Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says deliveries of interceptor drones to the country’s air-defense units have nearly doubled, reaching 1,500 per day. But that pace may still fall short of the volumes needed to counter the largest Russian drone barrages seen on September 7 and December 27.
Air-defense forces are receiving 1,500 interceptor drones daily, the ministry said on its Telegram channel.
The ministry said the current volumes should be sufficient to neutralize Russian drones over rear regions and along the front line.
It added that Ukrainian troops have also received 7,000 tactical-level interceptors via the DOT-Chain Defence platform. The drones are critical for air defense, officials said, because they help conserve scarce and expensive missiles, increase the density of countermeasures and more effectively defend the front. A photo accompanying the ministry’s post showed the Octopus UAV, developed jointly by Ukraine and the UK.
Ukrainian troops have said it takes about three interceptor drones to bring down a single Shahed, and sometimes more.
The first reports about this tactic against Russian strike UAVs emerged in the spring and summer of 2025. By autumn, the first official claims of kills appeared, with the Air Force starting to mention the systems in its reports on repelling Russian air attacks.
From September through December 2025, Russia launched drone swarms at Ukraine almost daily, according to the Air Force’s Facebook page.
- December 27: 519 drones, two-thirds of them — 300 — were Shaheds; 474 were shot down in total.
- September 7: 810 drones launched; 747 shot down.
Given that bringing down each attacking Russian drone can take roughly three interceptors, the current daily supply could neutralize around 500 Russian UAVs.
In December, the Defense Ministry detailed daily deliveries of interceptor drones to air-defense units. As of December 17, the figure stood at 950 UAVs per day (up from 600–800 in November), without specifying the models or their proportions.
The post featured an image of the P1-SUN interceptor from Ukrainian company SkyFall. Developers say the P1-SUN can reach speeds of up to 300 km/h and operate at altitudes up to 5 km.
In December 2025, reports surfaced about the Sting, which can run down a “jet-speed” Shahed flying at 400–600 km/h.
Octopus drones are quadcopters equipped with target-recognition sensors and can autonomously home in on a target without operator input in the final meters before impact.
On January 7, the news outlet Militarnyi reported that the “Salyut” anti-air interceptor drone completed trials with Ukraine’s 47th Brigade, showing a successful shootdown of a Shahed.
