Russia’s fastest strike drone, the Geran-5, is powered by a mini turbojet and reaches up to 375 mph — over three times the roughly 115 mph of the propeller models it supplements. The speed gap has inverted Ukraine’s interception math. Ukrainian officials say propeller-powered drones were typically shot down at rates above 90%; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in late September that Kyiv destroyed just 55% of Russia’s jet-powered drones that month. Volume is compounding the problem: Ukraine’s air force counted 350 Russian drones launched in June and 2,800 in August, an eight-fold rise in two months, as covered in rews’s earlier report.
Into that gap, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former defense minister, has unveiled a new interceptor drone. In recent combat tests over Kyiv, a specialized National Guard unit used it to take down two Geran-5s, Business Insider reported, citing comments Fedorov shared with it. How fast the interceptor itself flies has not been disclosed. Fedorov said testing continues, with the next steps being to improve the technology and scale production to hundreds of interceptors a month by the end of the year.
The aircraft is currently flown by a human pilot; Fedorov said he intends to make it autonomous in flight using artificial intelligence. He said the interceptor “will be very affordable,” and, in translated remarks: “That was our goal from the outset: to develop a low-cost, mass-producible solution that can be scaled rapidly.”
The autonomy push follows a logic imposed by electronic warfare: jamming severs the link between drones and their operators, so Kyiv is shifting toward AI-enabled systems that keep fighting unassisted. Interceptor drones and ground weapons with onboard targeting have already started closing on the Geran-5’s speed, including AI-aimed gun turrets.
During his six months as defense minister earlier this year, Fedorov pushed a sweeping modernization with a robotic-centric approach to combat, a tenure that coincided with battlefield successes driven mainly by drone warfare. After his sudden departure in July he launched a defense company focused on warfighting technology for Ukraine and international partners. He said in early September that the first investor would be Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, the American AI and data-intelligence firm.
Fedorov said on Monday he plans to invest further in research and development and in the Ukrainian engineering team behind the interceptor, making its intellectual property a “key asset” in his portfolio. Investment will be opened to other partners, with a first funding round expected soon.
The Geran-5 more closely resembles a cruise missile than the slower delta-wing models it follows, and Zelenskyy warned last month that Moscow plans to invest heavily in jet-powered drones next year. Fedorov said he is “confident that Russia can be stopped,” noting that Ukraine has shown it can engage the slower drones; “Our next challenge is to do the same with jet-powered versions.” The numbers that will test that are known in advance: whether production reaches hundreds a month by December, and whether the 55% September interception rate moves.