Russia has been reducing its usage of conventional long-range attack drones in favor of more advanced, jet-powered ones, the spokesperson for Ukraine's navy said on Monday.
"The Russians are reducing the number of conventional drones they use while effectively increasing the number of jet-powered drones," said Capt. 3rd Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk, in an interview with Ukrainian state TV outlet Ukrinform.
"In other words, the Russians are now betting primarily on those," he added. "At the same time, many different elements of Ukraine's defense and security forces are involved in countering them. The air force is constantly operating in the south, and that's noticeable even from the sea."
Many of the Kremlin's Shahed drones, which follow the design of Iranian attack drones but are manufactured in Russia, are launched from its southern territories and occupied Crimea.
Their typical flight path into Ukraine runs over the Black Sea, where the Ukrainian navy defends the region and its ports.
Jet-powered drones fly much faster than the Geran-1 and Geran-2, which are Russia's versions of the propeller-driven Shahed.
Moscow's jet-powered Shaheds, dubbed the Geran-3 and Geran-4, have been appearing in its air attacks since the summer of last year. The more advanced Geran-5, a version of Iran's Karrar drone said to fly at speeds of up to 373 miles per hour, made its combat debut in January.
In June, Ukraine's then-commander in chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said that Russia plans to eventually have 50% of its long-range attack drone waves consist of jet-powered systems.
The higher speeds have posed a challenge for Ukraine to counter with interceptor drones, first-person-view quadcopters that became its cheap answer to the Shahed.
Ukrainian interceptor drones have typically flown as fast as around 175 miles per hour, making them too slow to catch more advanced Russian drones. However, some manufacturers say they've been able to improve their interceptors to reach about 230 miles per hour, which is about the top speed of a Geran-3.
Pletenchuk said on Monday that the greatest hurdle Ukraine faces now is countering Russia's ballistic missiles.
"The main challenge, of course, remains ballistic missiles," he said. "It's no secret."
Kyiv has said it has been desperately lacking advanced interceptor missiles, most notably Patriot missiles, to neutralize these high-priority threats.
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Matthew is a senior reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau, primarily covering defense and how the war in Ukraine is rapidly changing battle technology and tactics.He joined the team in June 2021, previously focusing on internet crime and labor, examining how these issues impact modern society in Asia, with a particular emphasis on China.In 2024, he won the Singapore Press Club's Young Journalist of the Year Award. His work from 2023 also won a silver award from the North American Travel Journalists Association and accolades from Longreads.Matthew's previous work has been featured in the South China Morning Post, as well as Singaporean news companies TODAY and The Business Times.As a student, Matthew's coverage of migrant workers' nutrition in Singapore during the COVID pandemic won the SOAP Story of the Month award and the Student Category prize in the International Labor Organization's 2021 Global Media Competition on Labour Migration.Selected features:
- Death on the Savage Mountain: What really happened on K2, and why 100 climbers stepped over a dying man on their way to the summit
- The nuclear weapons era is making a comeback, and experts say we're all not paying attention
- How nets from a Danish fishing village found their way into Ukraine's modern war
- Inside Ukraine's race to crank out unjammable, fiber-optic drones that can break through Russia's electronic warfare
- Finding Dora
