Ukraine's Bars strike drone is now more than 74% domestically made, and the one part it still buys abroad is the turbojet. A Ukrainian engine has passed final tests. The engine, not the airframe, is what caps output on both sides of the drone war.
Russia first outran Ukraine's cheap drone shield. Now it is blinding the operators, pushing the defense toward onboard guidance and digital links that erode the interceptor's defining cost advantage.
Russia flew 76 jet-powered Gerans at Ukraine in daylight on Aug. 18. Turbojet drones now reach two-thirds of some waves and roll off Alabuga at about 3,000 a month, faster than the $2,000 interceptors that beat the Shahed. Kyiv's jet-powered answer is still in combat testing.
GPS-free navigation and autonomous terminal guidance move the intercept onto the aircraft as Russian jamming degrades external links.
The reusable drone cuts the cost of catching slow, low targets, but its 160 km/h speed leaves jet-powered Shaheds to faster interceptors.
Investors bet $3.4 billion on Monday that cheap interceptor missiles win the counter-drone war. The same week, the Pentagon capped what it will pay for them and funded two rival ways of killing drones.
Ukraine's $2,000 interceptor drones stop nine in ten Shaheds. Its ballistic defense depends on a Lockheed line building 52 interceptors a month, and Trump has withdrawn the licence that was Kyiv's way around it.
Ukrainian interceptor drones now down about half of Russia's Shaheds, so Moscow is scaling a faster jet-powered Geran-4 built to outrun them.