A new video transmitter for Wild Hornets’ drones, including its STING interceptors, has passed state tests, the Ukrainian drone maker told Militarnyi. The module sends a drone’s camera feed to its pilot. The company expects it to widen its interceptors’ operating radius.

Russia launched 140 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine overnight on 26 October and 280 the next night, when its main target was Kyiv, Air Force figures as of the morning show. Interceptor drones, which cost dozens of times less than the Shaheds they hunt, are one of Ukraine’s answers. The STING alone downed more than 3,000 drones in its first seven months of use, Wild Hornets says. If the company’s estimate holds, a 30 km radius would let each ground station cover more than twice the area it covers at 20 km.

What the testers checked

Specialists from the State Research Institute for Testing and Certification of Arms and Military Equipment and the Defense Ministry’s State Quality Assurance Directorate confirmed the module’s declared characteristics on three drone types, the company said. The three were the STING interceptor, the Queen of Hornets cargo platform, and the 10-inch Wild Hornets Digital anti-aircraft drone.

Some of the drones’ figures exceeded the values the company had set for them, Wild Hornets told Ukrainian defense outlet Oboronka, without saying which ones. Those figures will enter the official specifications after further field tests, it said.

More than double the power

The module, called HV VTX Pro, is part of an upgrade to Wild Hornets’ Hornet Vision digital video system. It more than doubles the transmitter’s maximum power, to 4 W. That sends a clear picture farther and makes the feed steadier in crowded airwaves and under electronic jamming, the company said.

Wild Hornets first described the module in August, when it was already in serial production. Its interceptors’ operating radius would grow from around 20 km to 30 km, the company said at the time. That estimate assumed good line of sight and the 360-degree antenna on its ground stations, according to a company statement Interfax-Ukraine quoted. Interception could also become at least 20% more effective against targets flying extremely low, the statement said.

Wild Hornets is a Ukrainian company that designs and builds drones, from strike FPV drones and cargo platforms to the STING, which the company says flies at up to 280 km/h to hunt Shaheds. Its drones serve with more than 100 units of Ukraine’s Defense Forces, from the army and the National Guard to military intelligence, the Air Force, and the border guard, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

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.

One drone launched another drone, which then shot down a third. All three were unmanned, and all at sea off Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Navy has destroyed a Russian Shahed attack drone with a Sting interceptor launched from the Sargan 3000 unmanned surface vessel, the Navy said, showing sailors adapting to new aerial threats with sea-launched interceptors.

Russian Shaheds threaten Ukraine’s ports, coastline and the ships that approach them, so meeting those drones out at sea, before they reach land, matters for the whole southern defense.

The Sting is built to destroy Russian kamikaze drones such as the Shahed, Geran and Lancet, as well as reconnaissance drones, with quick deployment, a short training course and a top speed of 280 km/h, its producer, Wild Hornets, says.

The interceptor that has become Ukraine’s Shahed-killer

The Sting has earned its place at the front. The Ukrainian FPV interceptor has proven highly effective in combat, with a typical hit rate of 80 to 90% depending on the unit, and on some days reaching 100 percent, one launch for one kill.

It is currently Ukraine’s most productive Shahed interceptor, according to the Wild Hornets, having destroyed more than 3,000 drones in its first seven months of use. Mounting it on a sea platform extends that record from land into the Black Sea.

A drone boat that keeps finding new ways to kill

The Sargan 3000 has become a multi-purpose hunter. In July, Ukrainian naval personnel used a Sargan 3000 to sink a Russian second-rank border patrol ship.

In October, the same drone boat shot down a Russian Shahed with a turret-mounted machine gun over the Black Sea. Ukraine’s Navy took the Sargan 3000 into service in April 2026, and the drone boat has a combat radius of up to 1,600 kilometers, letting it clear the sky far from shore without putting a sailor in range.

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.

Ukraine’s six-wheeled Frodo ground robot fired on targets during a demonstration in Kharkiv Oblast for the Pomsta (Revenge) Border Guard Brigade, a border guard detachment posted on Facebook. Frodo made its public debut only on 30 September.

Ukraine had contracted more than 22,000 ground robots for 2026 by July, mostly logistics carriers, with combat models the smallest group, the Defense Ministry said. Frodo’s first reported mission was an evacuation. The demo shows its armed version to a fighting brigade, the kind of robot Ukraine has ordered least.

What the armed version carries

The platform completed its tasks at a training ground in near-combat conditions, said the 3rd Border Guard Detachment named after Hero of Ukraine Colonel Yevhenii Pikus. The Buria turret mounted on Frodo can fire either a Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher or a Browning M2 heavy machine gun. It engaged targets at up to 1.3 km (0.8 mile), the detachment said.

The 47-kg (104-lb) module has a ballistic calculator, stores up to 256 targets, aims in three seconds, and has a stated autonomous run time of up to 48 hours, the post said. Frodo is rated for up to 150 km (93 miles) on paved roads and 75–80 km (47–50 miles) over rough terrain, the post added. A Frontline Robotics Zoom reconnaissance drone flew reconnaissance during the test.

The developer, Frontline Robotics, describes its core philosophy as arriving fast, doing the job, and leaving very fast—hit and run, the detachment’s post said. Familiarizing the brigade’s soldiers with such systems aims first and foremost to preserve personnel’s lives and health, the detachment said.

A robot first reported as a medevac

Frontline Robotics told Militarnyi at the unveiling that Frodo had passed Defense Ministry codification and was built for logistics, evacuation, and strike missions. The robot reaches 40 km/h (25 mph) and carries up to 200 kg (441 lb) of payload, or 400 kg (882 lb) at most, the company said. A single soldier can swap its batteries.

The 92nd Assault Brigade used an early test unit to evacuate a wounded soldier, Frontline Robotics told Militarnyi. An operator, callsign Tango, named the robot’s speed and its ability to handle complex maneuvers as its main advantages, Militarnyi reported.

A Ukrainian company has played the enemy in a Pentagon drone contest, and the US liked what it saw. Phantom Defense, a Ukrainian defense-tech firm, was one of three companies whose systems built the counter-drone environment for Gauntlet II, the second stage of the US military’s Drone Dominance program, and has been invited to take part further, Defender Media reports.

Drone Dominance is the Pentagon’s four-phase effort to field cheap attack drones fast, a roughly $1 billion program to buy more than 200,000 low-cost attack drones by 2027. Phantom Defense brought a system that was already proven at home, where in one city it neutralized more than 7,000 enemy drones over an area of more than 100 square kilometers in a year, the company says.

Rather than enter a drone of its own, Phantom Defense supplied the resistance that the American drones had to fly through. Its setup paired the Specter PRO, L, X, and XL jammers with the Streamhunter video-interception tool and a command-and-control layer that detected and classified targets, coordinated the countermeasures, and confirmed the kills. The jammers suppressed drones and held up in heat and rain, it adds.

The arrangement lets American developers fly their drones under live electronic attack rather than calm conditions, recreating a battlefield where a drone’s performance swings with the jamming around it, according to the company.

One map to run the whole fight

At the center sits Phantom Defense’s C2 system, Kupol, which integrates separate tools into a single ecosystem on a shared map. It lets crews run electronic warfare remotely, without driving out to a position, and ties in sensors, interceptor drones, and turrets, the company says.

Kupol reads the terrain and a drone database to propose the best way to take down a target, then logs each mission automatically so its recommendations sharpen over time.

The high-power Specter PRO station, built to shield positions, critical infrastructure, and cities, serves as the hardware anchor.

An invitation, not yet a contract

Previously, Ukraine’s battle-tested drone makers also took part in Drone Dominance. However, they didn’t succeed in it, though some of their technology competed under Western partners. The program bars direct purchases from Ukrainian firms, which must set up a US legal entity to bid.

Ukraine's state railway, Ukrzaliznytsia, has added 18 Kyiv City Express shuttle runs between Vydubychi and Darnytsia for 5–9 October, while the government has begun preparatory work on temporary crossings over the Dnipro River after Russian strikes disrupted bridge traffic. Minister for Restoration, Infrastructure and Transport Mykola Kalashnyk outlined the backup plan in an interview with Suspilne on 3 October.

About 600,000 vehicles cross the Dnipro in Kyiv each day, making the river crossings critical to movement across the capital, Kalashnyk said. Russia's attacks on the Southern and Northern bridges have disrupted traffic, with the Southern Bridge fully closed to cars and metro on 2 October and restrictions introduced on other crossings. The risk of further damage is heightened by Russia's upgraded jet-powered Geran-4, which now carries a specialized warhead designed to cut through bridge structures and power-line supports, according to presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov.

Jams, restrictions, and extra trains

On 6 October, large traffic jams formed between Kyiv's left and right banks, with the heaviest queues on approaches to the Southern Bridge, Obozrevatel reported. The jams followed Russian strikes that cratered the Northern Bridge.

Green-line metro trains resumed carrying passengers between the banks during the yellow threat level on 4 October, Radio Svoboda reported. Under the current restrictions, traffic on the Southern and Podilskyi bridges is stopped in certain directions for at most the first 15 minutes after an air alert begins.

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The additional Kyiv City Express shuttles run during the busiest hours, 06:00–09:00 and 16:00–21:00. Together with scheduled suburban and regional trains, they bring the number of peak-hour runs between the banks to up to six, Ukrzaliznytsia said.

Pontoons first, tunnel later

Kalashnyk said the government plans to build several backup crossings over the Dnipro. The sites have already been chosen, and he named a combination of earth embankments and pontoon crossings as measures that can be built quickly. He said construction could take up to three months and that the backup crossings should provide at least 50% of the capacity of the existing bridges. The government is also considering quick-build concrete structures and, in the longer term, a tunnel under the Dnipro, he told Suspilne.

Volodymyr Kreidenko, deputy head of the parliamentary committee on transport and infrastructure and an MP from the Servant of the People party, proposed reversible traffic across the bridges: "in the morning from the left bank to the right, in the evening from the right to the left." He also suggested hubs near the bridges where people could take a bicycle or e-scooter, and passenger ferry crossings, Radio Svoboda reported.

Andrii Koretskyi, an associate professor in the department of bridges, tunnels and hydraulic structures at the National Transport University, cautioned that temporary crossings cannot substitute for a permanent bridge.

"The only alternative to a bridge is a bridge as a permanent structure," he told Radio Svoboda.

He said a tunnel under the Dnipro is technically possible but "not a quick solution at all." He pointed to the scale involved: where the Irpin River requires spanning a few dozen or, in places, a few hundred meters, the Dnipro within Kyiv is "roughly 400 to 1,500 meters" wide.

National Guard commander Major General Oleksandr Pivnenko signed a follow-on contract with Quantum Frontline Industries managing director Matthias Lehna and Frontline Robotics chief technology officer and co-founder Pavlo Kosolapkin to build two Ukrainian drones in Germany, Quantum Systems said on 5 October. The deal covers the Linza strike drone and the Zoom reconnaissance drone, exceeds the volume of the 2026 agreement, and schedules delivery for 2027.

The order scales up a line that is already running. Quantum Frontline Industries' first production year remains on track for completion in 2026, it has already delivered its first drones to Ukraine's Defense Forces, and it is now preparing to increase production capacity fivefold for next year, Quantum Systems said.

German plants, Ukrainian designs

Quantum Frontline Industries is a German-Ukrainian joint venture of Frontline Robotics and Quantum Systems. Both the Linza and the Zoom come from Frontline Robotics, and the systems are manufactured in Germany for Ukraine.

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Linza 3.0 carries up to 4 kg of payload out to 15 km and stays aloft up to 60 minutes, and it is already in service with more than 60 Ukrainian units, Frontline Robotics has said. Zoom 3.0 detects targets, fixes their coordinates, and corrects fire under active Russian jamming, the company told Militarnyi. It loiters for up to an hour and works at a tactical radius of up to 20 km. AI-driven navigation and autonomous operation over the target keep its data flowing even when standard radio links break down.

From ramp-up to serial production

Quantum Frontline Industries said the contract moves it from initial production ramp-up toward sustained, high-volume manufacturing. Kosolapkin told Militarnyi the firm keeps refining Linza and Zoom on feedback from Ukrainian troops, whose needs drive how the systems evolve, and that producing in Germany gives it extra capacity to scale Ukraine-proven designs and deliver them in larger volumes.

Ukraine is stitching together a layered answer to Russia's faster, jet-powered Shahed drones, leaning on electronic jamming, fighter jets, and a new class of homegrown interceptors, RBC-Ukraine reported. Each tool has limits, and the new interceptors still bring down only the occasional jet drone. The bottleneck now is money and factory output, not ideas.

Russia is pouring faster jet-powered drones into the air war as winter nears, a campaign Western analysts say is meant to wear Ukraine's defenses down—and holding those skies now turns on which side can keep out-producing the other's cheap weapons.

Fighter jets help, but they run on imported rounds

Electronic jamming can work against some of the drones, and Ukraine is also sending combat aircraft up after them. But aviation has a catch: the jets need air-to-air missiles and cannon rounds, and for the F-16 and Mirage those are imported and not always in stock. Flying over Kyiv adds danger to the civilians below and to the pilots, so Ukraine would rather catch the drones out on the approaches.

New interceptors are landing hits—just not enough

The newest piece is a wave of Ukrainian interceptor drones built to chase the jet versions, which fly three times faster than the propeller Shaheds. Ukrainian crews have been downing the jet Gerans in a recent run: on 19 September, presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, confirmed one Geran-5 shot down, and in late September, operators of the National Guard's Separate Artillery Brigade brought down a Geran-4 with the Bullet interceptor made by General Cherry, the first Geran-4 that drone has downed, Ukraine's National Association of Defense Industries said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said several prototypes have proven themselves in combat.

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Across all methods, Ukraine now intercepts about 57% of the jet drones Russia launches, Zelenskyy said on 28 September—a rate that has climbed but still trails the 90%-plus it manages against slower Shaheds. Kills by the new interceptors specifically remain isolated. In August, Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said jet drones can make up as much as two-thirds of the drones in some raids—though not every time. One promising route is reworking Ukraine's own long-range strike drones into interceptors. Kyiv is in talks with partners over the money; on 28 September, Ukraine's Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara asked the EU to help finance the interceptors so enough reach the front quickly.

Hitting the launch sites and jamming the controls

Ukrainian forces strike the Russian airfields the jet drones launch from, RBC-Ukraine's sources said, though the raids have not forced Russia to abandon the attacks. On 20 August, military intelligence hit drone storage and launch sites at Primorsko-Akhtarsk, one of the launch bases RBC names, and at occupied Donetsk airfield. Ukraine also keeps going after the Belarusian relay towers Russia strings into a mesh network to steer the drones in, RBC's sources said.

Russian infiltrators have been slipping into villages and towns along Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia, likely aiming to draw Ukrainian troops away from the bigger fights farther south around the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Desperate to clear out the infiltrators without dedicating too many precious infantry to the task, the Ukrainian 475th Assault Regiment formed a unique team: two heavily up-armored tanks plus three different types of drone. The drones scouted ahead of the tanks and protected them as they trundled through Russia's own drone kill zone on their way to a point-blank clash with Russian troops.

In this mission, the blend of mechanized and unmanned forces worked: the tanks accomplished their mission and survived to fight another day. If the tank-drone pairing keeps working, expect it to become more common all along the 1,200-km gray zone as Ukraine struggles with a deepening shortage of manpower.

It's unclear what kinds of tanks the 475th Assault Regiment operates. It is clear how the regiment protects the tanks from ever-present Russian drones. The unit wraps the tanks in metal cages and then welds hundreds of metal spines on the cages. The spines trigger incoming explosive drones at a safe distance from the tank's hull. The cage supports the spines and catches any drones the spines may miss.

We call these kinds of tanks "hedgehog tanks." The Russians developed the hedgehog application but, seeing that it worked, deflecting potentially dozens of drones at a time, the Ukrainians copied it.

Hedgehog helpers

But even the best-protected hedgehog tank might struggle to get through the enemy's kill zone when that kill zone may include bomber and one-way attack drones in the air and loitering ambush drones waiting on the ground as well as mines and other threats.

Sometimes the best defense against a drone is another drone, and the 475th Assault Regiment put that truism into practice. To shepherd those two hedgehog tanks into battle with Russian infiltrators in the village of Vilkhuvatka, in Kharkiv Oblast 9 km from the border with Russia, the regiment deployed a Vampire heavy bomber drone, at least one explosive first-person-view (FPV) quadcopter, and at least one surveillance quadcopter.

The surveillance drones could scout ahead. The bomber drone could blast mines and loitering ambush drones. The FPVs could intercept incoming enemy FPVs. The layered protection was effective. As evident in the 475th Assault Regiment's video depicting the two-tank counter-assault, the tanks took multiple hits from Russian drones and mines, but not enough hits to slow them down.

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Both tanks reached an intersection inside Vilkhuvatka, fired their cannons at nearby Russian infiltrators, and then withdrew.

It should come as no surprise that the 475th Assault Regiment is pioneering mixed formations of drones and tanks. The regiment recently partnered with the 1st Assault Regiment to develop new "multi-domain" tactics combining ground, air, and cyber forces. "We came to the conclusion that fighting in only one domain makes no sense," said "Perun," the 1st Assault Regiment commander. "We'd simply lose because the enemy would bring another domain into play."

The key takeaway is that, despite the serious threat that drones and mines pose to tanks in the fifth year of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, tanks can still fight, win, and survive—if they have plenty of support from the same kinds of drones that, in enemy hands, vex them along every kilometer of disputed terrain. The tank isn't dead yet. It just needs a little help.

A Ukrainian Hornet drone struck a Russian radar system about 120 kilometers behind the front, Taras Myshak, senior communications officer of the 59th Separate Assault Brigade of Unmanned Systems, said on Suspilne on 28 September, ArmyInform reported. The brigade's Signum unmanned systems battalion carried out the strike about a week earlier, he added.

Russia's air defenses depend on radars to see Ukrainian drones and missiles coming. Every radar it loses weakens that watch and gives the next Ukrainian strike a better chance of getting through.

According to Myshak, the target was a "quite expensive" Russian radar system.

A radar system is effectively the "eyes" of the Russian air defense system: it detects aerial targets, determines their coordinates, and transmits information to other elements of the system.

Russians continue probing Ukrainian defenses

Russian forces in the brigade's zone, roughly along the Donetsk Oblast border, continue to operate in small infantry groups and use infiltration tactics, Myshak says. At the same time, the Russians are trying to cut Ukrainian logistics, he adds, saying that the brigade is effectively holding the Russian army back from infiltrating into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The Russians' main means in this sector remain drones and infantry, the serviceman says. The number of infantry has decreased somewhat compared with previous periods, but the pressure from the enemy has not stopped, he adds.

"Of course, they will try, they will constantly probe, so to speak, our defense with their infiltrations. And likewise with drones, of various ranges, working on logistics, making it impossible for us to enter positions, to deliver everything necessary to the positions, in order to make our defense impossible," Myshak emphasized.

At the same time, Ukrainian troops are trying not only to defend against these actions but also to deprive the Russians of radars, electronic warfare systems, and other equipment, the serviceman says. "We likewise don't let them relax," he said.

Ukraine systematically knocks out the "eyes" of Russian air defense

In October 2024, Ukraine's military said it had hit a Russian Nebo-M radar station with ATACMS ballistic missiles to blunt Moscow's ability to spot and shoot down aircraft and missiles, Reuters reported. The military estimated each such system at more than $100 million.

Ukraine is systematically increasing its use of medium-range strike drones, which can hit targets up to 200 kilometers deep inside enemy territory, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported in May this year. Russian air defenses and radars are among the main priorities of such operations, as their destruction weakens the system for detecting and intercepting aerial targets, the ministry said. Medium-class drones, including the FP-2, Hornet, and Bulava, play a critical role in such strikes, the ministry noted.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Ukrainian forces struck at least 25 major Russian air defense and radar systems during April, about 12 of which were radar systems, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry also wrote in May this year.

A Ukrainian jamming-systems maker went to a US Army base to do to candidate drones what Russia does to Ukraine's: flood them with electronic warfare (EW) and see which survives. Unwave company has tested four of its EW systems at Fort Carson in Colorado as part of the Pentagon's Drone Dominance program and has been asked to continue supporting it.

The Pentagon is using Drone Dominance to choose the drones it will buy at scale, more than 200,000 by 2027, and it needs to know they work under jamming, the condition that decides most drone fights in Ukraine.

So it brought in a Ukrainian electronic-warfare maker to supply that jamming, turning Ukraine's hard-won counter-drone experience into the test bench for American hardware. It follows a pattern in which US defense efforts adopt Ukrainian battlefield models.

Ukraine brings the jamming

From 24 August to 2 September, Unwave's team worked at the base, running scenarios that pitted its jammers against drones tasked with protecting fixed positions, moving vehicles, and infrastructure.

The crews operated from three separate positionsat short and long range to compare how drones from different manufacturers held up.

"Our mission was to create conditions as close to the real battlefield as possible," the company said, adding that it judged the tasks successfully completed but could not detail the scenarios for security reasons.

In all, 14 drone makers and three electronic-warfare firms took part.

Four systems on show

Unwave brought four:

• VIHA, which it calls Ukraine's first tactical-operational jammer for directed suppression of drones
• BOOMBOX, built to shield troops and positions from FPV and drop-drones
• SHATRO, for vehicles
• CHOVEN-2, a multi-frequency amplifier for cars.

Its participation was organized by Revenant Technologies, a US firm that specializes in bringing combat-proven defense tech to the American market, and helped design the scenarios using its ties to Ukraine and frontline experience.

A foothold in the US market

For Unwave, the value is a door into the alliance's security architecture. The event showed the importance of Ukrainian, American, and European specialists testing together, the company said, and "such interaction will help integrate Ukrainian technologies into the security architecture of our allies."