KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The icy ground crumbles under their feet, members of an elite Ukrainian drone hunting team set up for a long night.
The antennas and sensors are cut on a light stand. Monitors and controls are pulled from hard cases, and a new game-changing weapon is ready for deployment.
The Sting, shaped like a flying thermos, is one of Ukraine’s new homegrown interceptors.
The unit’s commander says the interceptors can effectively counter Russia’s rapidly evolving suicide drones, which are now flying faster and at higher altitudes.
“Every target destroyed is something that didn’t hit our homes, our families, our power plants,” said the officer, known only by the call sign “Loi”, in line with Ukrainian military protocol. “The enemy does not sleep, and neither do we.”
The nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure have forced Kyiv to rewrite the air defense rulebook and develop cut-price killer drones costing as little as $1,000.
The interceptors went from prototype to mass production in just a few months in 2025 and represent the latest change in modern warfare.
Effective defense in Ukraine depends on mass production, rapid adaptation and integration of low-cost systems into existing defenses rather than relying on a few expensive and slow-to-change weapons.
Models such as the Sting – made by the volunteer-run startup Wild Hornets – and the newly appeared Bullet can speed up before crashing into enemy drones. They are flown by pilots who watch monitors or wear first-person goggles.
The economy is crucial. Andrii Lavrenovych, a member of the strategic council of the fast-growing startup General Cherry that develops the Bullet, says the drones they destroy cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000.
“We are causing serious economic damage,” he said.
Russia favors the Shahed suicide drone designed by Iran and has produced several variants of the triangle wing craft, armed with jammers, cameras and turbojet engines in a constant battle of innovation.
“In some areas they are a step forward. In others, we invent an innovative solution, and suffer from it,” said Lavrenovych.
Federico Borsari, a defense analyst at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, says the interceptors are a valuable addition to Ukraine’s — and Europe’s — anti-drone arsenal.
“Inexpensive interceptor drones have become so important, and so quickly, that we can consider them the foundation of modern unmanned aerial systems,” he said. “They realign the air defense cost and scale equation.”
Their mobility and low price allow them to defend more targets, but Borsari added: “It would be a mistake to see them as a silver bullet.”
Their success, he said, depends on sensors, fast command and control as well as skilled operators. They can be used in a menu of options that starts with multi-million dollar missiles and ends with nets and anti-aircraft guns.
Defense planners in Ukraine and NATO expect hyperscale drone production on both sides of the conflict to continue into 2026, adding urgency to European plans to create a layered air defense system known as the “drone wall”.
The network along the borders of eastern Europe, which is to be operational over two years, is designed to detect, locate and intercept drones, with Ukrainian-style interceptors playing a potentially central role in eradicating the threat.
Ukrainian drone makers are set next year to expand co-production with American and European firms. Combining battle-tested designs and valuable data with Western scale and funding, the collaboration boosts production and brings Ukraine into the supply chains of NATO members.
Another inevitable trend, argues Lavrenovych, is increased automation.
“Our mobile groups do not have to approach the front line, where they become targets,” he said.
“Drones must become fully autonomous robots with artificial intelligence – as scary as that can be – to help our soldiers survive.”
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Yurchuk and Ephrem Lukatsky contributed to this report.