Oleh Chernysh, BBC News Ukraine
The kamikaze drones “Shahed-136” (in the Russian version “Geran-2”) have been the main and most widespread means of the Russian army for air strikes on Ukrainian rear areas since the fall of 2022. Now their era is coming to an end. Instead, jet-powered analogs are emerging, which are much harder for the Ukrainian air defense to shoot down. With this weapon, Russia has already managed to block Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea.
During the shelling of Kyiv on the night of August 4-5, the share of jet UAVs in the total number for the first time exceeded half, the Ukrainian Air Force reported. That night, the Russians launched 115 strike drones, of which nearly 85% were shot down and suppressed.
The next day, Russia launched 101 “Shaheds,” and again, more than half of them were jet-powered. The interception rate fell even further to 65%.
In fact, Russia is developing new types of “Shaheds” to stop the trend seen during 2025-26 when Ukraine was able to raise the interception rate of enemy strike UAVs to an extraordinarily high 90-95%.
This was achieved in part due to the rapid development of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft interceptor drone industry.
They effortlessly caught up in the air with the regular “Shaheds” (also “Geran-2”), equipped with a low-power gasoline engine, which allowed speeds of only up to 150-200 km/h.
Not a very high flight altitude (up to 2 km), relatively low speed, and also the lack of real-time control due to the lack of access to “Starlink” and problems with mesh systems led to the gradual decline of the “Shaheds” era.
Now these “mopeds,” named so for the characteristic buzzing sound of their engines, are becoming a thing of the past. But Russia has already found a replacement for them.
We will tell you about it, and also about how dangerous and vulnerable it is.
New Jet Threat
Simply put, a jet drone is one that has a small turbojet engine instead of a regular internal combustion engine. This allows the drone to fly 2-2.5 times faster, meaning it is more likely to overcome air defense barriers, which sometimes may not have enough time to deploy the necessary means for interception.
In fact, these are ersatz cruise missiles—much cheaper, smaller in size, and much less powerful.
Throughout this war, Ukraine was the first to use such jet UAVs, albeit under the name “missile drones.” Here we can mention the publicly presented “Peklo,” “Bars,” and “Ruta.”
However, Russia was the first to see the potential for their mass use. According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia is already serially producing about 500 of these jet drones per month and plans to increase their share to 50% of the total number of “Shaheds.”
According to Vadym Skibitsky, Deputy Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Russia’s defense order for 2026 includes almost 100,000 Shahed-type drones, analogs, and imitation drones.
And while during 2025 and early 2026, cases of jet “Shaheds” use were neither massive nor regular, starting from the second half of the current year, their numbers began to rise, and launches became almost daily.
During the shelling on August 5 and 6, Russia launched more than 50 jet “Shaheds,” according to the Air Force report. During the July 24 attack, there were about 30 of them.
Deputy commander of the anti-Shahed battalion Darknode with the call sign “Artes” told BBC News Ukraine that the military is recording an increase in the share of Russian jet UAVs.
“The share of jet strike drones relative to the total number of launches is growing: according to our observations, it may make up between 25% and 50% of all daily launches,” he noted.
They hit various targets. On land, they often strike locomotives, and at sea – grain tanker ships. They also attack substations, warehouses, and hangars. Jet “Shaheds” have also targeted manufacturing facilities, infrastructure objects, electrical and energy generation facilities, and aviation bases.
Types of Jet “Shaheds”
For strikes against Ukraine, the Russian army uses a whole range of jet drones that are part of the “Shahed” (or “Geran”) family.
The “Geran-3” is most similar in shape to the classical “Shahed-136” (or “Geran-2”). It is based on an Iranian design presented in 2023 under the name “Shahed-238.”
This drone has a “triangular wing” shape without a tail section, 3.5 meters long and 3 meters wide, equipped with a turbojet engine. According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia uses Chinese Telefly JT80 engines, which are available on the open market and may cost up to $24,000-30,000 each.
This engine allows the “Geran-3” to reach speeds of up to 300-350 km/h.
An even more powerful modification of this drone is the “Geran-4.”
According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia began to use this UAV in combat only in May of the current year.
The “Geran-4” has the same triangular shape and dimensions as a typical Shahed, but with a reinforced body structure and improved aerodynamics. This is due to the use of a much more powerful jet engine (according to GUR, referring to Chinese Telefly LX-WP-160 or TF-TJ2000A). They can accelerate the drone to almost 500 km/h.
The reinforced body ensures the integrity of the structure for flights at such speeds and with high overload during maneuvering.
The latest modification of jet drones from the “Shahed” family, namely the “Geran-5,” is radically different from its “relatives”. It is likely built on the base of the Iranian Karrar drone and visually resembles a conventional cruise missile.
The “Geran-5” can be launched from an aircraft and reaches speeds of up to 600 km/h.
This missile-drone has a length of 6 m and a width of 5.5 m. The warhead weighs up to 90 kg.
This version is still the least used for strikes on Ukraine. The Russians prefer to use the jet “Geran-3” and “Geran-4,” which have a warhead of about 50 kg.
The most damage is caused by these drones in the “seeker” modification (from the English “seeker” – “finder”). Such “Gerans” have automatic target recognition and acquisition. Russian sources show their active use in recent weeks for strikes on ships in the Black Sea near the Ukrainian coast.
According to presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov (call sign “Flash”), such “Gerans” are equipped with several cameras working in different modes, as well as a mesh modem, through which the pilot controls the drone online via radio communication.
“If the ‘Seeker’ pilot, for example, locks onto a locomotive from a kilometer away, the low-powered electronic warfare system on the locomotive will not protect it. Machine vision algorithms will guide the ‘Seeker’ to the target without operator involvement,” explains “Flash”.
It works like this: thanks to its high speed, the jet “geranium” overcomes the Ukrainian air defense lines, and when approaching a moving target – a ship, locomotive, or car – the UAV system identifies and captures the target, the operator confirms it, and then the drone autonomously attacks the target.
Since the end of June, the Russian Ministry of Defense has released about 40 videos of the use of jet “geraniums” with the “seeker” system for strikes on Ukrainian targets. In addition to ships, planes, unmanned boats, stores, warehouses, locomotives, gas stations, trucks, and electrical substations were also attacked.
Are there any drawbacks?
Fast, stealthy, precise. The deputy commander of the Darknode battalion with the callsign “Artes” calls the jet drones “guided cruise missiles.”
But even this weapon has a number of drawbacks. Besides its cost, which is 2-3 times higher than regular kamikaze UAVs.
“First – the distance: the higher the speed of the Shahed’s jet engine, the more fuel it consumes. And the more fuel it consumes, the smaller the payload the drone can carry or the shorter the distance it can fly,” explains a soldier.
According to information about the strikes by jet “geraniums,” their operational range is up to 500 km, so they most often attack front-line and border areas of the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Poltava, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. In the case of a mesh-system-controlled UAV, this distance can increase, but then a relay is needed every 100 km for the drone to operate.
The second drawback – maneuverability: at high speeds, a jet drone physically cannot perform sharp maneuvers.
If it needs to “circle” in an area of interest, it has to slow down, which creates a convenient window for interception.
According to “Artes,” the Darknode battalion has shot down over 3,000 Shahed-type UAVs, with dozens being jet-powered. Most of them were destroyed by classic interceptor drones and were the result of “properly selected tactics and perfect timing for engagement.”
How to counteract
So how to counteract jet drones? Ukraine uses anti-aircraft missile systems such as Vampire, fighter aviation, mobile fire groups with MANPADS, and interceptor drones.
For the latter, however, it’s quite a challenging task. The point is, interceptor drones were created to counter “regular” Shaheds with internal combustion engines, and their maximum flight speed is up to 250-300 km/h.
Whereas jet UAVs can reach speeds up to 500 and even 600 km/h. Plus, they fly much higher – up to 9 km – and many are operated online by an operator.
The “Wild Hornets” company, which produces the Sting interceptor, claims they have already downed jet drones.
“Currently, we can intercept about 90% of regular ‘Shaheds’ and about 10% of jet-powered ones, considering interception specifically by interceptor drones,” a representative of the manufacturer, who requested not to be named, told the BBC.
It is also known that the Zirka interceptor from NOCTIS has been successfully used against jet-powered UAVs.
Its unique feature is that this drone has computer vision, which analyzes video streams in real-time, automatically detects ‘Shahed’, proposes the target to the operator for confirmation, and then switches to automatic tracking and guidance mode.
This significantly increases the accuracy of hitting high-speed aerial targets and allows operations in a short “time window,” i.e., when the jet-powered drone flies past anti-aircraft positions for just a few minutes.
To catch such ‘Gerans’, Ukrainian interceptors also need to be jet-powered. Such developments are already being tested, says Darknode deputy commander “Artes”.
“Right now, several Ukrainian R&D teams have already developed and are testing high-speed and autonomous interceptor drones, including jet engine variants. I wouldn’t want to share details publicly, but I can assure you that soon we will see the first results and move to systematic interception of jet-powered ‘Shaheds’,” he is confident.
The “Wild Hornets” company also expects that “approximately by October, an effective solution against jet-powered ‘Shaheds’ will be found.”
The main difficulty is not in making the anti-aircraft interceptor drone faster, say the manufacturers.
“The key parameters for ‘Shahed’ interceptors are speed, flight altitude, and air time. It’s important to find an optimal balance of these characteristics,” notes the company representative.
According to him, the flight time for jet-powered ‘Shahed’ interceptors should be up to 20 minutes, but the speed needs to increase by at least a third, and the height of effective use by several kilometers.
However, a higher drone speed usually reduces air time. Therefore, making a regular interceptor faster won’t work.
“Wild Hornets” state that interceptors for jet-powered UAVs need to be created “almost from scratch,” and there are “certain difficulties.”
Ukrainian developers are already working on solutions.
On the screen: “Shahed-136” that did not explode during the Russian attack on Kharkiv, August 2025. Photo: Suspilne
