• Russia looks to be moving toward 3D printed cruise missiles for its next era of air attacks on Ukraine.
• The threat could be so major, turbojet Shaheds would seem like a small problem, one drone guru said.
• GUR recently posted details of the Filin, a cheap Russian missile reported to fly as fast as 500 mph.

Russia's next big bet in the air war will likely move past jet-powered Shaheds to a deep arsenal of new cruise missiles, two of Ukraine's most prominent drone experts warned on Thursday.

Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov and Serhii Sternenko wrote separately on their Telegram channels about the Filin, an 11-foot Russian winged cruise missile that Ukraine's military intelligence service recently unveiled.

These cheap weapons possess superior capabilities that would easily overshadow the threat posed by the Shahed, according to the pair, both former drone advisors to Ukraine's defense ministry.

"The mass use of this type of aerial attack weapon is what awaits us very soon," wrote Sternenko, who runs a major foundation that crowdfunds for Ukraine's military, in a Telegram post.

"Then we will remember the jet Shaheds only as a small problem compared to this," he added.

Beskrestnov, a drone analyst, said he had "long predicted that our adversary is betting on cheap cruise missiles for the future, not on jet Shaheds."

He wrote on his Telegram channel that the Filin can fly faster, maneuver better, and carry a heavier payload than Russia's current turbojet drones,

"They do not need drone ports, many of them can be launched from helicopters and UAVs. And most importantly, they can be produced from Russian components," Beskrestnov added.

A strike at nearly 500 mph for cheap

On Wednesday, Ukraine's military intelligence agency, GUR, released extensive details on the Filin, which it said Russia had begun deploying at the end of summer 2026.

The Filin, it said, is the "continuation of the trend of the Russian military-industrial complex to develop inexpensive air attack weapons with jet propulsion and ground launch."

The ground-launched missile can carry a 100kg warhead, and Russia has said that it can fly at speeds of almost 500 mph at a range of 745 miles. By comparison, the Kremlin's most advanced jet-powered drone deployed so far, the Geran-5, is known to fly at a maximum speed of 370 mph.

The Filin can also fly at "ultra-low altitudes" and as high as 3.7 miles, GUR said.

Similar to Russia's Shahed drones, the Filin features a carbon and fiberglass fuselage, with some of its parts produced via 3D printing, the intelligence service added.

And as with turbojet Shaheds, GUR also said that the Filin is filled with foreign electronics in its flight controller, inertial navigation system, equipment control unit, and counter-jamming hardware.

The agency listed 35 components from the US, including transistors and converters; 22 from China; and 13 more from Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.

Notably, GUR said the Filin's engine is Russian-made, compared to the Chinese engines used on many of Moscow's turbojet drones. The same engine has been found on other recently unveiled Russian missiles, such as the air-launched Kover and Monochrome.

Much of Russia's ability to reduce the cost of its new cruise missiles is owed to its use of commercial engines and components. Another high-profile Russian missile that also uses civilian tech is the Banderol, which emerged in the spring of 2025 and has been straining Ukraine's air defense networks in the last few months.

The Banderol flies more slowly and has a shorter range than the Filin, but it still reaches a max speed of 435 mph, making it much harder for Ukraine to intercept with drones. Its estimated price is $150,000 per unit — about a sixteenth the cost of a traditional Kh-101 cruise missile — so it's easier to mass-produce.

The frequent use of weapons like the Banderol over the summer has led to fears that Russia will lean into its tactic, often nicknamed "missile spam," to keep pushing Ukrainian air defenses.

"What is the Air Force command doing now to build up countermeasures in advance?" Sternenko wrote on Wednesday about the missile threat.

• A new Ukrainian list of foreign parts in Russia's anti-jamming antenna is filled with US electronics.
• GUR published a catalog of US digital processors, chips, and other components found in the Kometa.
• These arrays are used to help Shaheds and Iskander-M missiles navigate and suppress jamming.

Over two dozen US processors, chips, and other components have been found in Russia's anti-jamming antenna systems, according to Ukraine's military intelligence.

The Ukrainian agency, GUR, published a list of foreign parts on Monday that it said were discovered in 16-element Kometa modules, one of Russia's more advanced systems that help drones and ballistic missiles suppress electronic warfare and navigate the skies.

US-headquartered firms produced 28 out of 37 foreign components — or just over three-quarters — listed on Monday, per GUR.

Ten American brands and their components were identified in the catalog, posted on GUR's War and Sanctions page. These include digital processors from Intel subsidiary Altera, radio-frequency and precision components from Analog Devices, a memory chip from Micron, and supporting electronics from Texas Instruments.

Another three components are built by Chinese companies, while the other six come from Japanese, Taiwanese, and Swiss manufacturers, GUR also indicated.

In a statement to Business Insider, a Texas Instruments spokesperson said the company "strongly opposes the use of our chips in Russian military equipment."

"Any shipments of TI chips into Russia are illicit and unauthorized. We devote significant time and resources to developing, implementing, and refining policies and procedures to combat illicit diversion and keep chips out of the hands of bad actors," they added.

Intel, Analog Devices, and Micron did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The new list from GUR, which regularly publishes information on foreign parts in Russian equipment, comes as the electronic warfare race grows more vital to Ukraine's air defense.

Kyiv's forces try to stop Russian drone and missile attacks with a mix of jamming tools and interceptors, but the latter are facing difficulty as Moscow has begun mass-launching faster, jet-powered drones — the slowest of which can fly at about 185 mph.

Kometa antenna panels are among the most common anti-jamming tools on Russian long-range weapons, such as Shahed drones, Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and glide bombs.

Each antenna receives satellite signals and helps to counter jamming or spoofing.

The 16-element Kometa, which essentially has an array of 16 antennas, is one of Russia's newer versions of the system in mass production. Two years ago, Moscow was regularly using eight-element Kometas on its Shaheds instead.

• Ukraine is funding air defense missiles with a hard cap of $20,000 per shot, Brave1's chief said.
• That's about a sixth the cost of a Stinger missile, and still cheaper than an APWKS 70mm rocket.
• It's one of Kyiv's responses to Russia's thousands-strong, inexpensive Shahed fleets.

Ukraine has been running a yearslong weapons program to develop cheap surface-to-air missiles that cost no more than $20,000 each, said Andrii Hrytseniuk, the head of its Brave1 startup incubator.

Several firms have been testing prototypes under this framework, and Kyiv is "preparing to put two of these companies into combat," Hrytseniuk said in a video interview published with Ukrainska Pravda on Thursday.

He expressed hope that a third would soon reach a similar stage.

Hrytseniuk said some of these manufacturers have managed to get costs down to $10,000 per missile, though the program has set a hard price cap of $20,000 per shot.

"This is significantly cheaper than the cost of a Shahed. Even if you need two or three missiles, it is still several times cheaper than the cost of a Shahed," said Hrytseniuk of the limit.

Hrytseniuk said the program was launched by Brave1 as a competition between Ukrainian firms to "create the cheapest anti-aircraft missile systems possible."

"Funding for missiles began in 2024, but making a missile takes even more time than making an interceptor drone," he added.

A price limit of $20,000 would make these Ukrainian missiles even cheaper than the AGR-Falco Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, an American-made unguided 70mm rocket fitted with a laser guidance kit.

Costing about $30,000 to $35,000 each, these were traditionally air-to-ground rockets that have now been converted for air defense in Ukraine. The cheapest US standard surface-to-air missile is the shoulder-mounted Stinger, which costs about $120,000 per missile.

The Ukrainian effort to lower air defense costs comes as a response to Russia's extensive Shahed attack drone fleets, which are numerous and cheaper to produce than typical missiles. Ukrainian officials have estimated that the Russian Geran-2, for example, costs $70,000 each, while jet-powered drones like the Geran-3 cost at least $100,000.

Kyiv uses a layered network of defense systems, including machine gun crews, interceptor quadcopters, and electronic warfare, to fight against these drones, which Russia can launch hundreds of at a time.

But Moscow has increasingly used jet-powered Gerans, which fly too fast for regular interceptor drones and human gun crews to keep up with. A new AI-powered terrain mapping system found on some Gerans has also raised concerns that Russia will soon be able to bypass Ukrainian jamming.

Ukraine's alternative has been air-defense missiles, such as the air-launched AIM-9 Sidewinder, which can cost about half a million dollars per shot.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month that his country was working on a "small missile program" as a counter to jet-powered Gerans.

"There are several types. We will clearly see the result this month. At the end, in the second half of this month," he told reporters at a press conference.

In September, Hrytseniuk told Business Insider's Jake Epstein that several Ukrainian companies were also integrating artificial intelligence into strike missile systems and were seeing "first successes."

• Meta says its system detected intense bursts of activity by a Claude tool.
• That triggered an automatic shutdown and locked admins out of the account.
• It happened during a day of rallies promoting early voting in the midterms.

Meta said Sunday that its systems suspended the No Kings movement's Instagram account during its day of action because it detected "intense" activity by a Claude tool.

The account was locked and administrators were denied access for "several hours" during nationwide rallies on Saturday to mobilize early voting in the midterms, the group said.

Meta initially said that an automatic trigger was responsible for shutting down the account "in error," but offered a fuller explanation a day later.

"Our engineering team discovered that the spike that triggered the incorrect enforcement was primarily in the account's 'reading' behavior," spokesperson Andy Stone said in an X post.

"Specifically, our network security systems detected the use of a Claude tool reading profiles, posts, and hashtags, the rate of which sharply increased (~4x volume) in intense bursts on October 17. "

Stone said the activity resembled bot traffic, prompting the system to take the account offline.

"An automated re-review of the removal action an hour later recognized that shouldn't have happened and restored the account. It unfortunately took additional time for us to straighten out the situation with admin access to the IG account.

"We want to reiterate our sincere apology for the error," he wrote.

The No Kings network, which bills itself as nonpartisan but arose last year in response to President Donald Trump's actions, said it held nearly 3,000 rallies across the country to encourage voters to cast their ballots early as a hedge against any effort to undermine turnout.

"Restricting communications about voting in the middle of an election is unacceptable," it said.

"Meta must answer for this suspension and take immediate steps to ensure it never happens again — to any account, but especially those working to inform voters and encourage participation in our democracy."

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut called for an investigation into the shutdown, saying on Sunday evening that even if it was made in error, the incident was a "total indictment of Meta's outsized influence on our culture and politics."

"If it wasn't malevolence, it was likely a natural consequence of a company that is desperate to get as close to Trump as possible (and thus has a disincentive to do the basic, proactive work to be ready to support users on No Kings Day)," he wrote in a post on X.

The senator, who has advocated for stricter regulation and anti-monopoly laws against Big Tech, said Meta's significant share of the political discourse market comes with a responsibility for it to be ready for "major moments of political action."

October 18, 2026: This story was updated with public comment from Sen. Chris Murphy.