Over the course of early 2026, it is fair to say Russia’s offensive efforts in Ukraine have not gone particularly well. Casualties continue to mount, and territorial gains have been a mixed bag, with some small gains in various directions being largely negated by Ukraine’s own quiet gains near Pokrovske, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. With the ground war at an effective standstill, both sides are locked in a struggle of innovation and counter-innovation, each looking for solutions to give themselves a tactical edge.

Against this background, a fascinating arms race continues to rage, with innovations in drone technology coming at what may be their most rapid pace since the beginning of Russia’s invasion.

Evolution and counter-evolution

When it comes to aircraft bypassing or evading air defences, it is common to think in terms of flares, chaff, or sophisticated electronic countermeasures such as directional infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) or digital radio frequency memory (DRFM) transmitters, and the like. However, much simpler techniques can often be the most effective, especially if you understand your opponent’s defences. For instance, simply flying higher or lower, or faster or slower, can all be viable approaches to evading an opponent’s air defences, depending on the tactical scenario.

In this vein, when Russia began launching its Shahed/Geran one-way attack (OWA) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) salvos, Ukrainian forces were able to down them using various widely-available means, such as machine guns and medium-calibre cannons. Russia’s responses included both technical and tactical changes to its OWA UAV employment, such as setting them to fly higher, out of reach of the common direct-fire weapons. Intercepting these targets in turn meant Ukraine had to increasingly turn to other solutions, such as electronic warfare (EW) jamming and spoofing to confuse the OWA UAVs’ navigation, or using aircraft, helicopters, and precious surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to directly engage them. However, as production scaled up, Russian strikes began to involve many hundreds of OWA UAVs at a time, and their jamming resistance improved significantly. Under those conditions, Ukraine’s existing solutions were neither sufficiently scalable nor sustainable to match the threat.

Ukraine enjoyed some success with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) jamming in late-2024/early-2025. Russia responded by first increasing the number of elements on their controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs) used by their OWA UAVs, from four, to eight, to 16, but according to Ukrainian sources, this had mixed results. A more comprehensive response came with Russia’s introduction of newer versions of their Kometa-M-VT CRPA design, which started becoming more common by spring 2025. This generation of the antenna was substantially more jamming resistant, to the point where Ukrainian sources reported that Russia was able to go back to using four-element antennas.

Alongside this, for a time Russia was able to use Starlink to control various OWA UAVs, creating a major headache for Ukraine. However, this did not last, as on 4 February 2026, SpaceX began requiring users in the region to verify their Starlink terminals, resulting in a de facto ban on Russians using the service.

With jamming not always an effective option, Ukraine needed its own systemic response, and so began to develop ‘pseudo-SAMs’ – specialised high-speed first-person view (FPV) interceptor drones as a relatively low-cost means of engaging OWA UAVs. Commonly-cited examples include the ODIN ‘Win_Hit’, the Wild Hornets ‘Sting’ and the Skyfall ‘P1-SUN’ models. These are piloted by a human operator, and are capable of reaching speeds of around 300-400 km/h, depending on the model, and can reach altitudes of 4-5 km. They were well suited for engaging Russia’s Geran-2s, whose piston engine propulsion enabled them to attain speeds of around 185 km/h, and reach altitudes of 4 km. Consequently, Ukrainian mobile groups armed with such interceptors proved highly effective against Russia’s Geran-2 and similar OWA UAVs, according to multiple Ukrainian sources.

However, Russia developed various adaptations in response. These included putting Ukrainian SIM cards into their Geran-2s to send back telemetry information on where individual drones were shot down, so the rest of the wave could avoid the area. Recently, however, Ukraine has reportedly found a means of blocking such GSM/LTE trackers after the drones cross the border. Some Geran-2s have also featured rear-facing cameras, to allow them to detect incoming interceptor drones and initiate an evasive manoeuvre when they get close. Gerbera decoy drones were also sent alongside Gerans, to help saturate the defences by adding false targets into the threat mix. Another tactical adaptation involved flying Geran-2s in pairs, one above the other, to mask their true numbers from ground-based radars.

While these measures helped survivability, they were not a systemic solution, and Ukraine was able to sustain high interception rates with its ‘pseudo-SAMs’. This trend has broadly continued into 2026, but things are already starting to shift.

Drones are speeding up

Beyond the aforementioned tactical and technical adaptations, Russia began serious efforts to develop a systematic answer to the interceptor drone problem in 2025. This came in the form of Russia beginning production of Geran-series designs with jet propulsion, to enable their OWA UAVs to reach much higher speeds than previously possible.

The first major example of this trend came with Russia commencing use of the Geran-3 model, which started being documented in Ukraine from around September 2025 onward. According to Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR), Geran-3 is derived from Iran’s Shahed-238 design, powered by a Tolou-10 or Tolou-13 turbojet engine. It was initially credited with being capable of attaining a maximum speeds of around 550-600 km/h and maximum altitude of 9 km, though these figures were later revised downward, to around 280-330 km/h, and a maximum altitude of around 3 km. These latter figures seem broadly correct, as footage of Sting series interceptor drones catching up to and engaging Geran-3s emerged.

Alongside Geran-3, the Russians have also developed the similar but heavier Geran-4, assessed by Ukraine as being capable of attaining higher speeds of 350-500 km/h, and maximum altitude of 5 km. Faster still, Russia is also introducing the Geran-5 model, which is visually very distinct to the rest of the Geran series, essentially following a conventional cruise missile design. Geran-5 is assessed as being capable of reaching speeds of 450-600 km/h and altitudes of 6 km. Both Geran-4 and Geran-5 have also been assessed as suited for carriage by Su-25 ground attack aircraft, potentially extending their range, and opening up new tactical options.

Further adding to the recent panoply of fast aerial threats seen emerging from Russia is the country’s new low-cost air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), currently only known as ‘Izdeliye-30’. According to GUR, the missile is armed with a large 800 kg warhead, and powered by either a TRDD-50AT or Izdeliye-64R compact turbofan engine. It is assessed to be capable of reaching speeds of 720 km/h, altitudes from 200 m to 2 km (though its maximum altitude is thought to be higher), and a range of at least 1,500 km. Izdeliye-30 is believed to be at least partially based on Russia’s Kh-35U anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM), given the similarities between the aft portions of the two missiles, albeit the former is larger, heavier, has a much larger warhead, and has a completely different wing design.

Aerial threats with the speed and altitude performance of Geran-4, and especially Geran-5 or Izdeliye-30, match or exceed the current maximum performance of Ukraine’s FPV interceptor drones, and are therefore very difficult to intercept with such low-cost weapons. At present, the most suitable means for engaging this class of target reliably are SAMs, which are in relatively short supply for Ukraine. Although Geran-4/5 and Izdeliye-30 are limited in number right now, as production increases, they threaten to impose a tactical dilemma on Ukraine – whether to conserve its SAMs for use against high-value targets, or engage the immediate threat and risk depleting its SAM supplies.

Keeping up will not be cheap

Ukrainian radio and drone specialist Serhiy ‘Flash’ Beskrestnov has been at the forefront of Ukraine’s efforts to catalogue and understand Russia’s drone evolution. Writing on his Telegram channel, he warned of the potential threat posed by Russia’s faster drones: “At one point, all our interceptor drones may prove to be useless. If you are a manufacturer, I ask you to start developing systems for intercepting strike UAVs at such speeds right now. We still have time.”

Flash’s assessment is not hyperbole. Russia’s recent push to produce faster drones should be read as a strategic attempt to impose an economic and industrial checkmate on Ukraine. The logic at play can be summarised as: ‘Yes, we’ll have to spend a bit more money to build jet-powered drones, but you’ll have to spend much more to shoot them down, and you won’t be able to build those interceptors in tiny, dispersed workshops which are difficult for us to find and destroy’.

Widespread employment of these faster drones would effectively nullify many of the current advantages enjoyed by Ukraine’s pseudo-SAMs. Starting with guidance, Ukraine’s current pseudo-SAMs typically use a human pilot. However, engaging faster targets with this arrangement is much more difficult. As speeds increase, factors such as the latency of the connection begin to matter more, and the interceptor may need to be able to pull high-g manoeuvres in the terminal phase, especially against a target making evasive manoeuvres. Ukraine has made efforts to decrease their pseudo-SAMs’ dependence on a human pilot – a recent initiative by Brave1 aims to develop AI-guided interceptor swarms, which would enable a single pilot to control multiple interceptor drones simultaneously.

However, while AI guidance would negate some problems such as connection latency, and could react to evasive manoeuvres faster than a human pilot, fundamentally the main problem Ukraine faces isn’t guidance but propulsion. A rule of thumb in air defence is that you typically want your interceptor to be faster than your target. So as the target gets faster, the interceptor needs to get even faster, and this is where the economic challenge lies.

Engaging fast, manoeuvring aerial targets would normally require SAMs or AAMs, but even at the cheaper end, these tend to cost orders of magnitude more than pseudo-SAMs, which average around USD 1,000-2,000. Ukraine can and probably will opt to build cheaper domestic alternatives, but there are limits to what can be achieved with propeller propulsion using consumer-grade electric motors. Realistically, engaging Russia’s new, faster jet-powered drones will probably require Ukraine’s interceptors to adopt their own jet or rocket propulsion to stay ahead. This immediately causes several problems all at once.

For starters, miniature jet engines and rocket motors are both fairly complex components which require both specialist knowledge and often specialist equipment to build. Therefore their production cannot be as easily decentralised and scaled as when using the common consumer electronic components as with pseudo-SAMs. It is difficult to see Ukraine’s network of small workshops manage the switch from assembling drones using prebuilt electric motors and propellers, to assembling low-cost turbojet engines using crude tools, or mixing their own fuel and oxidisers in small batches. In both cases, it makes more sense to use dedicated facilities with specialist equipment and staff to produce such components. The associated problem is that compared to small, dispersed workshops, such specialised facilities are much more vulnerable to discovery and destruction. However, that is likely to be a risk Ukraine will have no choice but to take.

With the direction of travel trending toward Ukraine having to build more expensive interceptors, market analysts may be tempted to see Ukraine’s pseudo-SAMs as a temporary blip, which worked well within a narrow problem set, but are already being overtaken by the march of technology. Over the long term, this may end up proving true, but right now such a prognosis seems premature, considering Russia is continuing to mass-produce and evolve its slower drones.

New tricks for old drones

Russia continues to produce and employ the Geran-2 at scale, but is adding further technical measures and changing up their employment tactics. In a 29 January 2026 post referencing video footage of a very low-flying Geran-2, Flash wrote “Our adversary is employing a variety of tactics and tricks to destroy our military facilities. One of the latest is flying at extremely low altitudes in manual control mode.”

Flying at low altitudes means the Gerans once again become vulnerable to direct fire weapons such as machine guns and cannons, and there has been an uptick in these kinds of interceptions being posted to social media. The trade-off is that flying very low greatly decreases the range at which they’re spotted on radar, which can complicate interception efforts. Moreover, when slow, low-flying munitions are coupled with high-flying, high-speed munitions as part of a mixed strike package, the defender’s task becomes more complicated, requiring the commitment of multiple different assets with differing capabilities to defend any given point. This can result in defences becoming overstretched and gaps in defences forming.

Alongside this low-flying trend, Russia has been employing various new modifications of Geran-2 with secondary offensive capabilities. One such use is for the counter-air role, as seen in two recent Geran-2 ‘E’ series modifications. One configuration which surfaced in December 2025 involved mounting an R-60 air-to-air missile (AAM) on top of the fuselage, and in January 2026, a similar arrangement was seen using a Verba man-portable air defence system (MANPADS) missile launcher. These modifications are intended to engage Ukraine’s light aircraft and helicopters defending against Geran waves. While the R-60-armed Geran-2 variant reportedly has to sacrifice its primary warhead to carry the AAM, the Verba-armed version retains its primary warhead, allowing it to carry out a ground strike after using its Verba missile. Fake versions of such armed Gerans have also started to crop up.

Russia’s experiments with OWA UAV secondary offensive capabilities have not been limited to AAMs and MANPADS. Over early 2026, a number of remote mining configurations of the Molniya drone, and more recently Geran-2 as well, have been circulating on social media channels.

Around the same period, a number of different Geran, Gerbera, and Molniya examples emerged in which the platforms were configured as motherships for FPV drones. Some Geran examples were reported to be capable of carrying two FPV drones. Flash wrote about the drone mothership phenomenon on his channel:

“Our adversary has come up with the simplest way to control FPVs. Or rather, our adversary has taken this method from us [referencing Operation Spiderweb]. I’m talking about controlling FPVs via the LTE mobile network. They’ve figured out that they can deliver FPV drones from winged UAVs in places where with good, stable mobile connectivity, and then drop the drones on targets. These drones are controlled by an operator from Russia, and their flight time is literally just minutes. Ukrainian SIM cards are used for these tasks.”

This is not the first time Russian troops have been shown using mobile internet for drone control. A similar arrangement was seen in RIA Novosti footage aired on 15 April 2025, showing Russian drone pilots stationed in a Moscow high-rise apartment building, using an internet connection understood to be via LTE (though unclear whether direct or bridged via a dedicated radio transmitter), to control an FPV drone near Chasiv Yar, around 800 km away. Moreover, the technology had been commercially available for some time before that, with drone manufacturer DJI having released a cellular dongle which enabled drone control via LTE networks circa August 2024.

Combating FPV drones using LTE connectivity is not entirely straightforward, not least because their traffic can be difficult to distinguish from regular mobile phone activity. In response to comments from channel members, Flash wrote:

“Every day, I receive ideas and advice from readers to use the IMEI [International Mobile Equipment Identity] operator register to combat LTE modems on UAVs. It’s surprising that advanced people don’t know about the ability of Chinese equipment to change the IMEI serial number…The latest LTE drone came to us disguised as an iPhone 12”

Indeed, Ukraine’s own usage of LTE guidance in its OWA UAVs led to Russia imposing periodic mobile network outages during March 2026. Reportedly, Ukraine’s drones used foreign-bought tourist SIM cards to skirt around Russia’s 24 hour ‘cooling off’ period on new SIM cards connecting to a Russian network. This was a network access restriction brought in during November 2025.

Elsewhere, with Ukrainian EW still a concern, newer versions of Russia’s Molniya drones are understood to send and receive on different frequencies, making them very difficult to jam. Some models have also been seen fitted with directional antennas to complicate jamming further. Writing on the topic, Flash stated:

“The number of ‘Molniya’ drones and strike and reconnaissance drones on the frontlines is significantly increasing. The military is asking me why our electronic warfare systems aren’t effective against ‘Molniya’. Let’s consider an example of a classic strike version. Our EW systems can easily detect ‘Molniya’, which is flying and transmitting video images, and we can track it. However, we don’t know the frequency at which ‘Molniya’ is being controlled. This is because ‘Molniya’ simply receives control signals and doesn’t transmit anything in response. The frequency could be anywhere from 150 MHz to 2800 MHz. It’s impossible to jam the entire frequency band over long distances, and randomly jamming parts of the band is pointless.”

However, possibly Russia’s most concerning technical development in drone control seen so far in 2026 is the increasing adoption of mesh networking among many of its OWA UAVs and decoys. Flash wrote that he has noticed with mesh networking modems beginning to appear on the Geran (AKA Shahed), Gerbera, Kub, and Molniya models. This is problematic because mesh networking ultimately enables Russia to maintain a fairly resilient communications link with its OWA UAVs while operating in the presence of EW, and potentially over greater distances, depending on the numbers of drones involved.

In the context of its use on Shahed OWA UAVs, Flash explained: “The mesh radio network on Shaheds is actually radio modems that not only receive and transmit signals, but also act as repeaters and signal amplifiers for each other. In this scheme, all Shaheds in the air are connected via radio to each other. As a result, even if several Shaheds are shot down, the connection [to a given Shahed] will not be interrupted – it will simply go through other Shaheds.”

However, mesh networks do still need an entry point, where at least one node in the network is connected to a control signal from the ground. In this vein, Russia has established a system of relay stations in neighbouring Belarus, which according to President Zelenskyy are used to control OWA UAV strikes over northern Ukraine. This is problematic for Ukraine, since the country is not formally at war with Belarus.

Beyond new means of controlling drones, Russia has also been experimenting with more active means of protection for its slower drones, such as using IR spotlights to dazzle the cameras used for guidance by Ukraine’s pseudo-SAMs – effectively a low-cost DIRCM. Flash wrote of what has been seen so far:

“I’m focusing on a new direction – blinding cameras and surveillance systems. The first attempt was the IR spotlight on the ‘Shahed’ drones…They were mounted in pairs on the tail. Then, we detected the enemy’s experiments with installing spotlights on the ‘Shahed’ drones on a rotating platform. They even tried to blind our aircraft with beams of light. Now, I’m receiving information from the frontlines about attempts to install blinding systems on ‘Molniya’ drones to counter our interceptors. I can add that attempts to blind the camera were made at an altitude of 200-300 meters, DEEP OVER OUR TERRITORY, and were repeated several times.”

Where are things heading?

As can be seen from Russia’s experiments with drones in Ukraine, innovation in this sphere is extremely rapid and ongoing. This piece touched upon some of the most interesting measures adopted by Russia so far, but it is important to stress that many of these will be experimental in nature, and with Ukraine continuing to work on developing countermeasures, not all are likely to stay over the longer term.

That said, the problem which looks likely to be more complex for Ukraine to address are the faster Geran models and low-cost cruise missiles being developed by Russia. However, while these could prove effective, they may remain a niche threat worth expending SAMs on unless their production figures begin to get somewhat closer to those of Geran-2. This gives Ukraine a window of opportunity to develop the appropriate countermeasures, such as low-cost SAMs. However, on the face of it, this is likely to prove a substantial industrial and economic challenge.

Lastly, it is worth pointing out that even if Russia is able to use their new, faster drones to gain an edge in the unmanned weapon arms race, this may not necessarily translate to notable tactical successes on the battlefield. In part, this is because one trend which appears unlikely to die is the enduring importance of infantry, illustrated by the fact that both Russia and Ukraine, each of whose armed forces have perhaps the largest inventory of unmanned systems on the planet, are also taking some of the highest combatant casualties of any war in recent decades.