Jet-powered drones pose a new threat to Ukraine – can they be stopped?

A Ukrainian soldier tries to take down a jet-powered Shahed drone during a Russian aerial attack on 27 August in Boryspil, near Kyiv

Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images

A new generation of faster and deadlier attack drones is being launched against Ukraine, forcing engineers to develop more advanced interceptor drones to take out waves of Russian attacks.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, says four new devices are in testing that will help to tip the balance, as the country suffers a surge of attacks from the new drone models on targets such as petrol stations.

Since the start of the conflict, Russia has launched daily strikes using Shahed drones powered by petrol engines similar to those in motorcycles. Ukraine relies on layers of air defence – including fighter jets, machine guns, missiles and interceptor drones – to try to bring them down before they hit civilian or military targets. But the latest jet-powered models are harder to shoot down, sparking a hasty research-and-development effort.

On 30 August, Zelenskyy said that over half the drones deployed by Russia are now jet-powered Geran-4 models. The attack drones were originally designed by Iranian company Shahed Aviation Industries but were licensed to Russia, which manufactures them under the name Geran. They are known colloquially in Ukraine as Shahed.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian government defence innovation department Brave1 told New Scientist that the problem is speed. Older Shaheds used to fly between 100 and 150 kilometres per hour, but the jet-powered updates can reach 500 kilometres per hour.

“The existing copter-type drones cannot always catch up with such targets, which is why jet-powered interceptors are a necessary technological response,” says the spokesperson. “It also represents a major engineering challenge, because the high speed compresses the time window between initial detection and target strike. Russia is constantly experimenting and adapting its Shaheds to make them harder to intercept.”

One new trick is an updated jet engine that shrouds its heat signature, making it harder to detect for certain countermeasures that home in on hot objects. New types of electronic-warfare devices are also being built into Shaheds, and some even have rear-facing cameras to detect interceptor drones and trigger evasive manoeuvres.

To tackle this new threat, Ukraine will need to develop a new generation of interceptors, capable of speeds of at least 450 kilometres per hour and fitted with AI control.

Brave1 is working closely with the Ukrainian air force to develop and test a fleet of more capable, but still low-cost, interceptors. Four varieties are currently under consideration. One type will be winged drones with jet engines similar to the new Shaheds, another will have an impeller for propulsion, and a third will be familiar quadcopter drones with extremely advanced motors and batteries and some aerodynamic tweaks that allow them to reach the needed speeds.

“Across all these platforms, the key capability is the ability to detect, track and engage a target autonomously at very high speeds. This requires advanced terminal guidance using optical, thermal or other sensing methods, with as little reliance on human reaction time as possible,” says the spokesperson. “The main difficulty lies not in developing the physical hardware, but in developing automation, artificial intelligence.”

Kyiv resident Olexandra Shekhireva tells New Scientist that almost all Shaheds targeting the city are now jet-powered models. “Just this morning, two Shaheds flew near my house,” she says. “I heard one of them dive down and the sound is really different than the old Shaheds. It’s noisier, louder – not like a conventional motorcycle engine, more like a plane. They’re obviously faster.”

“In recent weeks, the guys who kill drones have been working incredibly hard. In general, their skills are changing and developing a lot, and they are able to quickly adapt to new tricks. The methods and tactics of attacks change literally every two weeks,” says Shekhireva.

She packs a bag and organises a change of clothes before bed, and has timed the journey to different shelters – 46 seconds from her building lobby to a nearby one, and 5 minutes to a better one up the road. She can then decide which to go to based on the type of alert. “I try to sleep until the last minute, which isn’t smart, but it’s simply impossible to not sleep for a week,” says Shekhireva.

But despite the danger posed by the new jet drones, Shekhireva is more concerned with ballistic missiles. “I’ve seen the results of both on my own street. A year ago, a drone hit the residential building next to mine and it destroyed a couple of flats, but the other people in the building still live there. But when a Zircon [ballistic missile] hit my residential building, the shockwave destroyed almost all windows in the district, and the whole building and a couple nearby are condemned,” says Shekhireva.