Russia’s once-rare turbojet drones with advanced parts now attack Ukraine by the thousands

New tallies from Kyiv show that Russia was able to bombard Ukraine with thousands of jet-powered attack drones — a rare weapon just a year-and-a-half ago — over the summer.

Col. Yuriy Ignat, the main spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, told national broadcaster TSN on Wednesday that the Kremlin has launched 7,700 turbojet drones into Ukraine so far.

The bulk of these appeared over the summer, surging from 350 jet-powered drones in June to 1,500 in July, before leaping to 2,850 in August, he said.

Russia has launched 1,900 of the faster, more advanced drones so far this month.

That means that at least half of all Russian long-range drone attacks, which include the Kremlin’s versions of the Iranian-designed Shahed, consist of jet-powered systems.

“This suggests that the enemy is not stopping, that they are finding opportunities to purchase those jet engines, other components, and assemble them on the territory of Russia,” Ignat said.

Jet-powered drones have posed a particularly acute problem for Ukraine’s air defenses, with the country still scrambling to find cheap, mass-producible countermeasures.

A novelty in the war’s earlier years, the drones drew wider attention at the start of 2025, when Ukrainian war observers began reporting increased sightings of Shahed drones equipped with jet engines.

Their surge in production this year indicates that Russia has greatly expanded access to vital components that Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly said Moscow can only procure on the global market.

Ukraine has said that the jet engines, in particular, are sourced from China. Kyiv has said it has also found critical electronic components in the drones, such as digital signal processors, clock generators, and transceivers, originating from US or European firms.

It’s been a particular pain point for Ukraine, which has long warned that Russia’s military production base has been able to evade international sanctions at a scale that allows it to mass-produce weapons with foreign parts.

The Kremlin looks to be expanding production further.

Politico reported last week on plans it acquired from a Russian state firm that outline producing enough airframe material for another 28,000 one-way attack drones a year, on top of the 36,000 it’s already estimated to make annually.

Satellite images analyzed by Business Insider’s Jake Epstein also show that Russia has built a new facility this year dedicated to launches for jet-powered drones, equipped with 280-foot rails.

Once a rare sight, now a priority threat

Jet-powered drones began appearing as Ukraine was settling into countering Russia’s then-most common attack drone — the Geran-2. These were propeller drones that flew at about 115 mph, modeled after the Shahed-136, which the Kremlin was sending in hundreds-strong waves at night toward Ukrainian cities.

The mass attacks meant Ukraine had to find a cheap way to counter the drones, which it did through interceptor drones, small quadcopters souped up to fly at higher speeds.

Then the newer, turbojet Geran-3 arrived. It’s thought to be a Russian analog of the Shahed-238, an Iranian drone known to reach top speeds of 373 mph, or even 500 mph in a dive — too fast for typical interceptor drones.

A more advanced generation of this delta-wing drone, the Geran-4, uses an airframe more suited to extreme speeds.

Russia has also introduced a new type of jet-powered drone that bears close similarities to the Iranian Karrar, which in turn was a copy of the American MQM-107 Streaker.

The Russian Karrar, designated Geran-5 by the Ukrainians, closely resembles what one might expect from a cruise missile. Shaped like a bullet with wings, it can reach about 370 mph in flight, with a range of nearly 600 miles and a 198-pound payload.

Ukraine has since begun developing more advanced jet interceptor drones as a countermeasure. However, their production is still in early stages, with Ukrainian firms announcing only a small number of takedowns this summer.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said this week that his country had already tested four types of jet interceptor drones in combat.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian cities have been feeling the deadly pressure from the Russian attacks. Its figures indicate that it’s only intercepting roughly 60% of Russia’s drones, down from 90% when the Kremlin was primarily launching propeller Shaheds.