Interceptor drone instead of missile: Ukraine's “Dronopad” to shoot down 1,000 Russian reconnaissance drones

Ukrainian pilots flying drones with a first-person view (FPV) have already successfully hunted Russian reconnaissance drones. The new “Dronopad” project is likely to build on this apparently successful field trial – with a declared and hardly modest goal: 1,000 Russian reconnaissance drones are to be shot down. Instead of air defence missiles costing millions of euros, the FPV drone is used as an interceptor drone, operated by special mobile FPV groups.

These “Dronopad” units are called “cover groups”. For their complex task they receive a wide range of equipment: at its core is a pickup as a mobile operating base, plus communications from radios to a Starlink terminal, a generator for power supply and FPV drones specially modified for this mission.

Does a carrier system lift the FPV drones to altitude?

It is not officially mentioned, but the available short videos do suggest an airborne carrier system for the FPV drones. Notably, almost all interception videos show an FPV drone in a dive, swooping down from a sometimes considerably higher position onto a reconnaissance drone already flying high. A carrier system would be the most obvious explanation for this impression.

It also remains unclear how the Russian reconnaissance drones are detected and tracked. Direction finding once they transmit is the obvious option. But solutions with optical detection in the visible and/or infrared band are equally conceivable – and, of course, radar.

In this context, the most recent video is noteworthy: it shows a night-time interception in which the FPV drone carries an IR camera. Such a scenario requires a considerable interplay of no longer quite so simple means.

Most kills so far have been reported by an attack drone company of the Signum Batallion of the 93rd Mechanised Brigade. The unit is stationed around 15 kilometres south-west of Bakhmut. The city was the focus of fighting from August 2022 to May 2023 and has been held, completely destroyed, by Russian forces since May of last year.

A further 45 kilometres south-west of this position runs the salient that has formed since the start of the major Russian offensive on Avdiivka in October 2023 and the capture of the city in February 2024. In this fiercely contested area, the drone company says it intercepted 49 Russian reconnaissance drones within a short time.

Three steps to an interceptor drone against the Geran

For the government in Kyiv, the significance of this development can hardly be overstated. Intercepting reconnaissance drones completes the first of three planned steps in the drone war on which Ukraine is working flat out.

Step two, also already under way, is a fixed-wing interceptor drone: it is to be able to follow Russian drones at altitudes of several kilometres for up to 60 kilometres if necessary and destroy them. This would dramatically increase the operating radius of the “Dronopad” cover groups.

The third step is the most important, as it is of immense significance for protecting critical infrastructure: an interceptor drone designed to destroy Russia's long-range Geran drones (a copy of the Iranian Shahed). Requirements are a speed of at least 200 km/h and a range of at least 200, preferably 500 kilometres. It should also be much cheaper and more readily available than air defence missiles.

In the first two years of the war, air combat between drones was rather sporadic and unplanned, but no less remarkable for that. With the new project it is likely to become increasingly systematic. In any case, the concept appears suited to large-scale roll-out and an important role across the entire battlefield.