Machine Gunners Going Against Russian Drones to Get New Interceptors

A Ukrainian mobile air defense unit is getting new interceptor drones to help it knock down high-altitude Russian threats flying beyond the reach of their aging machine guns, its deputy commander told Business Insider.

Oleksiy, who oversees a unit with the Territorial Defense Forces tasked with protecting Irpin, a city on the outskirts of Kyiv, said that his team is training to use the new interceptor drones to combat Russian reconnaissance and strike drones.

The Russian drones are a growing problem for Ukraine. In recent months, attacks have increased in size, forcing Kyiv to rethink its air defense and find cost-effective ways to keep up with the threat. Interceptor drones have emerged as a preferred solution for many units.

The unit Oleksiy commands primarily wields machine guns mounted in the back of pickup trucks to combat drones. While the guns work against low-altitude threats, Russia has been flying its drones at higher altitudes beyond their reach.

The unit uses the .50 caliber M2 Browning, a popular American-made heavy machine gun designed at the end of World War I with a maximum effective range of about 2,000 meters. Oleksiy said that his unit needs interceptors that are able to operate at altitudes up to 5,000 meters, “the corridor where enemy drones can fly.”

The air defense unit is in the middle of a weekslong training process to integrate first-person-view (FPV) interceptor drones into its operations. These systems can reach a top speed of 300 kph (186 mph) and reach those high-altitude drone corridors. They are cheap, estimated to cost between $2,000 and $3,000.

The interceptors have a small warhead that can destroy Russian Shahed-type one-way attack drones and reconnaissance drones, and are intended to supplement the M2 Browning in situations where the threat is beyond its reach. It’s unclear how many drones the defensive unit will receive, but it is expected to correlate with the intensity of Russian attacks.

The interceptor drones — simple quadcopters with four sets of propellers — are small and resemble standard FPV drones, footage and imagery reviewed by Business Insider showed.

Oleksiy described the new interceptor drones as a “pilot project” for his unit. He said they “are always ready to introduce new innovative technologies for more effective air defense operations.”

Not every air defense unit will undergo this transition, he said, as factors such as training for specialists and equipment financing are considerations. However, that such a process is underway underscores how Ukraine is trying to adapt to the latest battlefield conditions.

Russia has invested heavily in growing its drone operations this year, expanding production sites and building new launch platforms to increase the scale of its attacks against Ukrainian cities and military positions.

Every month, Russia produces thousands of one-way attack drones modeled after the Iranian-made Shaheds, a family of loitering munitions. Moscow has demonstrated consistently that it is capable of launching hundreds of drones into Ukraine in a night, and recent Western assessments suggest that this figure could increase to 2,000 in a single bombardment in the future.

Ukrainian manufacturers are scrambling to scale up production of the cheap interceptor drones after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set a new goal for companies — to produce 1,000 of these systems a day.

NATO members are noticing their effectiveness. The UK, for instance, said this month that it would jointly develop thousands of low-cost interceptor drones with and for Ukraine.