Russian forces appear to use AI to plan air attacks and recognize targets amid raids on Ukrainian cities. This may include recent air attacks on Odesa that have come in waves with short gaps, Deputy Air Force Commander for Air Defense Colonel Yurii Cherevashenko says, Ukrinform reports.

Russia has already equipped its jet-powered Geran-4 drones with machine vision, allowing them to recognize and track targets on their own in the final seconds of flight. Recently, a single jet drone hit a locomotive in Odesa Oblast in late September and killed two railway workers.

The scale of Russia's AI use is hard to measure, Cherevashenko continues, but Ukrainian specialists already see its elements in how attacks are organized. The long, wave-by-wave strikes on Odesa would be far harder to plan and coordinate without it, he believes.

"Russian forces use AI to lay out attack routes and to recognize targets," Cherevashenko says, framing it as his own assessment rather than a confirmed fact.

The sea is harder to defend than land

Odesa Oblast is home to the biggest port in Ukraine, "Southern". Protecting it is a challenging task as guarding the airspace over water is tougher than over land, Cherevashenko says. Some air defense assets do not perform as well at sea, and in some cases, crews can intercept a target only as it approaches.

Weather adds to the problem, with storms and fog, while the open sea gives Russia more freedom to choose drone routes and launch points. To protect ports and the coast, Ukraine uses drone motherships, platforms that carry other drones aloft to extend their flight time and keep watch over set areas.

Ukraine answers AI with AI

Ukraine is also building its own AI for air defense. Automated turrets using machine vision now help counter Russian drones. According to Army Media, the Air Force says such turrets have scored their first shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 jet drones, with one soldier saying 50 rounds were enough to bring down a Geran.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry is going further. In late September, it unveiled an AI system called SPECTR, built by its A1 Artificial Intelligence Center and already in testing with several combat units, to analyze battlefield data, predict Russian moves, and suggest options to commanders.

Last winter, eight Ukrainian companies told the defense minister that their interceptors were ready to knock Russia's jet-powered drones out of the sky. They were not. A fast-flying drone is the easy part of the design, while combat testing exposed what the interceptors lacked in key features to chase an evading jet-powered Geran, presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, said in an interview with NV.

Ukraine's answer to Russia's fast, hard-to-stop jet drones was supposed to be cheap interceptors, and last winter, their makers said they had them. But a jet Geran flies 450 to 500 kilometers an hour, up from the Geran-3's 320, varies its speed to slip past defenses, and will dodge harder once interceptors appear.

Catching one takes maneuverability, machine-vision target-lock, and fuel to loiter and search, not just speed, Flash said. Ukraine's cheap interceptors have already downed about half of Russia's slower drones, but the jet-powered systems have stayed a step ahead.

Eight makers said "ready"

At a meeting last winter called by Mykhailo Fedorov, then-defense minister, all eight interceptor makers reported the same thing: "everything's ready, the solution exists, it flies, we tested it, speed is sufficient," Flash recalled.

The mistake, he said, was that no one checked on them week to week. There were also too few jet Gerans in the skies then to test against.

"On the range, they showed: it flies. That was the problem," explained Flash.

Speed is the easy part

The engines are not the obstacle, Flash continues, since they can be bought abroad, and neither is a plane that flies fast in a straight line. The hard part is a machine agile enough to chase a jet-powered Geran, which is far more maneuverable than the propeller kind and will start changing altitude and throwing evasive maneuvers once interceptors appear.

Because an operator's aim frays at such speeds, he said, the decisive pieces are automatic target capture by machine vision and automatic terminal guidance.

"Building a construction that just flies fast is the easiest part," he added.

Mass orders must wait

That is why Ukraine cannot simply order thousands to blanket the country, Flash said: it first needs a proven design that works for any crew, from Security Service specialists to territorial defense soldiers, and is simple to launch, operate, and maintain.

Once such a sample exists, he said, scaling up is only a question of money. Meanwhile, the work is moving: a Ukrainian interceptor recently notched its first kills against jet Gerans and is heading toward mass production.