism, a new and more sensitive homing head, and an electro-optical sight mounted on a rail.

Those changes improved target acquisition, resistance to countermeasures, and effective range against low-flying aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, and drones.

Ukraine's record set the reference

Poland approved its first Piorun transfer to Ukraine on 1 February 2022, three weeks before the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian crews have since used the system against cruise missiles, aircraft, and helicopters, and Western analysts list it among the short-range systems European industry can supply without American approval.

The ministry's announcement names no allocation for Ukraine.

Ukraine's cheap interceptor drones have been knocking Russia's nightly attackers out of the sky, so Russia has now bolted a jammer onto some of its own drones to blind them, according to Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's President on defense technology. He examined the system, found in drone wreckage, and mapped how it strikes back at the interceptor sent to hunt it.

Russia batters Ukrainian cities with long-range drones most nights, and Ukraine has leaned on a cheap shield—drones costing a few thousand dollars—instead of burning through far pricier missiles. Anything that dulls that shield pushes the cost of defending the sky back up.

A jammer that waits for the interceptor

The unit rides on a Geran, Russia's version of the Iranian Shahed one-way drone. It listens for the video signal an approaching Ukrainian interceptor beams back to its pilot. Its receiver reads the interceptor's working frequency, then orders a transmitter to bury that same channel in noise, Beskrestnov found.

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By his first estimate, the jammer's signal runs about five times stronger than the interceptor's video link—enough to wipe the picture and any chance of steering the drone onto its target.

Seconds decide it

In Beskrestnov's account, the system detected a test transmitter and switched on jamming after about three seconds, and the feed cut out. The device stays nearly idle until a hunter comes close, then jumps to full power to smother the signal. It targets the ordinary analog video band around 5.8 gigahertz that many cheap interceptors still use.

Possible answers, include interceptors with terminal-guidance homing for the final stretch of flight, digital communication links, or transmitters set to non-standard frequencies.

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An old problem for Russia's drones

Russia has tried again and again to keep its one-way drones alive against Ukraine's defenses, including wiring jammers into some Shaheds earlier this year. Spending weight and power to protect a drone from a far cheaper interceptor shows how well those cheap drones work.