A Ukrainian drone maker just got its own air defense unit, and says it has already downed Russian jet-powered drones. Ukraine's Defense Ministry has issued an order granting the Night Hornets, the anti-Shahed unit of interceptor maker Wild Hornets, the status of a private air defense, and the company announced it is starting to build its own network of remotely launched interceptor drones.

Russia has sharply increased its use of jet-powered Shahed drones, which cuts the reaction time of Ukraine's mobile fire groups from about a minute to as little as six seconds. Now, a private company joins the air defense line, while Ukrainian military intelligence says Russia is producing up to 500 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones a month.

The planned network will combine remote-control centers, a grid of remote interceptor launches built on the company's Hornet Vision Ctrl technology, and field positions. Wild Hornets will not sell protection for individual sites and will pay for the unit from drone sales profit.

"The unit has more than 50 downed Shaheds to its name, including jet-powered ones. We create technologies that work. We use them ourselves to protect our country," the company says.

Air Force commanders will direct the crews

The crews already go on daily combat duty alongside the military and will take orders from the Air Force command. The unit draws on Wild Hornets instructors and test pilots, including veterans of the war and pilots who rose from beginners to instructors. The company wants to fold private air defense into the country's overall system, including over Kyiv.

Air alerts now swallow nearly a third of mall hours

Due to Russia's jet-powered drones, air-raid alerts covered 30.8 percent of shopping-center operating hours across Ukraine in September, a record, up from 22 percent in August and 14.1 percent a year earlier, the Ukrainian Council of Shopping Centers reports. The average mall has now lost 176.5 working days since the full-scale invasion, including 9.6 in September alone.

Kyiv shows the sharpest jump. The share of alert time during mall hours in the capital rose from 11.6 percent in August to 32.7 percent in September, the council said.

The damage reaches well beyond the malls. Ukraine's Economy Ministry expects losses from Russian strikes to reach up to $10 billion this year, Economy Minister Oleksandr Kravchenko said on 12 September.