Why is it so difficult for Ukraine to take down Russia's jet

Why is it so difficult for Ukraine to take down Russia's jet-powered drones?

Half of drones currently being launched at Ukraine are jet-powered, senior official suggests

When a Russian drone slammed into a high-rise residential building in Kyiv around 8 a.m. Friday, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring several others, the remnants of a jet engine were plainly visible among the broken glass and blackened debris on the pavement.

Russia's latest battlefield innovation — jet-powered drones — has been used to carry out strikes on the Ukrainian capital, including attacks targeting offices, data centres and warehouses.

The weapons, which have been pummelling Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine for weeks, have often been able to evade Ukrainian air defences because they fly at higher altitudes and at much higher speeds, reaching more than 600 km/h.

"It's not easy to intercept. You need to intercept [at] a similar speed or faster," said Volodymyr Khomenko, head of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Department of the National Police of Ukraine.

"For faster drones, we need faster interceptors."

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According to Ukrainian officials, Russia began testing its jet-powered strike drones two years ago in the Chernihiv region, north of Kyiv and near the border with Belarus.

Unlike earlier models of Shahed drones, which were based on Iranian designs and included piston engines, the new versions are equipped with turbojet engines. Ukrainian military intelligence officials have said some of those engines are being sourced from China.

There are three models of Geran jet-powered drones, with the latest being the Geran-5. Its design differs significantly from earlier versions. Instead of a triangular shape, it looks more like a cruise missile, with aerodynamic fins.

The Geran-5 can cruise at about 600 km/h, roughly three times the speed of the earlier Shahed models that began attacking Ukrainian cities in 2022.

How often is Russia using them?

Khomenko told CBC News that he believes about half of the drones currently being launched at Ukraine are jet-powered, while the other half are older models. But he says the balance is shifting rapidly.

Ukraine's Air Force said Russia fired 2,800 jet-powered drones at Ukraine in August, almost twice as many as in July.

In recent weeks, Russia has been sending the drones in small waves, often resulting in multihour air-raid alerts in Kyiv. Air defences can be heard throughout the city alongside the sound of explosions.

Unlike older models, which emit a buzzing sound that's been compared to a motorcycle, the jet-powered drones are quieter. Instead, residents often report hearing a whooshing sound as they fly through the air.

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When a drone crashed into the high-rise apartment building on Friday, Alice Boyko told CBC News she didn't think she heard the air-raid siren until after the explosion. She lives in the same building that was struck, but her apartment is on the opposite side.

"To be honest, I was more afraid of the missiles, but now I worry about drones, too.

"You never think that this is going to happen to you."

Why are they so hard for air defences to intercept?

Ukraine's Air Force has said that it's intercepting about 60 per cent of the jet-powered drones, compared with more than 90 per cent of earlier models.

During air-raid alerts in Kyiv, mobile units armed with heavy machine guns and shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile systems track threats in the sky. Above them, fighter jets, including F-16s, try to shoot the drones down.

Ukraine has also developed a large fleet of interceptor drones during the war. But the models currently in the field are not fast enough to intercept the jet-powered drones.

Borys Dolyna, a commander of a Ukrainian interceptor-drone company, told CBC News that the jet-powered drones move so quickly that they can be difficult to see even on the video feeds from interceptor drones. In some cases, he says, they appear as little more than a small pixel on the screen.

He says he's seen jet-powered drones several times, but their speed was so great that his team had no chance of intercepting them.

What is Ukraine doing about it?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the country is trying to accelerate production of newly designed interceptors capable of bringing down the Russian drones.

While officials have reported a number of successful interceptions, the technology is still in the trial phase.

Cory Woods, a Canadian working as a drone-interceptor pilot in Ukraine who is normally deployed in the eastern part of the country closer to the front, says drone warfare is evolving so rapidly that it has become what he describes as a "cat-and-mouse game."

"Every time the enemy makes an innovation and alters their technology or their tactics, we have to respond and change ours," he said in an interview with CBC News from Kyiv.

"Once they pick up on that, they change it again, and so it's constantly going back and forth."

However, Woods says that if Ukraine is to seriously blunt Russia's ability to use strike drones across the country, its military must have weapons capable of targeting the factories where the drones are made and the sites where they're launched.

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"There's no point in hitting the arrow if you let the archer live," he said.

"Russia has massive manufacturing capabilities. They've been gearing up for this for years. They've stockpiled a lot."

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Briar Stewart is a CBC correspondent, based in London. During her nearly two decades with CBC, she has reported across Canada and internationally. She can be reached at briar.stewart@cbc.ca or on X @briarstewart.