Ukraine unleashes the minigun on Shahed drones

Ukraine has started equipping its Mi-8 helicopters with American-made M134 Minigun systems to counter Russian Shahed kamikaze drones, according to footage published by the Instagram account aero.tim and reported by Militarnyi.

Russia launches swarms of Shahed kamikaze drones at Ukrainian cities every night, overwhelming air defenses with sheer numbers. These Iranian-designed attack drones are difficult targets for expensive surface-to-air missiles. Helicopter-mounted machine guns give Ukraine another option for intercepting drones without burning through costly missile stockpiles.

The video shows a Mi-8 door gunner firing several bursts at an incoming drone, which then veers off course and crashes. The modification gives the Soviet-designed helicopters a major boost in firepower against low-flying targets that have become a constant threat across Ukraine.

Why Ukraine is putting American miniguns on Soviet helicopters

According to Ukrainian defense portal Militarnyi, the M134 Minigun is a six-barrel, electrically driven machine gun chambered in 7.62×51 mm NATO. It can fire between 2,000 and 6,000 rounds per minute - about eight times faster than the standard PKT machine guns typically mounted on Mi-8s.

Often seen on US helicopters such as the Black Hawk and Huey, the Minigun can be mounted in fixed or swivel configurations, allowing gunners to cover a wide firing arc. Beyond defending against drones, the weapon is also effective for close air support and suppressing enemy firing positions.

Ukraine has become a drone superpower, producing about 4 million unmanned aerial vehicles of various types each year. For comparison, some estimates put US military drone production at roughly 100,000 units per year, Bloomberg reports. 

Ukraine’s drone era began with Turkish Bayraktar TB2s. Ukraine purchased its first Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles in 2019. These drones have significantly strengthened the capabilities of Kyiv's forces since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war. Today, Ukraine produces most of its drones itself with the support of its allies. 

 

Ukraine's drone variety exceeds NATO arsenals

Now, Ukrainian companies, facing acute funding shortages, are eager to share their drone expertise and create safer production lines aimed at European armies that want to stockpile weapons.

“It’s not just the quantity of drones, it’s the variety. Probably more than all NATO countries combined right now," said RAND analyst Michael Bohnert.

That variety includes long-range strike drones, as well as inexpensive first-person-view (FPV) attack drones.

Increasingly, Ukrainian air defenses are also using interceptor drones. Ukraine and the UK plan to begin joint production of such drones in the coming months to counter swarms of Russian drones.

FlyWell wants $50 million to manufacture drones on European soil

• Some Ukrainian drone makers have already entered the EU market. For example, Skyeton opened a facility in Slovakia and has announced partnerships with Denmark and the UK. The company produces reconnaissance UAVs capable of flying for up to 24 hours.
• Another Ukrainian firm, TSIR, is now operating in Finland and is preparing to launch a production line for tactical quadcopters that can cover up to 15 kilometers and are used for reconnaissance and strikes along the front line, in a joint venture with Finnish partner Summa Defence Plc.
• FlyWell brings together several Ukrainian companies that produce aerial, ground, and maritime drones intended for reconnaissance and strikes on Russian targets from the front line to ranges of up to 2,000 kilometers. FlyWell plans to raise about $50 million to fund European manufacturing and R&D projects.

Currently, Summa Defence is self-funding production and has already created prototypes of three models that could enter mass production immediately after testing in Ukraine, CEO Yussi Holopainen said. Some of the output is intended for NATO countries, but Ukraine remains the priority.

Offices in Berlin and Copenhagen

Denmark allocated nearly $77 million this year to help Ukrainian arms manufacturers establish operations on its territory. The first project is expected to begin producing rocket fuel this year for Fire Point, a Ukrainian company developing the Flamingo cruise missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers.

Ukraine plans to open offices in Berlin and Copenhagen this year to market weapons, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 3 November. This is about joint production and the export of weapons that Ukraine can afford to sell in order to raise funds for domestic production of scarce items that Kyiv currently lacks funding for.

Russian drones now build a web of relays and defy electronic warfare. Russia is rapidly deploying and refining remote control of long-range drones over mesh networks. In October 2025, the occupiers already used this approach to hunt Ukrainian trains, says Serhii Beskrestnov, also known as Flash, as per Defense Express.

From Chinese mesh modems to relay drones that keep functioning under fire

Flash explains that Russia turned to Chinese manufacturers to turn the idea into reality. It specially ordered mesh modems, nominally labelled as Wi-Fi gear, operating in the 1300–1500 MHz band, and uses technology that differs from conventional Wi-Fi.

Each unit costs approximately $7,000 and can deliver an output of 10–20 W per channel, allowing for links of 100 km or more.

These modems provide a digital, encrypted connection that is relatively resistant to electronic interference by using cross-frequency distribution techniques. Each modem also acts as a relay: airborne modems on drones form a chain network in which data packets automatically reroute if a node disappears.

As a result, even if many platforms are shut down, the network remains operational. The drones that survive keep the links and forward data. 

“Each modem is not just a transmission point but also a relay for others. In the air, modems on drones create communications channels between themselves. Each of them tries to link to the next, and if one drops out, the information is routed around through another channel,” Beskrestnov explains.

From Gerbera to Shahed: scaling the tech for attacks on moving targets

Russia has been refining this technology for about a year. Flash noted that even if 80% of the drones are destroyed, the remainder can still relay information. Initially, Moscow tested the system on small foam drones, such as the “Gerbera", used for rear-area reconnaissance and relaying signals back toward Russian territory.

Seeing the concept’s effectiveness, the Russians began installing mesh modems on Shahed drones, enabling online control from Russian soil.

Technically, the network can provide throughput up to ~50 MB/s, and in degraded conditions, around 2 MB/s, which is enough to stream optimized high-definition video and allow FPV control with acceptable latency.

Although Shaheds are not highly maneuverable, their capabilities are sufficient to attack predictable moving targets, such as trains whose speed and route are known. An operator controlling a drone online can approach from the rear and strike a locomotive or tanker.

“These Shaheds can not only hit GPS coordinates like a substation but can also strike its most vulnerable point... We prioritize detecting these modems by their signal and jamming them with electronic warfare,” Flash says.

Modems that only switch on near the target, and ground relays on balconies

A Shahed with a mesh modem may only power the modem at a specific coordinate near the target — i.e., these modems don’t need to broadcast continuously and may activate just before strike.

Beyond airborne nodes, the Russians can set up ground relays: the modems are compact and can be installed on balconies or rooftops with internet access. Such ground nodes don’t need high antennas to communicate with nearby UAVs.

Can the system be countered?

Flash stresses that, despite the system’s complexity, it can be defeated by electronic warfare. However, the effectiveness of countermeasures depends on how widely and well Russia implements mesh technology: if Moscow deploys it not just on Shaheds but on other long-range platforms, it will gain a robust, fast, and wide two-way data channel.

Any mitigation depends on the volume, quality, and scale of Russia's deployment.

"It’s crucial not to miss the moment when Russia multiplies use of this tech across many platforms, not only Shaheds. Because that would create a resilient, fast, broad two-way data channel,” the Defense Express experts say.

Marauder's thumbs make micro-adjustments on the FPV controller, keeping the racing drone steady at 5 km above ground. On his screen: a speck against gray sky—the Russian reconnaissance drone. Its camera swivels, scanning for threats.

Too late. The pilot presses the button. Bang.

Both drones—Ukrainian interceptor and Russian spy—disappear in the detonation. The freeze frame on the screen shows the enemy's rearview camera catching its killer in the final millisecond. The team in the underground bunker cheers, but waits for confirmation. Minutes later, radar confirms: target down.

Around him in the underground bunker, two teammates have been managing their own screens: one tracking the target's coordinates across three monitors, another radioing compass directions to the sapper above, who's swiveling a directional antenna to keep their interceptor connected.

They've been doing this for months now—hunting Russian drones with drones, from positions the enemy can't see.

Teams like these have shattered Russia's air supremacy—saving countless Ukrainian military targets. Now they're Moscow's most wanted. Just one problem: you can't kill what you can't see underground.

It's a reversal that could reshape Ukraine's air defense calculus: instead of expensive missiles chasing cheap drones, cheap drones are now hunting expensive ones.

In this exclusive, I am granted the world’s first look inside the inner workings of an anti-aircraft team of the 113th Separate Kharkiv Territorial Defense anti-aircraft battery and the Volunteer unit “Phoenix” as they pioneered this underground drone warfare.

Russian eyes from above meet their match

Big Russian reconnaissance drones like the Orlan-10, Zala, and Supercam slip through Ukrainian defenses and patrol for hours deep in Ukrainian territory, guiding Iskander missiles and Lancet drones to devastate Ukrainian training grounds, logistical hubs, and civilian targets.

Until recently, Ukraine was powerless against these spy drones. Flying at altitudes of 4-5 km, above the range of MANPADs and anti-aircraft guns, demanding expensive anti-air missiles, the feared recon UAVs could loiter for hours, unhindered, spotting targets that Russian ballistic missiles would slam into minutes later.

Even if the Russian scouts got into range, Ukraine’s air defense teams were prohibited from attempting to shoot them down during the day, lest they themselves become a target.

Then came Ukraine's $600 interceptor drones—now hunting the $30,000-120,000 reconnaissance UAVs from underground bunkers the Russians can't target.

Best known for being the most promising solution to Russia’s Shahed drones swarms, they are now launched by air defense units from underground bunkers to down the recon drones that once traveled Ukrainian airspace with impunity.

Anti-aircraft positions like the 113th and Phoenix defend more than military assets. According to Ukrainian emergency service officials in the region, 90% of Russian airstrike targets are civilian—and these anti-aircraft (AA) teams are the only thing standing in the way.

Attack drones such as Shahed drones are pre-programmed with a route and target in mind. Prior to the drone launch, someone in Russia chooses a target they deem a priority.

Illya, a volunteer soldier of the Phoenix unit, callsign “Artist,” sees the pattern:

“Potentially, the target is something that they think is very important, but normally, they just hit civilians for some reason. Maybe that's the goal; in fact, I'm pretty sure it is."

A war of drones, they say

Russian tactics are evolving as fast as Ukraine’s defenses. “The enemy is not dumb; he's adjusting as well as we are to modern combat,” the Artist says. Russians now fly higher routes beyond gun ranges and deploy dummy drones—unarmed decoys that mimic real threats to distract AA teams, while armed drones threaten anyone who goes after them.

Furthermore, as soon as the Russian recon drone spots the AA team, an artillery strike may follow. "Currently, it is quite difficult to work from the ground."

“Who could have imagined that some bird [drone] would become one of the main offensive weapons five years ago?” asks Commander “Makhno,” a veteran of the 2014 Donetsk airport battle. When I interviewed him five months ago, he sat on a stationary ZU-23-3 autocannon, as part of an AA battery of the 113th Territorial Defense Brigade. That gun is now mobile.

This position? Home to the next evolution in anti-aircraft warfare—FPV interceptor drones.

First Sergeant Yuriy, callsign “Fly,” watched drone warfare evolve firsthand.

• In early 2022, using drones was unprecedented.
• By mid-2022, it was standard—Fly flew a commercial Mavic 3 for scouting missions.
• Since then, drones have spread across every sector of warfare: FPV strikes, logistics runs, even ground-based operations.
• Anti-aircraft interceptor drones only emerged in mid-2024 and became scalable in early 2025.

Where does it go next? Fly predicts that by 2026, we'll see full drone-on-drone air warfare.

But the system has growing pains. The 113th is still experimenting with ways to cut costs and improve operations. If an interceptor misses its target, the pilot must return it to base so someone can manually disarm the explosive charge.

If it hits? They need to buy a replacement drone. Each interception burns through equipment one way or another.

A Truck, a Docent, and an Artist walk into a bunker

An interceptor drone team runs on three roles: pilot, navigator, and sapper. The Phoenix soldiers training here today—Truck, Docent, and Artist—are cross-training across all three positions, giving me a complete view of how the system works.

Sapper

Truck is learning the sapper role. He assembles the interceptor step-by-step: wires zip-tied to a ten-inch carbon fiber drone, four propellers tightened onto motors, a large capacity battery velcroed into position.

Finally, the explosive charge mounts to the underside, its detachable detonator dangling loose. Truck and his trainer Snake carry the drone to a launch point away from the bunker and wait for the command to arm it.

When command gives the order, Truck attaches the battery, confirms connection to the bunker, and arms the charge by inserting the detonator.

But the sapper’s job does not end there. Truck also operates the directional antenna on top of the bunker—critical for maintaining the drone’s connection. The signal projects in a narrow beam, and the farther the drone flies, the more precise Truck’s aim must be.

He relies on constant radio updates from the navigator below, adjusting the antenna based on compass directions alone.

Navigator

First Sergeant Fly trains Docent on the navigator role.

Three screens sit in front of them: a live map tracking all aerial targets above a certain altitude, a Ukrainian radar feed, and a zoomed-in satellite map. All are required to accurately guide the pilot sitting right next to him.

The radar feed catches launches from Russian soil and tracks their general position as they enter Ukrainian airspace. The aerial target map displays airspeed, altitude, and signal emissions—helping identify the drone model.

The satellite map guides the intercept itself The FPV interceptor carries a swivel camera that can instantly point groundward.

Docent must match the landscape from the satellite image to what the drone’s camera sees, navigating purely by visual landmarks. A complicated task given that he must also relay the compass direction to the sapper above, so he could maintain a connection with the drone.

Pilot

The pilot’s job seems simpler—until the dogfight starts. When Ukrainian and Russian drones meet in the air, the pilot must pull off precise maneuvers with highly finicky drones. Marauder, the unit’s main pilot, moved from infantry to drone operations after combat injuries. The navigator guides him to the target area, but Marauder makes the final visual contact.

Finding the speck is just the start. Marauder learned FPV flying by striking virtual ground targets—and those same precision skills translate to hunting drones.

"It is vital to actually learn to work as you are hitting ground units because all these micrometrics in maneuvering, slowing down, and making a perfect angle to attack—that's what makes a successful interception."

Marauder trains Artist on the pilot role—the most demanding session I witness. The physical work is easier than handling explosives or juggling three screens, but mastering the precision flying takes far longer. FPV drones crash easily. The controls are unintuitive. And for a volunteer unit funding most of its own equipment, every crashed training drone is money lost.

So they start with video games. Artist boots up Liftoff, an FPV flight simulator from LuGus Studios. The program's realistic physics engine lets pilots practice the tiny adjustments—speed changes, approach angles, attack runs—without destroying real equipment. Ukrainian armed forces units have widely adopted it for drone training.

War games

What does an actual intercept look like? Ukrainian radar tracks the Russian drone from launch. The team gathers around their monitors as the sapper carries the interceptor to a launch point far away from the bunker.

He connects the battery, arms the explosive, and moves to the directional antenna. The navigator radios command for clearance. Approved. The pilot fires up the drone—FPV propellers whirring to life.

The interceptor could climb over 2,000 meters, but the pilot keeps it low. The navigator needs to match ground features on screen to the satellite map, guiding the drone toward the target zone. Approaching the intercept area, the pilot scans his screen repeatedly, hunting for a tiny speck against the open sky.

Visual contact. Now it becomes a dance between two pilots. Russian reconnaissance drones often don’t notice the small Ukrainian interceptor approaching—but not always. Marauder says Zala reconnaissance drones now carry rearview cameras to spot pursuers. During the chase, the navigator coordinates with the sapper topside, calling out quick antenna adjustments to keep the signal strong while the pilot maneuvers unimpeded by signal lag.

When the pilot closes in, he flicks a switch on the controller. Boom. Detonation. Artist jokes they’ll start marking their controllers the way pilots mark their fuselages—one kill at a time.

This is just the beginning

"That's the reality; welcome to it. Right now, potentially, anyone can be a lethal weapon with a drone, right? That's drone warfare, unfortunately,” Artist says.

The technology has opened new paths for wounded soldiers. Marauder, Fly, and Snake can no longer fight as infantry—but they can hunt Russian drones from below. Interceptor drones won’t replace gun batteries.

“A bullet is a bullet,” Fly says. But the interceptors save lives, stretch manpower, and force Russia into a calculation: spend more money sending drones, or accept surveillance gaps.

Cross-training between gun crews and drone operators creates another advantage. "It gives you perspective," Artist says. "You learn how the different systems operate."

The advantage is practical: understanding both gun operations and drone piloting means you can predict what the other side will do. Drone pilots who've worked gun crews know the evasion tactics. Gun crews who've flown drones know where pilots are vulnerable.

The two systems complement each other, Fly says. Gun teams can't operate during daylight when Russian reconnaissance drones patrol overhead. Interceptor drones struggle at night when spotting targets becomes nearly impossible. Together, they cover the gaps—protecting both military positions and the civilians Russia increasingly targets.

This is just the beginning for interceptor drones. The 113th and Phoenix innovators are already experimenting with improvements—better range, faster interception, lower costs. Now it's a race to scale the technology before Russia adapts—because every drone they down is a missile strike that never happens.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved from a strategy of conquering Ukraine to a strategy of its destruction. This year he has lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in exchange for less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory, The Economist reports. 

Russia is conducting thousands of air strikes on the power grid, central heating, and gas infrastructure as winter approaches.

The goal is to render parts of the country’s east uninhabitable, crash the industry, and provoke mass emigration and panic.

Russia is inventing new weapons to destroy Ukraine

The Kremlin is now operating even more clinically and cynically than before. Russian capabilities and tactics are evolving faster than Ukraine can improve its air defenses — both missile interceptions and electronic warfare measures around sensitive sites. It appears this winter will be a test of endurance like no other.

The Kremlin is concentrating on specific regions, striking in waves and using new variants of cheap Shahed drones.

The drones are also attacking differently, approaching from near‑vertical trajectories and flying above the effective range of machine guns, almost like missiles.

Over the past three weeks, Russia has hit several thermal power plants and possibly shut down half of Ukraine’s gas production, a key part of balancing capacity.

Beyond the cost of damaged infrastructure, recent attacks unexpectedly forced Ukraine to spend a staggering $1.9 billion on imported gas.

Cutting the country apart with an energy blitzkrieg

Outside the capital, Russia has focused on the border regions of Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv. The apparent aim is to slice Ukraine in two: isolate the industrial east, where consumption has always been higher, from the energy production in the west, and to weaken transmission lines so that eventual west‑to‑east power flows are paralyzed.

“They want to turn the power off on the eastern bank first, not the whole country,” a government source says.

The report says that Putin, smelling blood, is unlikely to stop. In previous years, his attacks only strengthened Ukrainian resolve. This time, they may be more effective.