Jet-powered Russian drones are racing across Kyiv's skies, and Ukrainian air defenses are struggling to keep up KYIV, Ukraine -- Russia's new class of jet-powered drones rip across the night sky in Kyiv at hundreds of kilometers per hour, leaving Ukrainian air-defense units only moments to intercept them. With many of the drones getting through to the capital, defense manufacturers are scrambling to develop a new generation of interceptors to counter the deadly threat. They are building their own jet-propulsion systems and training artificial intelligence to help guide the chase.
They need to move fast because the Russian drones are driving a new tactic, ramped up in recent weeks, to hit the infrastructure keeping Ukraine’s war-battered economy afloat. Recent targets have included energy systems, key industries, railways, post offices, shopping centers, telecom networks, gas stations and grain exports. Russia also has an advantage with its ballistic missile arsenal, which poses another challenge as Ukraine runs low on interceptor missiles.
The effects of the barrage are being felt in Kyiv, which increasingly resembles a front-line city, without the relative safety that had long set it apart from the fighting. Food supplies have been disrupted, explosions echo day and night, and residents scramble for cover from strikes that reach closer to the city center. Ukrainian officials say they are testing new interceptors that have successfully hit jet-powered Russian drones, which fly much higher and faster than propeller-driven drones and are much harder to stop.
Building the prototype interceptors in sufficient numbers, and training pilots to fly them, could take up to six months, manufacturers say. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for faster production. Air-defense crews have no time to wait.
Facing constant waves of drones, they improvise, but lives are lost almost daily. Serdiuk's air-defense crew begins their night shift at 8 p.m. He studies a tablet connected to a centralized radar system to track the sky above his sector.
A circle marks the stretch of airspace his unit is responsible for protecting. His son is serving on the front line in eastern Ukraine and now calls him in Kyiv just to check that he is safe, a measure of just how much life in the capital has deteriorated. To the west, the lights of Kyiv twinkle on the horizon.
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