An upgraded Ukrainian Zirka interceptor caught and destroyed a Russian jet-powered Geran-5 drone, its developer, the ZRK tech project, said. A crew from Ukraine’s drone forces flew the self-guiding drone, ZRK added. At its summer debut, the cheap interceptor looked too slow for Russia’s jet models.

Russia sends waves of attack drones at Ukrainian cities almost every night. It has spent the year moving more of them onto jet engines. The faster models slip past many of the cheap interceptors Ukraine built for propeller Shaheds. That leaves gaps Ukraine often plugs with expensive missiles, and Washington is holding back the ones Ukraine needs most.

Caught at 3,500 meters

ZRK said the upgraded Zirka chased down the Geran-5 at about 400 km/h, at an altitude of 3,500 meters. The developer published the interception video on 31 October.

The crew “Retro” of the Darknode battalion flew the mission, ZRK said. The battalion belongs to the 412th Nemesis brigade of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. ZRK has not disclosed the upgraded drone’s specifications.

From too slow to catching a jet

When Zirka debuted in late June, its makers listed a top speed above 340 km/h. They also gave a 6 km ceiling and a 30 km radius. At up to $2,000 a unit, they called it the cheapest interceptor in its class with automatic guidance. That speed fell short of the bursts Russia’s jet-powered Shahed variants can reach.

Zirka still found a way against jets. In late July, it downed a jet-powered Geran-4, its maker said in a press release, Militarnyi reported. Instead of chasing the faster drone from behind, Zirka met it head-on or from the side, Ukrainian tech outlet ITC explained.

Oleksii Babenko, director of investor Vyriy Industries, later said Zirka could down jet Shaheds on its own. He also said it once hit a target about 3,000 km from its operator, controlled via Starlink.

A hobby computer does the aiming

Zirka carries a Raspberry Pi 5, a credit-card-sized single-board computer, Militarnyi said. It runs a machine-vision model trained to pick out the features of Shahed-type drones. The system detects a target up to 1 km away. Once the operator confirms it, the system tracks it and steers the interceptor in.

The pilot only has to adjust the closing speed, Militarnyi added. Machine vision makes Zirka up to 60% more effective against maneuvering targets than manual piloting, NOCTIS claims, according to ITC. ZRK’s new video shows the software flagging the Geran-5, then switching to automatic terminal guidance, so the upgraded version likely keeps the same system.

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That is the capability Ukraine’s presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov has pressed for. Speed alone will not catch jet drones, he argued. Interceptors need machine vision to lock on and guide themselves in.

The battalion behind the brief

Ukrainian company NOCTIS built Zirka to a technical brief drawn up with the Darknode battalion, ITC said. The battalion, one of Ukraine’s top anti-Shahed units, has downed more than 1,500 Russian drones, according to ITC. Vyriy Industries holds a 30% stake in NOCTIS, Babenko said.

Cheap answers to cheap drones

Ukraine’s government wants exactly this kind of trade. “We need asymmetric effect,” Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said, as Kyiv funds its own missiles and radars. The goal is to stop spending costly interceptors on Russia’s cheap drones.

Until cheap tools catch up, Ukraine improvises with what it has. One regiment has paired a Soviet Kub launcher with a Buk radar to hunt jet drones. It has also rewired launchers to fire American RIM-7 missiles.

Russia keeps speeding up

Ukraine shoots down 50–60% of Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds, against 85–92% of propeller ones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in October. Russia builds about 3,000 jet drones a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) estimated.

HUR puts the Geran-5’s cruise speed at 450–600 km/h, and Beskrestnov said it has hit 1,000 km/h in maneuvers. He added that Ukraine’s jet interceptors still struggle with guidance, automatic target lock, and mass production.

Zirka is not alone. The 1020th anti-aircraft regiment caught a Geran-5 at 425 km/h in September. Wild Hornets says its new STING-family interceptor has destroyed about ten Geran-4s.

A Russian jet-powered drone set homes on fire in Kharkiv’s Osnovianskyi district during the night, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES) reported. A small child was among the people hurt. Around 13:00 on 28 October, another Russian drone hit the same district, starting a fire, killing one person and injuring two, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Of the 88 Shahed-type drones Russia launched from 18:00 on 27 October, 38 were jet-powered, the Air Force reported. By its preliminary count at 08:00, defenses had downed or jammed 31 of those 38. Several drones were still in the air. Russia also fired an Iskander-M or S-400 ballistic missile from Taganrog. Even so, Russian weapons hit eight locations, and debris fell on two more.

One strike, a casualty count that shifted

Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported a drone strike on the district at 22:42 on 27 October. At 23:12, he clarified that a child hurt in the strike had acute stress reaction. At 23:39, he listed four people hurt: women aged 32 and 65, a 56-year-old man, and a 4-year-old boy. Three went to hospital. Eight minutes later, he added that a 65-year-old woman had acute stress reaction. His morning summary of the day’s strikes lists two 65-year-old women in Kharkiv, one wounded and one with acute stress.

The SES put the number of people hurt at five, including the child. Rescuers said a jet-powered drone struck the area, starting a 2,500 m² fire.

Kharkiv’s last two days

The Osnovianskyi fire was part of a run of Russian strikes on Kharkiv and the area around it. On the evening of 26 October, Russian multiple rocket launchers hit the city’s Novobavarskyi district, killing two people and hurting four. That night, jet drones struck three places in Kharkiv district, which surrounds the city. One hit, in the settlement of Vilshany, left people hurt. The SES counted three injured that night.

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During the day on 27 October, another Russian jet drone hit a warehouse in the city’s Slobidskyi district. Preliminary reports showed no casualties. Drones also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district that afternoon, wounding one person, Terekhov said. Another hit damaged an administrative building in the Kholodnohirskyi district, he added. Hours later came the strike on Osnovianskyi. Across Kharkiv Oblast, 14 people were hurt over the past day, including a child, Syniehubov’s morning summary shows. In Osnovianskyi, rescuers were again working under the threat of repeat strikes.

German defense AI firm Helsing has unveiled Contra, an AI-run air defense system and two interceptor missiles designed to chase Russia’s jet-powered Geran drones, the company announced on 26 October. Officials pitch it as cheap, but it won’t reach the market this winter.

That leaves Ukraine on its own defenses as Russia shifts to jet drones. By early October, jet models made up about 40% of Russian drone launches, and Ukraine’s own interceptors for them won’t arrive in needed numbers before late November, Air Force Deputy Commander Yurii Cherevashenko said.

Two missiles, one AI brain

Contra is the command layer of air defense: it links radars and other sensors, tracks incoming drones and missiles, and assigns a weapon to each target, while people keep control over decisions, Helsing said. Besides the company’s own missiles, it can also use other firms’ interceptors, lasers, guns, or nets. AD-1 Inferno is jet-powered and designed to loiter, swarm, and re-engage targets, while AD-2 Ambush, a solid-fuel rocket, is designed to reach Mach 2.5, over twice the speed of sound, and a range of more than 20 km, the company said.

Inferno, with a 700 km/h speed and a 20-km range, would be the everyday shooter. Ambush would handle “leakers,” drones about to hit the ground, said Maxwell Adams, Helsing’s senior product director. Each shot should cost under $100,000, company officials said.

Built for the faster Gerans

Ukraine once downed 90% of Russia’s slower, propeller-driven Gerans, copies of Iran’s Shahed, Defense News reported. Russia has since fielded thousands of jet Geran-4s and Geran-5s flying at 400–700 km/h, and almost half now get through, Helsing co-founder and co-CEO Gundbert Scherf said.

Ukraine’s own nightly rates swing widely. On 28 September, President Zelenskyy put the shoot-down rate for jet drones at 57%. Overnight on 7 October, it exceeded 82%, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Ihor Klymenko said. Russian output of the two models has reached 4,000 a month, Helsing said, citing unspecified intelligence reports.

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Helsing has signed one Contra contract, Scherf said, but the system is still in testing, and he expects it on the market in the second half of 2027. Ukraine already uses Helsing’s HX-2 strike drones. Scherf said they should be integrated into a system like Contra.

As of October, Russia has up to 700 ballistic and several thousand cruise missiles in reserve, and its 2026 state order for Geran-type drones and decoys such as the Gerbera exceeded 100,000 units, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told NV in figures the outlet published on 20 October. The missile stocks are roughly the same as HUR reported to NV in July, the outlet found.

Ukraine enters the heating season facing what it says is a Russian plan to hit 60 infrastructure sites this winter. HUR’s figures suggest Russia has the weapons for it, even after its fall mass strikes. In June, HUR said Russia could fire up to 100 ballistic missiles a month while keeping its stocks steady. Its drone output, meanwhile, is shifting to jets that are harder to shoot down.

Russia produces 110 ballistic missiles a month

Russia can make more than 200 missiles a month, 110 of them ballistic, HUR said. About 115 of its ballistic missiles are Iskander-Ms, with production of up to 65 a month. A modernized Iskander with a projected range of 550 to 700 km is in development.

At the same time, Russia holds up to 400 S-300PM and S-400 air defense missiles adapted to strike ground targets, and makes about 40 a month. Meanwhile, Kinzhal production has been temporarily paused over poor accuracy, and the capacity has gone to conventional ballistic missiles.

Most new Kalibrs go into reserve

Russia plans to make more than 80 Kh-101 cruise missiles a month and is exceeding that, though defects in releasing them from aircraft have sent some batches back to the factories.

Russia has more than 450 Kalibrs and makes about 29 a month. Because Ukrainian air defense downs them effectively, Russia sends most new ones to its strategic reserve and to equip its fleets, HUR said. It also holds more than 600 Oniks anti-ship missiles, upgraded for ground strikes, and more than 120 Zircons.

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Russia now assembles 4,000 jet drones a month

Russia holds a reserve of about 6,200 Gerans and makes about 10,000 drones a month. Its main production hub is the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan.

Since summer, Russia has shifted toward turbojet drones. “The reason is the saturation of Ukraine’s Air Force with mobile fire groups that shoot down low-speed targets en masse,” HUR said. Russia now assembles about 4,000 jet drones a month, mostly Geran-4s and Geran-5s, which fly at 400 to 500 km/h. It also makes about 2,000 cheaper propeller-driven Geran-2s, which HUR said are used to wear down air defense and locate air defense positions.

Russia's latest jet-propelled Geran-4 and Geran-5 one-way attack drones fly at 500 km/h or more, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2.

That's too fast for many of Ukraine's air defenses. In particular, the inexpensive interceptor drones that Ukrainian forces deploy by the thousand.

Russia launched more than 2,700 jet Gerans at Ukraine in September, and Ukraine is shooting down only about 55% of them, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The speed disparity is a big part of the problem.

Ukrainian forces are scrambling for new defenses against the speedy Gerans. Among the best is actually a Ukrainian take on the Geran-4 and Geran-5: a fast, jet-propelled one-way attack drone that the Ukrainians have modified for air-to-air use.

Against jet drones, the air-to-air Bars have a hit rate of around 30%, Zelensky said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Kyiv on 4 October. "The Bars have shown positive results," Zelensky said. "They currently have the highest percentage. Others are also catching up."

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In July, Ukraine and Germany agreed to jointly produce Bars, with Germany financing the first phase. Ukraine has reportedly been launching Bars at targets on the ground since at least the summer of 2025. But it was only recently that clear photos and videos of the drones have circulated.

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade released footage of one jet drone hunting another. Observers identified the interceptor as a Bars and its target as a Geran-5. After launching from an elevated ramp with help from a rocket booster, the drone's operator—seeing what the drone saw through a front-facing infrared camera—steered the drone toward the Russian drone, possibly destroying it.

Exactly how the operator controlled the Bars—whether by satellite or mesh radio or some other command and control system—is unclear. Equally unclear: what kind of warhead a Bars would employ in the air-to-air role. Many smaller interceptor drones lack warheads. Instead, they simply slam directly into their targets, wrecking them in the collision.

Mystery drone

Bars isn't small. It likely packs an explosive warhead. Potentially one that the operator can remotely trigger when the interceptor passes near its target.

Bars is adaptable. Its maker has reworked it from a 22-kg warhead and a 700-km range to a 60-kg warhead and a stated range of more than 1,000 km, and a heavier variant can carry a 105-kg warhead.

In the air-to-air interceptor role, long range is terribly important but speed is everything. There's an obvious way for the Ukrainians to boost the Bars' speed from its reported 700 km/h top speed to potentially even faster. They could shrink the drone's warhead and its fuel load, making it lighter in order to make it faster.

That may explain how a Bars can chase down a Geran-5 even as the Russians, by one Ukrainian analyst's estimate, try to push the Geran-5 toward 700 km/h or more.

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Cost is important, too. Russia churns out Gerans for an estimated $100,000 or so per drone. The cheaper the drone, the more copies the Russians can fling at Ukrainian cities. If it takes three or more interceptor drones to take down each of those 2,700 jet Gerans, Ukraine may need to deploy 8,000 to 10,000 interceptors a month.

Ukraine already builds more than 2,000 Bars a month, its maker says, but mostly in strike versions. How many go to air defense, and how much each costs, isn't public.

The supply of small jet engines could be a constraint. “Engines are a key element; we really import them in large quantities,” Zelensky said in an interview with Financial Times. "There are also domestically produced engines, but there are not enough of them.” A Ukrainian-made engine for Bars passed final tests in September.

US defense-tech company CHAOS Industries introduced its Vespid interceptor family in Washington on 12 October, as the Association of the US Army (AUSA) annual meeting opened there, the company announced. CHAOS pitches the drones as low-cost defense against small and mid-size drones and one-way attack munitions. The company expects initial production capacity of 12,000 interceptors a year, expandable to 50,000 as demand grows.

The pitch lands as Russia moves its strike drones to jet power. Russia has stopped building the Geran-3, an earlier jet model, and makes about 3,000 faster Geran-4s and Geran-5s a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told Militarnyi in August. In mid-September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two Ukrainian companies had passed combat tests with interceptors against such drones, while 67 were still working on them. Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express measured the new US drones against exactly that threat.

One to carry, one to launch in batches

The Mk 1 made its first public appearance on 12 October aboard a Forterra MESA autonomous ground vehicle, Army Recognition reported. It fires from tubes on launchers such as the 10-round ISS Aerospace HAL10. It takes midcourse guidance from CHAOS radars or external command systems, then an AI-assisted infrared seeker handles the final approach, the company says. An electric ducted fan rather than a jet engine drives it, which CHAOS says cuts cost and logistics compared with turbojet interceptors.

The smaller Mk 0 is man-portable and needs no operator input once fired, its product page says. Both are rated to reach a target in under 100 seconds, with a listed range of 10+ km. Defense Express called that range a serious weakness that more launchers around a city could offset.

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CHAOS lists cruise speeds of 100 m/s (360 km/h) for the Mk 0 and 150 m/s (540 km/h) for the Mk 1. Defense Express said those speeds may be enough to intercept the Geran-4 and Geran-5, which it puts at 340 km/h and 450–600 km/h.

Ukrainian makers say their interceptors already down jet Gerans

Wild Hornets’ Sting interceptors downed several of the slower jet-powered Geran-3s in November 2025. An unnamed Wild Hornets representative told NV, in an interview published on 22 September, that the company’s new interceptor had destroyed about ten Geran-4s and several Geran-5s in limited use. The company plans mass production within a month of finishing combat tests.

On 12 October, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said he and Pavlo Yelizarov, commander of Lasar’s Group, had created a new interceptor with troops and engineers. He said it downed two Geran-5s headed for Kyiv.

Crews from Lasar’s Group, which Fedorov has called a National Guard special unit, flew those combat tests, he said. Separately, Fedorov reported in August that a Ukrainian jet interceptor with a top speed above 600 km/h had entered combat testing.

Russia has nearly finished the first section of a new launch site for jet-powered Geran-5 attack drones near the town of Millerovo in Rostov Oblast, anonymous Ukrainian OSINT channel Absolutely Reliable Source reported on 13 October. The channel’s bio says it covers Ukraine’s deep strikes and that its author belongs to a larger, unnamed structure. It says Russia rushed the build to scale up attacks after its September strikes on Kyiv.

The site is meant for the kind of drone Ukraine stops far less often than the older Shaheds. Ukraine downs 55% of jet-powered Shaheds, the class that includes the Geran-5, and more than 90% of the older propeller-driven ones, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 26 September. Russian industry makes about 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told Militarnyi in August. A new launch site is how Russia plans to fire more of them, the channel argues.

Built in weeks, by the channel’s count

The channel’s images from 1 September show no construction at the site. The latest ones show eight prepared positions for launchers and 32 places for preparing drones for launch, the channel wrote. Imagery from the day before its post shows drones being unloaded in one zone, it said.

The channel’s headline says the work took a month. Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi, comparing the channel’s own images from 1 September and 12 October, put it at about six weeks. Both readings rest on the same images, which have not been independently verified.

Built like Tsymbulova

The construction style is very similar to Tsymbulova, Russia’s jet-drone base in Oryol Oblast, the channel wrote. That base has separate positions for storing, preparing, and launching jet drones, Militarnyi said. By late May, less than a month into an expansion of Tsymbulova, Russia was already building 10 more launchers there.

Ukrainian drones have hit Tsymbulova repeatedly, though most of the damage imagery comes from Absolutely Reliable Source. Militarnyi reported strikes on the base’s bunkers and hangars in September. Ukraine’s Defense Forces struck it again overnight on 1 October, damaging two ground shelters and drone preparation areas, Absolutely Reliable Source said. On 10 October, OSINT channel Exilenova+ reported another drone strike there, saying several bunkers, one jet-drone launcher, and a drone storage area were hit.