From AI to cheap shotguns and interceptors, Ukraine is trying to protect its skies from drones

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This week, as air raid warnings sounded in the distance, kyiv held the funerals of two sisters.

This is the human cost of the largest sustained Russian air attack to date – with 1,500 drones and 56 missiles fired at Ukraine in 48 hours.

But the loss of life could have been even higher. Ukraine’s air defenses prevented more casualties. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, 94% of these long-range drones and 73% of the missiles were successfully intercepted. In comparison, May 14, 2025Kyiv forces shot down 55% of Russian drones launched throughout the country. Ukraine is getting better and better at defending its skies.

“Unfortunately, today we are the best in the world,” says Lt. Col. Yuriy Myronenko, inspector general of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. He admits, however, that shooting down Russian ballistic missiles “is not that easy.”

More than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has built an increasingly sophisticated multi-tiered air defense system.

At the start of the war, it relied on old weapons from the Soviet era. The West then helped strengthen its defenses – with expensive and more sophisticated systems, including Patriot air defense missiles.

But Ukraine has also developed its own homegrown solutions – from mobile fire teams using heavy machine guns on trucks to cheap, mass-produced interceptors.

Embracing innovation and technology gives Ukraine an edge. At the heart of Ukraine’s air defense is the software that tracks every glider bomb, missile and drone launched by Russia.

Sky Map uses radars, thousands of sensors and video feeds as well as artificial intelligence to detect threats and guide its air defenses.

At first, Ukraine relied on a network of cellphones attached to telegraph poles to listen for the sound of approaching drones. The system now uses more sophisticated sensors.

The United States uses Sky Map to protect one of its bases in the Middle East.

And there is one weapon, more than any other, that helps eliminate Russian drones: cheap interceptor drones.

They are shaped like a large ball and are powered by four rotors at the base. Ukraine now produces more than 1,000 such drones per day. In March this year, they destroyed more than 30,000 Russian drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

In a field outside the city of Kherson, the Ukrainian Marine Corps Unmanned Systems Regiment shows one in action.

From a static launch, their P1-SUN interceptor can reach speeds of over 300 km/h (186 mph) with a range of over 30 km. The unit had just completed a mission to eliminate Russian drones.

Welkos, the commander, calls it a “very serious weapon.” “It shows how quickly we can adapt, how we can hold up and how much we can grow,” he says. The P1-SUN is 3D printed and costs around $1,000 (£750) – far less than the large $50,000 delta-wing Shahed one-way attack drones it is designed to destroy.

Private companies also connect to the system.

“We need to cover the whole of Ukraine and see all the targets. That’s why we use all the resources we have,” says Myronenko, who oversees the initiative.

Twenty-five companies have already signed up to this system. There is an obvious incentive: to protect their factories and infrastructure. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter left millions without power.

Carmine Sky is among the private companies now offering air defenses to other private sector customers. They have already built a network of towers equipped with remote-controlled machine guns in the Kharkiv region, near the Russian border.

We visit their control room in the basement of a building. Rows of screens display the sky map of Ukraine that tracks Russian drones and planes.

Behind the screens are ordinary civilians – mothers, taxi drivers and veterans. Each was vetted and trained for a few weeks before being allowed to use one of the remote-controlled weapons.

Ruslan, the company spokesperson, tells me their work “is not difficult.” Using remote-controlled machine guns to shoot down drones “is like a video game – just like an Xbox or PlayStation,” he says.

Ruslan describes their role as a “complement to the state air defense structure.”

“We are integrated into the military system,” he says. “It’s not the Wild West, so we follow the instructions and commands of the army.”

Ruslan says there are other benefits to involving the private sector: “we can move much faster than the public sector.” It’s still early, but these private companies have already shot down dozens of Russian drones.

Ukraine has also stepped up its own attacks against Russia. The recent strikes caused massive fires at Russian oil refineries across the country and reached major cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, forcing the Kremlin to scale back the scale of its World War II Victory Day parade in May over fears of a Ukrainian attack.

As a result, both sides are now racing to innovate as quickly as possible in order to gain an advantage in this war. Russia is developing faster jet drones. It now uses decoy drones to identify the locations of Ukrainian air defenses.

There are still glaring gaps in Ukraine’s air defense.

On the one hand, there is a lack of highly sophisticated and expensive missile interceptors. Ukraine still needs American-made Patriot missiles. So far, they are the only effective weapon for shooting down Russian ballistic missiles. With the American war in Iran, they are becoming rare.

Closer to the front line, Ukraine, like Russia, is struggling to deal with the threat of prolific small first-person view (FPV) drones, which operators remotely guide to their target. They are still the cause of most of the victims.

Despite the technical advances of this war, nets over roads, rifles and shotguns remain the last line of defense.

Defending Ukrainian skies will never be easy. President Zelensky warned that Russia’s massive attacks were aimed at overwhelming its air defenses.

By launching hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles, it is inevitable that some will get through, which means there will be more tragic deaths, like those of the Lyubava sisters and Vira.

Additional reporting by Firle Davies, Anastasiia Levchenko and Mariana Matveichuk