“The Sky Is No Longer Safe”: How Ukraine Is Reinventing Air Defense in the Age of Mass Drone Warfare

Ukraine adapts to mass Russian drone attacks with cheaper interceptors, but faces serious limitations in scale, supply, and technology

Facing intensified Russian drone strikes and shrinking Western weapon supplies, Ukraine is turning to cheaper, domestically developed drone interceptors and volunteer defense units. While these efforts show innovation, they remain limited in scale and capability. Russia’s evolving tactics and technological upgrades continue to challenge Ukraine’s defenses, highlighting both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of its current air defense strategy.

Late at night, the skies over Ukraine no longer bring peace. They hum. Not with aircraft engines, but with the low, sinister buzz of Russian drones, generically referred to by Ukrainians as Shaheds, after their presumed Iranian origin.

These buzzing death machines — nicknamed ‘flying mopeds’ — are now a regular feature of Russia’s air assaults. But in recent months, something has shifted. The number of drones has exploded. The tactics have changed. And Ukraine, forced to adapt, is now rewriting the rules of modern air defense.

“They don’t just come in waves anymore,” says Artur Seletsky, Director of Strategic Development at KVERTUS, a Ukrainian defense technology company. “They come in layers. They test, they strike, and then they finish the job. And we must respond faster than the enemy expects.”

The Drones Are Evolving — And So Is the War

By official estimates, in just one month — June 2025 — Russia launched 2,736 Shaheds. That’s more than seven a minute, every day. The month before? Over 4,000. A year ago, in May 2024, the number was just 365. Russia isn’t just throwing drones into the sky. They’re throwing smart drones — equipped with new communication systems, longer ranges, heavier warheads, and even machine vision.

Today’s Shahed drones can be controlled from over 150 km away, and some even avoid jamming with upgraded CRPA antennas. Others fly higher than ever, staying just out of reach of Ukraine’s mobile air defense teams.

And Russia’s new favorite trick? Staggered, combined attacks.

“They hit with drones first,” explains Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, Ihor Klymenko. “People wait until the buzzing ends and come out of shelters — and then the missiles hit. It’s calculated, cruel, and designed to break our will.”

A Shrinking Arsenal and a Growing Problem

For Ukraine, the real crisis isn’t just the volume of attacks — it’s the shrinking supply of defenses.

In May 2025, France’s Le Monde reported that Ukraine had run out of missiles for the high-end SAMP/T systems. In early July, the Pentagon confirmed it was pausing shipments of critical weapons, including Patriot air defense missiles, Hellfire missiles, precision artillery shells, and missiles for F-16s.

The reason? The U.S. fears it is depleting its own stockpiles too quickly.

“Before, we could intercept over 90% of incoming drones,” said a Ukrainian official. “Now, in some areas, it’s down to 30%.”

And that gap is dangerous — because Russia is moving faster than ever.

From Guns to Gadgets: Ukraine’s New Defense Strategy

Faced with dwindling stockpiles and relentless barrages, Ukraine is doing what it does best: innovating under pressure.

One of the most promising developments? Interceptor drones — small, agile, and cheap. In fact, at around $5,000 apiece, they cost a fraction of the $150,000 it takes to build a Shahed or the $1 million price tag for a single air defense missile.

“Some of our drones don’t even blow up the Shaheds,” explains Seletsky. “They just catch them mid-air and neutralize them safely. It’s smarter. More efficient.”

In May 2025, Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis drone unit reported a breakthrough: they intercepted and destroyed 60 enemy drones using their own experimental interceptors. According to presidential advisor Oleksandr Kamyshin, three domestic manufacturers are already producing these ‘Shahed hunters’.

President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed it himself:

“We’ve developed new drones. They’re already working. During the latest attack on Kyiv, we used dozens — and they brought down many drones.”

Taking Defense to the Ground Level

Beyond technology, Ukraine is also changing how it organizes its defenders.

In June, the government launched a pilot project: anti-air groups based in local volunteer defense units. These teams — often civilians with UAV experience — are trained to track and shoot down drones using drones, small arms, mobile detection systems and their own vehicles.

While formally under the command of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, they coordinate closely with the Air Force. Their training is overseen by national resistance centers.

“It’s not just about weapons,” one volunteer said. “It’s about knowing the sky. Reading it. Reacting in seconds, not minutes.”

A New Generation of Electronic Warfare

As Shaheds grow smarter, traditional jamming methods are losing effectiveness. The new drones can resist basic interference — so Ukraine is investing in advanced radio-electronic warfare (REW) systems.

Seletsky says Ukrainian engineers are now building multi-frequency jammers, automated switching systems, and mobile stations that can react in real time to enemy drone frequencies.

“This isn’t the old ‘trench warfare EW’ anymore,” he adds. “We’re talking about flexible, responsive systems that can outmaneuver drones on the fly.”

Limits of Innovation: The Challenges Ahead

While Ukraine’s efforts to develop and deploy cheaper, more flexible air defense systems are often praised as adaptive and resourceful, they also reflect a deeper problem: a widening gap between technological ambition and actual battlefield capacity. Interceptor drones, for example, though significantly cheaper than traditional missiles, are still in short supply. Many of the systems currently in use remain experimental, with performance not yet fully tested at scale or under sustained pressure from mass attacks.

“These are promising technologies,” said a Western defense analyst, “but they can’t yet replace the high-end systems Ukraine is struggling to obtain — especially when facing hundreds of drones and simultaneous missile salvos.”

Questions also remain about sustainability. Manufacturing capacity inside Ukraine is limited by infrastructure vulnerabilities and energy shortages — the very targets these drones are meant to protect. Training and coordinating local defense groups, while innovative, adds complexity to an already overstretched command structure. And despite Ukraine’s technological progress, Russia retains a significant advantage in sheer numbers — of drones, missiles, and launch platforms — as well as the capacity to iterate its own designs quickly.

In this context, Ukraine’s countermeasures, while necessary, are not a silver bullet. They reflect resilience, but also desperation — a response shaped more by necessity than by strategic choice. Without stable long-term support from partners and a way to close the growing resource gap, Ukraine's evolving air defense may struggle to keep pace with a war that continues to escalate both in scale and sophistication.

Innovation Born of Necessity

This is a war that continues to evolve rapidly, with both sides adapting their strategies and technologies. As the scale and complexity of drone warfare increase, Ukraine is working to develop new air defense solutions that are more cost-effective and responsive to modern threats. These efforts reflect a broader trend: the changing nature of conflict in the 21st century. What is happening in Ukraine today may offer a glimpse into how future wars will be fought — with drones, electronic warfare, and decentralized defense playing a central role.