The icy ground crackling under their feet, members of an elite Ukrainian drone-hunting team set up for a long night.
Antennas and sensors are clipped to a light stand. Monitors and controls are pulled from hard cases, and a game-changing new weapon is readied for deployment.
The Sting, shaped like a flying thermos, is one of Ukraine’s new homegrown interceptors.
The unit’s commander says the interceptors can effectively counter Russia’s fast-evolving suicide drones, which are now flying faster and at higher altitudes.
“Every destroyed target is something that did not hit our homes, our families, our power plants,” said the officer, known only by the call sign “Loi”, in line with Ukrainian military protocol.
“The enemy does not sleep, and neither do we.”
Nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and power infrastructure have forced Kyiv to rewrite the air defence rule book and develop cut-price drone killers costing as little as $1,000.
Interceptors went from prototype to mass production in just a few months in 2025 and represent the latest shift in modern warfare.
Effective defence in Ukraine depends on mass production, rapid adaptation and layering low-cost systems into existing defenses instead of relying on a few expensive, slow-to-replace weapons.
Models like the Sting – made by the volunteer-driven startup Wild Hornets – and the newly appeared Bullet can surge in speed before crashing into enemy drones.
They are flown by pilots watching monitors or wearing first-person-view goggles.
The economics are crucial. Andrii Lavrenovych, a member of the strategic council of the fast-growing startup General Cherry which develops the Bullet, says the drones they destroy cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000.
“We are inflicting serious economic damage,” he said.
Russia favours the Iranian-designed Shahed suicide drone and has produced multiple variants of the triangle-winged craft, armed with jammers, cameras and turbojet engines in a constant battle of innovation.
