Russian forces are preparing to resume mechanized assaults in southern Ukraine after a pause of several months and are moving armored vehicles toward areas where they plan to launch offensives, Anastasiia Shevchenko, deputy spokesperson for the Southern Forces Grouping, told Ukrinform on 22 October. The Huliaipole axis remains the hottest in the Southern grouping’s zone, with 10 to 20 combat engagements reported on an average day, she said.

On the Huliaipole axis, one of Russia’s largest force groupings is fighting Ukrainian forces, comprising units from several Russian combined-arms armies, the spokesperson says. Over the past week, as the weather worsened, Russian forces began local assaults there with infantry, motorcycles, and armored vehicles, seeking to break through toward Zaporizhzhia and blockade the city, Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps reported, adding that the area is one of Russia’s key priorities in southern Ukraine. Russia has used fog this way before: last November, Russian troops moved under its cover to avoid detection by Ukrainian drones as they advanced on Huliaipole, the Institute for the Study of War assessed.

Russian forces have abandoned large-scale assaults across a broad front and are attempting to infiltrate Ukrainian positions in small groups. They periodically use motorcycles and quad bikes for assaults, Shevchenko said, adding that these vehicles are fast and maneuverable.

However, Russian forces should not expect to advance unimpeded, the spokesperson noted. Ukrainian units control Russian supply routes and systematically detect and strike Russian personnel and equipment while they are still moving toward their launch positions, she added.

“Specifically, speaking in numbers, since the beginning of October alone, units of the Southern Forces Grouping (Forces) have destroyed more than 3,000 occupiers and 1,300 pieces of weapons and military equipment. Thus, the enemy is suffering significant losses in the operational zone of the Southern Forces Grouping (Forces),” the spokesperson concluded.

Ukrainian drones disrupt Russian logistics

Russian forces had stopped using military vehicles because Ukraine’s unmanned systems forces controlled their logistics, Shevchenko said in comments to Ukrinform on 16 September. Ukrainian drones spotted Russian troops and equipment in time and struck them mostly on their routes of advance, she said.

Ukrainian air strikes destroyed bridges near Polohy in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, complicating Russian supply operations along the Huliaipole axis, Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps reported on 21 September. Russian forces had used these bridges to move personnel, heavy equipment, and ammunition for their offensive toward Orikhiv. Disruptions to logistics have forced Russian units to rely more on motorcycles, which are more vulnerable to Ukrainian strikes, the corps said.

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Ukraine timed its Huliaipole operation around the weather — and it worked. Here’s why that won’t happen again soon

Russian forces are also expected to use fog and rain as cover for assaults, Mykola Zinko, deputy commander of the unmanned systems battalion of the 5th Assault Brigade, said on 19 October. Russia has brought up reserves, and its heavy equipment will move out under the fog, he said.

Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) published a 3D model and parts list of Russia’s new Filin cruise missile on 22 October. The breakdown names the Russian companies behind the missile and the foreign makers of its electronics.

HUR runs its War&Sanctions portal to trace such parts back to their makers. Its stated aim is to “deprive the aggressors of the ability to produce weapons for terror,” the portal says. Meanwhile, Russia is betting on cheap, fast cruise missiles, Serhii Beskrestnov, a freelance adviser to the president on technology, told Radio NV in mid-September. Naming the Banderol, Dan-T, Dan-M, and Gerbera-5, he warned they would soon outrun Ukraine’s jet-powered interceptors, so Ukraine needed its own cheap missiles to shoot them down.

Composite body, ground launch

JSC NPO Molniya, part of Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation, builds the Filin, HUR said. The agency called it part of a Russian defense-industry trend toward cheap jet-powered, ground-launched air-attack weapons. Russia began firing it at Ukraine in late summer 2026.

HUR’s data puts the carbon and fiberglass fuselage at 3.5 m, with a 3 m wingspan. Some parts are 3D-printed. Russia claims a top speed of 800 km/h. The range is 600–1,200 km, and the missile flies at ultra-low altitude or up to 6 km. Versions carry 50-kg or 100-kg warheads. A solid-fuel booster fires it from a ground launcher.

A firm tied to a Shahed-type drone

PLAZ LLC makes the onboard equipment, HUR said. The firm also helps produce the Garpiya, a version of Russia’s Shahed-type Geran-2 drone. Filin and Garpiya units share a similar layout and markings. Guidance combines a Chinese-made inertial navigation system with a 16-channel Kometa anti-jamming module from Russia’s VNIIR-Progress.

The electronics resemble those in other Russian missiles and drones but carry a larger share of Chinese parts. Of 81 components, 35 are American and 22 Chinese. The engine, however, is Russian: an R500 turbojet from Reynolds LLC. A similar engine earlier turned up in the S-71K Kover aviation cruise missile and S-71M Monokhrom, HUR said.

For comparison, Ukraine found more than 20 foreign components in a different cheap missile, the Banderol, in May 2025. They included 10 US microchips, and the Banderol flies on a Chinese jet engine.

As of October, Russia has up to 700 ballistic and several thousand cruise missiles in reserve, and its 2026 state order for Geran-type drones and decoys such as the Gerbera exceeded 100,000 units, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) told NV in figures the outlet published on 20 October. The missile stocks are roughly the same as HUR reported to NV in July, the outlet found.

Ukraine enters the heating season facing what it says is a Russian plan to hit 60 infrastructure sites this winter. HUR’s figures suggest Russia has the weapons for it, even after its fall mass strikes. In June, HUR said Russia could fire up to 100 ballistic missiles a month while keeping its stocks steady. Its drone output, meanwhile, is shifting to jets that are harder to shoot down.

Russia produces 110 ballistic missiles a month

Russia can make more than 200 missiles a month, 110 of them ballistic, HUR said. About 115 of its ballistic missiles are Iskander-Ms, with production of up to 65 a month. A modernized Iskander with a projected range of 550 to 700 km is in development.

At the same time, Russia holds up to 400 S-300PM and S-400 air defense missiles adapted to strike ground targets, and makes about 40 a month. Meanwhile, Kinzhal production has been temporarily paused over poor accuracy, and the capacity has gone to conventional ballistic missiles.

Most new Kalibrs go into reserve

Russia plans to make more than 80 Kh-101 cruise missiles a month and is exceeding that, though defects in releasing them from aircraft have sent some batches back to the factories.

Russia has more than 450 Kalibrs and makes about 29 a month. Because Ukrainian air defense downs them effectively, Russia sends most new ones to its strategic reserve and to equip its fleets, HUR said. It also holds more than 600 Oniks anti-ship missiles, upgraded for ground strikes, and more than 120 Zircons.

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Ukraine recovers Russia’s undamaged Geran-3 jet kamikaze drone carrying camera and live-link equipment (VIDEO)

Russia now assembles 4,000 jet drones a month

Russia holds a reserve of about 6,200 Gerans and makes about 10,000 drones a month. Its main production hub is the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan.

Since summer, Russia has shifted toward turbojet drones. “The reason is the saturation of Ukraine’s Air Force with mobile fire groups that shoot down low-speed targets en masse,” HUR said. Russia now assembles about 4,000 jet drones a month, mostly Geran-4s and Geran-5s, which fly at 400 to 500 km/h. It also makes about 2,000 cheaper propeller-driven Geran-2s, which HUR said are used to wear down air defense and locate air defense positions.

In a direct confrontation with Russia, European NATO states would likely be even more vulnerable than Ukraine to swarms of Russia’s new jet-powered strike weapons, Fabian Hoffmann of the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (NIDS) argued in a 20 October op-ed for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He calls them low-cost cruise missiles. Just three days earlier, Romania met what it believes were two of them over the Black Sea.

Romanian F-16 fighter jets shot down two jet-powered Geran-family drones over Romania’s territorial waters on 17 October, the Defense Ministry said. Interim Defense Minister Radu Miruță said they flew at about 450 km/h and were likely Geran-4s, the first of that type Romania had downed.

Faster drones for a faster war

Russia began using the Geran-4 in May in response to effective Ukrainian interceptor drones, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) said, adding that it reaches up to 500 km/h. By June, those interceptors were downing about half of slower Shahed-type drones, defense adviser Serhii Beskrestnov estimated.

Hoffmann traces the shift to the Geran-3, a model Ukraine recovered intact in 2025. In his account, a Chinese JT80 turbojet roughly doubled its speed, from 185 to 350 km/h. However, he puts newer models, including the Geran-4, at 600 km/h or more, above HUR’s figure for that model.

By his estimate, each costs $150,000–$250,000, against about $50,000 for a long-range drone. Still, from Russia’s perspective, he wrote, that buys a significantly higher chance of getting through.

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Ukraine is testing four new drone interceptors as Russia floods its skies with faster Gerans 

Engines are the bottleneck

Hoffmann argues defenses must match the threat’s speed, for example with jet-powered interceptor drones. Ukraine already fields some. On 4 October, President Zelenskyy said its Bars interceptors had shown the highest percentage among Ukrainian interceptors, about 30% of targets, according to Militarnyi. One unit destroyed five aerial targets with five Bars interceptors, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara later told journalists. He also called aviation one of the most effective tools against jet drones.

Hoffmann’s concern is scale. Jet engines are in short supply, he wrote, because too few European and US suppliers can meet demand. Ukraine’s Defense Industry Council flagged a shortage of such engines for its drones in April. In his view, gun systems and higher-end missile defenses are too scarce or too costly to fill the gap.

Turkey’s ruling AKP party is reportedly seeking a mandate from Parliament to deploy troops to Saudi Arabia to protect it from attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen, thus fulfilling the mutual defense obligations of the treaty signed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan in August.

The post Report: Turkey Seeks Parliamentary Mandate for Sending Troops to Defend Saudi Arabia appeared first on Breitbart.

Ukraine continues to struggle with throttling of the speeds at which weapons using the vital satellite communications services provided by the SpaceX Starlink system can operate, and one weapons manufacturer tells us it is rethinking whether to rely on it in the future. As we have previously reported, heavy use of Starlink on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, including as a means of guiding one-way attackers in the air and at sea, has underscored potential risks of exclusive reliance on Elon Musk’s orbital communications networks in critical tactical tasks.

At issue are complaints by Ukrainian officials that “in various sectors of the front, the equipment ceases to function at speeds of 130–161 kilometers per hour.”

A limit on how fast Starlink terminals on vehicles can travel before the feed is cut off in certain areas impacts a slew of weapons and campaigns, especially strikes on Russian logistics behind enemy lines and in the sea of Asov, as well as the control of defensive interceptor drones critical for taking down Russian long-range one-way attack drones, like the notorious Shahed-136.

The following video shows one such Shahed interception.

The limiting of Starlink/Starshield occurred amid deteriorating relations between the Trump administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The latest chill between Washington and Kyiv was sparked by the American leader’s claims that Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure have reduced the supply of diesel fuel to the U.S. and other nations more than the conflict in the Middle East. Trump was upset Ukraine kept hitting these targets despite his demanding they stop.

Exacerbating this issue, Trump on Oct. 9 announced via his Truth Social platform that he had made a deal to purchase diesel from Russia, pivoting away from a years-old Western policy that placed massive economic pressure on Moscow.

Who gave the order to limit the speeds at which Ukrainian weapons using the Starlink/Starshield system operate is unclear.

“The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House,” Reuters reported last week, citing two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter. “The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed.”

“No such request was ever made by the president,” a U.S. official told us on Monday.

“There has been no change to Department of War policy regarding intelligence sharing or any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine,” a senior Pentagon official responded to our questions about whether the Pentagon imposed the limits and, if so, why.

When we pushed for a more specific response to the Starlink/Starshield concerns, the Pentagon declined comment. However, Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon did not order any changes and that Ukraine violated Starlink’s terms of services.

We reached out to SpaceX as well, but the company did not immediately respond. Last week, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, said that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately” Trump. Musk had previously refused Ukrainian requests to use Starlink against targets inside Russia.

The prohibition against using Starlink inside Russia has drastically limited Ukraine’s ability to strike dynamic targets like mobile ballistic missile launchers and hunt for drone launch sites. However, Ukraine has not had to rely on Starlink in its campaign against oil infrastructure or other fixed targets deep inside Russia which upset Trump in the first place.

Tuesday morning, Zelensky spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and again brought up Starlink/Starshield in addition to other major concerns.

“…the situation with Starlink/Starshield… needs to be restored,” Zelensky urged.

Rubio denied that any assistance was being withheld from Ukraine. Noting that Starlink “is a private company,” the secretary told reporters that Trump is “frustrated…because he doesn’t like to be blamed for things that aren’t true, including accusations that somehow he had ordered intelligence sharing to be cut off. And that’s not true; he’s said that repeatedly.”

This most recent flap isn’t the first time SpaceX and Musk have faced particularly significant criticism over limiting some Ukrainian use of the network. Actions SpaceX took earlier this year to block unregistered Starlink terminals also had major consequences for Russian forces, which were sent scrambling to find alternatives to fill the massive resulting communications gap.

Given the tenuous nature of Ukraine’s ability to use Starlink/Starshield, the Wild Hornets company is reevaluating whether to use the SpaceX system in future endeavors even though, so far, it has experienced few problems with it. Wild Hornets is a major Ukrainian combat drone maker. Among other weapons, it makes the Sting interceptors, designed to defend against Russian Shahed kamikaze drones.

The Starlink/Starshield issue isn’t affecting current operations, a Wild Hornets spokesman told us Tuesday morning. “Our own communications system provides the basic connection to our interceptors,” he said. “Plus, our technology for remote control of the interceptors can use various sources of internet connectivity. True, the military often uses Starlink for this, but in our case, the terminal doesn’t need to be moved at high speeds (it simply provides a connection between the command center and the ground station to which the interceptor is connected—it’s somewhat similar to cell towers).”

Concerns about the reduction in speeds at which Starlink terminals can operate has Wild Hornets thinking about ditching a future project, the spokesman told us.

“But we understand that there are other types of interceptors,” added the spokesman. “For example, some drones carry a terminal on board and need to fly at high speed with it. In such cases, Starlink’s limitations make their operation impossible. From this point of view, it also makes us rethink some of the projects we’re currently working on. For example, launching interceptors from aerial platforms.”

“We’re keeping an eye on the situation,” the spokesman continued. “For our current operations (connections with ground stations), we can use any source of stable internet connectivity. Therefore, various solutions are possible in different locations. However, for these needs, everything is operating normally with Starlink at the moment. As for our plans with new projects, we don’t have a clear decision yet, but we will be testing alternatives.”

The spokesman declined to provide further details about what “alternatives” could look like.

There are a number of ways the lack of Starlink for extended-range drone operations could be mitigated to a degree, but the persistent, reliable, high-bandwidth and compact capability SpaceX provides has no direct alternative at this time. The use of drones that work as line-of-sight relays, which can be daisy chained together electronically with other airborne relays, with a connection spanning dozens or even hundreds of miles to a ground entry point is possible. You can read about this concept here. The use of swarms of balloons to create an active network over a battlespace and using Starlink on those slower moving platforms to relay line-of-sight connections to multiple drones below is another possibility. You can read more about this concept here. But we must stress again, nothing can fully replace Starlink/Starshield and its seamless beyond line-of-sight communications architecture at this time.

“I believe, in any case, depending on a single solution is very risky,” the Wild Hornets spokesman proffered. “Especially if you don’t have full control over it. Especially when it comes to something as critical on the battlefield as communications. That’s exactly why our ecosystem is built around our own communications technology and basically is open to various solutions when it comes to internet connectivity.”

As far as military units are concerned, the commander of the Georgian Legion told us that his forces have been affected by issues with Starlink/Starshield even though the main concerns have been about the speeds at which weapons can travel and still have connectivity. The Georgian Legion is fighting in the heavily contested Kramatorsk region of eastern Ukraine.

“We use Starlink a lot because, in this war, reliable communication is essential,” Mamuka Mamulashvili told us. “It helps us stay connected when everything around us is changing. Of course, we’ve learned not to rely on just one system. There are alternatives, like mobile internet, fiber-optic connections, radio and other satellite systems such as OneWeb. But honestly, none of them can fully replace Starlink in Ukraine right now.”

“The problems were not limited to the speed restriction of approximately 160 km/h,” the Georgian Legion commander pointed out. “Starlink connectivity itself was also intermittent, repeatedly switching on and off. This caused communication disruptions across various drone systems, not just those operating at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. As a result, the impact was broader than the restriction on high-speed interceptor drones. Intermittent connectivity created problems for drone control and communications across multiple systems, affecting their reliability and the ability to carry out missions as intended.”

“We had serious communication problems,” Mamulashvili explained. “At one point, our drone operators were struggling to maintain a reliable connection with the drone systems, which disrupted coordination and made it difficult to carry out missions as planned. When you lose the connection between the operator and the drone, you can lose control of the situation in seconds. We managed to adapt, but it definitely affected our work.”

“We have to adapt and find solutions, as we always do,” the commander said. “This war teaches you one thing every day. You can’t depend on a single technology or expect someone else to solve all your problems. You have to be ready for anything and keep moving forward.”

Russian sources, meanwhile, are gloating over the speed limits placed on weapons using Starlink/Starshield, particularly how it is affecting Ukraine’s mid-range drone attacks that have crippled Russian logistics. As we explained in a previous report, Ukrainian units have relied on the SpaceX system to help extend the range of their drones to reach as far as 150 miles into Russian-occupied territory. The SpaceX system is not used to hit targets inside Russia proper.

The following video shows some of these mid-range attacks.

“Disabling or slowing down Starlink has significantly reduced the enemy’s ability to launch medium-range drone strikes along the ‘Novorossiya’ highway,” influential Russian milblogger Vladimir Romanov reported. The highway, also known as the R-280, is a key link between cities in occupied southern Ukraine and the occupied Crimean peninsula. The road has been a frequent target of Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign.

“The success of these strikes depends on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ access to American satellite communication,” Romanov noted. “For the past six months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been attacking civilian transport – trucks, cars, and buses – exclusively through the use of ‘Starshield.’ This means that, for the past six months, American military satellite infrastructure has been used to carry out terrorist acts against Russian civilians, and so on. In other words, the United States is still directly involved in the war with Russia!”

As for how widespread worries among Ukrainian weapons manufacturers are, the Wild Hornets spokesman suggested that his company is not alone. He said he has spoken with other companies relying much more heavily on Starlink/Starshield who have expressed concerns. He pointed to growing interest in the European Eutelsat satellite constellation as an example of companies seeking options, but noted that “of course, creating something like Starlink won’t be easy.”

We’ve reached out to the Ukrainian Brave1 defense technology incubator and the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries (NAUDI) for additional insights into how this issue is affecting Ukraine’s defense manufacturing base.

It will be interesting to see if other Ukrainian weapons companies also consider scrapping plans to rely on Starlink in the future and what architectures will emerge at least as a backstop to it.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post Major Ukrainian Arms Maker Rethinking Future Reliance On Starlink appeared first on TWZ.

Russia's latest jet-propelled Geran-4 and Geran-5 one-way attack drones fly at 500 km/h or more, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2.

That's too fast for many of Ukraine's air defenses. In particular, the inexpensive interceptor drones that Ukrainian forces deploy by the thousand.

Russia launched more than 2,700 jet Gerans at Ukraine in September, and Ukraine is shooting down only about 55% of them, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The speed disparity is a big part of the problem.

Ukrainian forces are scrambling for new defenses against the speedy Gerans. Among the best is actually a Ukrainian take on the Geran-4 and Geran-5: a fast, jet-propelled one-way attack drone that the Ukrainians have modified for air-to-air use.

Against jet drones, the air-to-air Bars have a hit rate of around 30%, Zelensky said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Kyiv on 4 October. "The Bars have shown positive results," Zelensky said. "They currently have the highest percentage. Others are also catching up."

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Did Ukraine just unleash its first Bars cruise missiles? A 500 km strike deep inside Russia suggests it

In July, Ukraine and Germany agreed to jointly produce Bars, with Germany financing the first phase. Ukraine has reportedly been launching Bars at targets on the ground since at least the summer of 2025. But it was only recently that clear photos and videos of the drones have circulated.

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade released footage of one jet drone hunting another. Observers identified the interceptor as a Bars and its target as a Geran-5. After launching from an elevated ramp with help from a rocket booster, the drone's operator—seeing what the drone saw through a front-facing infrared camera—steered the drone toward the Russian drone, possibly destroying it.

Exactly how the operator controlled the Bars—whether by satellite or mesh radio or some other command and control system—is unclear. Equally unclear: what kind of warhead a Bars would employ in the air-to-air role. Many smaller interceptor drones lack warheads. Instead, they simply slam directly into their targets, wrecking them in the collision.

Mystery drone

Bars isn't small. It likely packs an explosive warhead. Potentially one that the operator can remotely trigger when the interceptor passes near its target.

Bars is adaptable. Its maker has reworked it from a 22-kg warhead and a 700-km range to a 60-kg warhead and a stated range of more than 1,000 km, and a heavier variant can carry a 105-kg warhead.

In the air-to-air interceptor role, long range is terribly important but speed is everything. There's an obvious way for the Ukrainians to boost the Bars' speed from its reported 700 km/h top speed to potentially even faster. They could shrink the drone's warhead and its fuel load, making it lighter in order to make it faster.

That may explain how a Bars can chase down a Geran-5 even as the Russians, by one Ukrainian analyst's estimate, try to push the Geran-5 toward 700 km/h or more.

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Turkey’s Korkut guns now shoot down Russian drones over Ukraine. Almost half of the jet-powered Shaheds still get through

Cost is important, too. Russia churns out Gerans for an estimated $100,000 or so per drone. The cheaper the drone, the more copies the Russians can fling at Ukrainian cities. If it takes three or more interceptor drones to take down each of those 2,700 jet Gerans, Ukraine may need to deploy 8,000 to 10,000 interceptors a month.

Ukraine already builds more than 2,000 Bars a month, its maker says, but mostly in strike versions. How many go to air defense, and how much each costs, isn't public.

The supply of small jet engines could be a constraint. “Engines are a key element; we really import them in large quantities,” Zelensky said in an interview with Financial Times. "There are also domestically produced engines, but there are not enough of them.” A Ukrainian-made engine for Bars passed final tests in September.

Key developments on Oct. 21:

• Zelensky supports resuming trilateral peace talks with US, Russia after Putin claims Kremlin readiness
• 'Everything was in ruins' — At least 2 killed, 2 injured in Russian drone attack on Kyiv
• Russian Su-30 fighter jet crashes in Kaliningrad Oblast during training exercises, Moscow

Intercepting a jet-powered Geran can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4 million depending on the weapon used. Cheap interceptor drones are the only option that keeps air defense affordable, the foundation of Ukrainian top war volunteer Serhii Sternenko said on Telegram.

Russia’s jet Gerans now carry every characteristic of a small cruise missile, and Russians keep raising their speed in answer to each Ukrainian countermeasure. Former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi has framed the shift bluntly: an expensive Cold War missile has become a cheap weapon fired in bulk, and the drone is now “a missile in all but name,” affordable to any side, not only wealthy countries.

Sternenko heads a charitable foundation that has purchased 291,502 FPV drones, which have helped Ukraine’s military down more than 12,954 aerial targets. Also, has advised the team of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Three ways to kill a jet Geran, and what each costs

The foundation laid out the price of each method:

• Aircraft (F-16, MiG-29, Su-27, Mirage 2000): $25,000 to $1.2 million per kill. Effective, but the stock of missiles is critically low, and some air-to-air types are no longer being replenished.
• Surface-to-air and shoulder-fired systems (IRIS-T, NASAMS, Vampire, Avenger): about $30,000 to $4 million. Good for shielding key sites, but a missile capable of reaching a jet Geran at 6 to 7 kilometers costs $0.5 million to $4 million.
• Interceptor drones (makers undisclosed): from $2,000. Cheap, with trained operators ready, but not yet scalable.

Why the cheapest option is the one that matters

No single tool is enough, the foundation stresses. Downing jet Gerans still needs aircraft, small aviation and missile systems together, but it is the interceptors that make the defense affordable, taking out the cheaper Shaheds and saving costly missiles for targets nothing else can reach.

The foundation says it has found a way to counter drones that already match small cruise missiles, working with Ukrainian manufacturers, without disclosing details. The method is far cheaper than other ways of downing jet Gerans and significantly strengthens air defense, it says, as part of a wider Ukrainian push to field interceptor drones fast enough to catch Russia’s fastest weapons.

The commander of an interceptor battalion in Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps said his unit destroyed several thousand Russian aerial targets during Operation Vivaldi, ArmyInform, the Defense Ministry’s news agency, reported on 21 October.

Operation Vivaldi is a Ukrainian counteroffensive north of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, where the 3rd Army Corps has reported liberating settlements. In its third phase, Ukrainian forces reclaimed five settlements and expanded their gains to 176 square kilometers. Strikes on Russian logistics and electronic warfare likely neutralized Russia’s drone defenses before Ukraine sent in armor, the Institute for the Study of War assessed.

The commander, who uses the callsign “Betsyk,” leads the interceptor battalion of the 1030th Anti-Aircraft Missile-Artillery Regiment “Aquila,” part of the 3rd Army Corps. He said Russian forces deployed large numbers of reconnaissance drones to locate Ukrainian positions after the corps began advancing.

Betsyk named Zala, Orlan, Supercam, Merlin, and Knyaz Veshchiy Oleg among the reconnaissance drones used by Russian forces.

Russia also brought in reinforcements and units operating strike drones, including first-person-view (FPV) quadcopters, Molniya fixed-wing FPV drones, and Lancet crews, he said. At one stage, Russian forces deployed crews from their Rubicon drone unit to disrupt the advance, but the move did not change the situation.

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Ukraine retook Kolodiazi north of Lyman as its drones hit 200-plus Russian vehicles in Operation Vivaldi’s last phase, Ukrainian drone officer says

Betsyk said his battalion’s work deprived Russian forces of the ability to strike Ukrainian troops and track their movements.

Jet-powered Shaheds: speed is the main challenge

The regiment also works against Russian strike drones heading for targets behind the front line. Betsyk said interceptor crews had destroyed some jet-powered drones, but not in significant numbers.

The main difficulty is speed, he said. Interceptor drones need to reach 500–600 km/h to intercept Russian jet-powered attack drones, according to Betsyk.

For now, the regiment mainly uses conventional air-defense systems against these targets: self-propelled anti-aircraft systems, surface-to-air missile systems, and portable surface-to-air missile systems. Betsyk said these systems were historically designed to engage jet-powered targets.

He compared the current challenge with the early use of piston-powered Shaheds. Those drones initially posed a serious threat but later became easier for Ukrainian air defenses to counter. Russia has largely stopped using piston-powered Shaheds on most fronts since summer, he said, but continues to use piston-powered Gerbera drones, which are relatively cheap and can partly exhaust Ukrainian air defenses. The main drones Russian forces use now are jet-powered Shaheds, he said.

Betsyk expects Russian forces to adapt if Ukraine fields effective interceptors against jet-powered drones. They will seek ways to evade the interceptors, increase speed, improve navigation, and change their tactics, he said. However, he added that the battalion had not observed a major evolution so far and did not expect the drones’ speed to double.

What the corps says Vivaldi achieved

Separately, 3rd Army Corps commander Andrii Biletskyi said Ukrainian forces retook 277 square kilometers and 16 settlements during Operation Vivaldi, Ukrainska Pravda reported. Biletskyi also said Russian losses exceeded 8,000 personnel, according to ArmyInform. These figures are Ukrainian claims and have not been independently verified.

At a training with the Ukrainian National Guard’s Omega unit, engineers from the defense tech company BlueBird Tech describe how to use their net gun, named Chipa, to entangle an approaching drone’s propellers.

The soldiers rehearse encounters with approaching first-person-view (FPV) drones, monitoring a handheld detector

Ukrainian drone maker Wild Hornets is rethinking projects it is currently working on, including launching interceptors from aerial platforms, because of limits on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet. Spokesman Mike Orliuk told The War Zone (TWZ) this on 20 October. The company builds Sting interceptors, which it says destroyed over 15,000 Shaheds and Gerberas, a cheaper Shahed lookalike, in a year. Orliuk said Sting’s current operations are unaffected.

The stakes rise as Russia shifts to faster drones. Ukrainian defense technology adviser Serhii Beskrestnov counted more than 2,500 jet-powered Gerans, Russia’s version of the Shahed, in August. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 16 October that these drones fly faster than 400 km/h. He added that some Ukrainian interceptors chasing them work through Starlink. When the link was slowed, Ukraine could not intercept some of them, he said.

How Sting stays connected

“Our own communications system provides the basic connection to our interceptors,” Orliuk said. The company’s remote-control technology can draw on various internet sources, he added, though the military often uses Starlink. Even then, the terminal does not need to move at high speed. It only links the command center to a ground station, which Orliuk compared to a cell tower.

“For these needs, everything is operating normally with Starlink at the moment,” he said.

An air-launch project under review

“Some drones carry a terminal on board and need to fly at high speed with it,” Orliuk said. “In such cases, Starlink’s limitations make their operation impossible.”

That is why the company is rethinking the air-launch project. Wild Hornets has made no clear decision yet but will test alternatives, Orliuk said. He declined to describe them.

“I believe, in any case, depending on a single solution is very risky,” he said.

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Musk pointed at the US military over Ukraine’s satellite limits. Now a US official says the administration had nothing to do with them

Other firms share the concern

Orliuk said he has spoken with other companies that rely far more on Starlink and have expressed concerns. He pointed to growing interest in Europe’s Eutelsat network, though “creating something like Starlink won’t be easy.”

Who ordered the slowdown remains unclear. The order to slow Ukraine’s Starshield service came from inside the White House, two US officials and a Western official said. A US official told TWZ the president never made such a request. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 17 October that the slowdown had “nothing to do with the White House” and called “a report on that” “categorically false,” without saying which report he meant.

Elon Musk ordered the speed cap on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink network that Ukraine’s drones rely on, The Wall Street Journal reported on 20 October. Earlier, Musk said that such limits are decided by the US military and “ultimately POTUS.” Speaking to reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on 20 October, according to WSJ, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We haven’t made any directives or anything like that,” CBS News reported.

For a week, no one with a hand on the system said the decision was theirs. Musk pointed to the US military and the president, and Trump said he did not know who it was. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the cap has hampered the drones they use to intercept Russian Shaheds and to strike Russian forces in occupied territory. Kyiv says the cap remains in place, and at about 160 km/h it makes intercepting jet-powered drones and missiles that fly about twice as fast virtually impossible.

Musk spoke with administration officials, including Trump, before the cap, a source says

Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the network, people familiar with the matter told WSJ. The slowdown, which began on 14 October, left some of Ukraine’s strike and interceptor drones virtually useless, WSJ said.

WSJ’s sources differ on Trump’s role. Some US officials said Musk acted on his own and that Trump did not specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. One person said Musk spoke with several senior administration officials, Trump among them, before imposing the cap. Two people said Musk and Trump discussed the decision by phone soon after the slowdown became public.

During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts. They asked for a shared message that the company and the administration had coordinated before Musk’s directive, the people said. The White House ran an informal inquiry into who ordered the slowdown, WSJ said.

Musk held several conversations with administration officials before the order to understand the president’s thinking, CBS reported, citing sources. He dislikes his company being seen as profiting from the war, and it is unclear how his order was carried out, CBS said.

Hegseth points to Starlink’s terms of service

Hegseth said the US had not pulled anything back. He said Starlink “has the option” to make decisions under its terms of service, and that from the Pentagon’s view nothing had changed, CBS reported.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on 16 October, Trump said he did not think either he or Musk was responsible, The Telegraph reported. On 19 October, he said, “I don’t know who it was, but I’d like to find out.”

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate whether officials “directed” or “authorized” changes to Starlink and Starshield services and intelligence sharing affecting Ukraine.

Earlier reports pointed at the White House

On 15 October, Reuters reported that the order came from inside the White House. The officials said Pentagon leaders received a message that the Starshield service for Ukraine’s military needed to be slowed, but did not say who made the decision or who carried it out. A senior US official said “No such request was ever made by the president.”

On 16 October, The Telegraph reported, citing four sources, that Musk approached Trump with the idea of the speed limits. One of the sources said Trump agreed.

Analysts and Kyiv say the cap is still in place

Michael Kofman, a war analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said, according to WSJ, that Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones remain limited to 160 km/h. He said actual connections run below 130 km/h, which still hampers strikes and air defense.

On 20 October, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Kyiv was still waiting for answers from the Pentagon and SpaceX, WSJ reported.

Russian drones struck a 24-story apartment building in Kyiv, a university building in Kremenchuk, warehouses, and hypermarkets overnight on 21 October, killing two people in the capital and an elderly couple near Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. The attack went well beyond Ukraine’s power grid, hitting places where people live, study, and shop. Over the past day, Russian strikes also killed three more civilians and injured dozens across several oblasts.

Russia has kept up nightly drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities through the autumn, mostly aimed at the energy system. It struck Ukraine’s energy 76 times during a US-declared truce, and fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid three days after Washington announced it. This time the targets also included homes, a university, warehouses, and shops.

Overnight, Russia launched 186 Shahed-type and other attack drones, 88 of them jet-powered, along with Iskander-K cruise missiles, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Air defenses downed or jammed 150 drones. Hits were recorded at 27 locations, and debris fell at 13 more.

Two killed on the 20th floor in Kyiv

A drone hit a 24-story residential building in Kyiv’s Sviatoshynskyi district at the level of the 20th floor, starting a fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The fire spread over about 70 square meters, and rescuers found the bodies of two people while clearing debris, the State Emergency Service said. Two people were injured and hospitalized, Klitschko said, including a 46-year-old man who was walking past the building, according to the police.

In the Desnianskyi district, seven parked cars caught fire, the State Emergency Service said; police put the number at about 10. The evening before, drones hit a warehouse building in Desnianskyi and a transport facility in Solomianskyi district.

An elderly couple killed near Kharkiv

In the village of Korotych near Kharkiv, Russian drones killed an 81-year-old woman and an 83-year-old man, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Rescuers recovered their bodies from the rubble of their house, the State Emergency Service said. Eleven people, including a two-month-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, were treated for acute stress, and 13 houses were damaged.

A university, warehouses, and hypermarkets

In Kremenchuk, a drone hit a building of the Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University, setting it on fire, the State Emergency Service said. Three people were injured, including a 16-year-old who was hospitalized with a concussion, Poltava Oblast Governor Vitalii Diakivnych said. In the Poltava community, drones damaged an administrative building and warehouses.

In Lviv Oblast, an attack set fire to an enterprise in a village in Lviv district and injured two people, while a house was damaged in a neighboring village, the State Emergency Service said. In Uman, drones hit a hypermarket and damaged a hotel, injuring one person, Cherkasy Oblast Governor Ihor Taburets said.

On the evening of 20 October, a drone hit an Epicentr hypermarket in Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast, injuring eight people, acting Governor Heorhii Reshetilov said. Russia also struck a hypermarket in Rivne Oblast several times that day, injuring four and forcing rescuers to pull back while they fought the fire, the State Emergency Service said.

More dead and injured over the past day

The overnight strikes followed a day of attacks. In Kyiv, Russian strikes on 20 October killed one person and injured 21, three of them seriously, Klitschko said. An administrative building caught fire, rescuers freed four people trapped on its upper floors, and a healthcare facility was damaged, the State Emergency Service said. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, two men were killed and seven people injured that day, regional officials said.

In Kharkiv Oblast, Russian attacks over the past day injured 11 more people in Kharkiv, Derhachi, and Shestakove, Syniehubov said. In Kherson Oblast, 13 people were injured, three of them children, the regional administration reported. In the Chernihiv region, an 89-year-old woman and a young woman were hurt in strikes on villages and on Novhorod-Siverskyi, Governor Viacheslav Chaus said, and a 21-year-old woman was injured in the Sumy community, according to the Sumy regional administration.

More than 5,000 subscribers lost power in Volyn Oblast’s Lutsk district, Governor Roman Romaniuk said. In Ternopil Oblast’s Kremenets district, 7,949 subscribers remained without power after earlier Russian strikes on energy facilities, the regional administration reported.

A city stretches out beneath the lens of a Russian drone. Roads, apartment blocks, parks, and office buildings come into view as the weapon closes in on its target.

Footage like this has become all too familiar over the course of Russia's full-scale war, usually captured by small

The organizers of the Future Investment Initiative (FII), a major investment conference held in Saudi Arabia every year, announced on Monday that the event would be postponed from October 26-29 to an unspecified date in 2027.

The post Saudi Arabia Postpones Major Investment Conference After Houthi Attacks appeared first on Breitbart.

Ukrainians can now check a free live map of where Russian attack targets are flying, a Ukrainian air-threat monitoring project called monitor announced on X on 13 October. The beta pulls public reports of drones in flight into a single view and lays them over official air raid alerts.

Russia now flies jet-powered drones, and some switch off their engines before an attack and glide in. Over a hundred drones can arrive in one night. Yet since September, drone-only yellow alerts in some Oblasts no longer shut everything down. So during drone alerts, some Ukrainians now stay at their desks rather than in shelters. The new maps offers them a quick look at the sky from a phone, even on a weak signal.

What the map shows

The launch post described the service as one that tries to show where each target is, using open sources and algorithmic processing. It said the beta focuses on drones, with other targets to follow.

The drone data does not come from radar. The service draws on regional Telegram channels that post where drones and missiles are flying over their own oblasts. It cross-checks those posts to estimate what each target is, roughly where it is, and where it is heading, the project explains. The same page already lists cruise and ballistic missiles among the targets. It also says the map is free, ad-free, and needs no registration, and that it runs in a browser or on Telegram, designed to work on a phone with a weak signal.

A target log lists each drone’s district and course. Alert data comes from alerts.in.ua, and areas under alert turn red or yellow. The map refreshes about every 20 seconds while targets are airborne.

However, the developers warn that the dots are only estimates and show up late. Some targets slip through untracked. That is why “an empty map does not mean you are safe,” they wrote. When sirens sound, they urge people to rely on official signals and take shelter.

On 17 October, the Defense Ministry said that Ukraine’s Air Alert app now maps the approximate position and heading of some targets. These include cruise missiles, Banderol drone-launched missiles, and Shahed-type drones. The data comes straight from the Air Force over secure channels.

For security reasons, it carries no exact coordinates or real-time tracking and may lag. Ballistic missiles and anything faster than 2,000 km/h don’t appear at all. The ministry’s advice matches monitor’s: get to a shelter first, then check the map from there.

• Ukrainian forces said Monday that they pulled off a "first-ever" air evacuation using a heavy drone.
• Deploying large aerial drones for battlefield casualty evacuation is a high-risk operation.
• A Ukrainian official involved in the development of such drones called them a last-resort tool.

Several Ukrainian companies have developed heavy-lift drones that can evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield, but the risks mean they should be used only as a last resort, an official involved in these efforts told Business Insider.

Denys Lohvynenko, the drone chief at Brave1, Ukraine's state-backed innovation platform, said that heavy-lift drones provide a time-sensitive means of rescuing wounded troops in highly dangerous situations where they cannot walk on their own and other evacuation methods are unavailable.

Ukraine began developing heavy-lift drones two years ago, but the complex technical requirements took time to iron out.

On Monday, a Ukrainian military unit said that it had used a heavy drone to save a wounded soldier from the front lines, carrying out what it described as a "first-ever air evacuation."

The presence of land mines and Russian drones rendered the use of ground robots — for Kyiv, an increasingly common method of casualty evacuation — too challenging.

"In these situations, heavy-lift aerial evacuation serves as a lifeline of last resort," Lohvynenko explained in remarks shared by Brave1, which has supported the development of these drones and other war technology.

Ukraine's 92nd Separate Assault Brigade said Monday that soldiers used a six-rotor hexacopter made by the Ukrainian company Gurzuf Defense to carry out the mission. Other defense companies are working on similar technology; SkyFall, for instance, recently unveiled its own hexacopter for evacuations.

Ukrainian forces also use heavy-lift drones for logistics missions, as they can typically carry more cargo than smaller variants.

A challenge is that big drones are big targets. Samuel Bendett, a drone warfare expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a US research organization, told Business Insider on Monday that certain elite Russian military units are focused on downing such aircraft.

Lohvynenko said Ukraine understands the risk of using large drones in and around contested airspace, as is the case along most of the front lines. So they are "reserved only for high-risk, high-priority emergencies," he said.

The heavy-lift drones have also been equipped with what he described as "additional survivability systems," including electronic warfare and alternative communications. Active protection systems could be installed in the future.

"We maintain a realistic view of the technological and operational challenges associated with aerial extraction of personnel via heavy-lift drones," Lohvynenko said.

"However, establishing this technical capability is essential," he continued, arguing that a "single life saved on the battlefield justifies every engineering hour and resource invested in this program."

Combat casualty evacuation has become increasingly robotic for Ukraine as the country's officials, companies, and military units look to replace soldiers with machines in dangerous front-line missions wherever possible.

Ground robots, in particular, are seen as crucial tools for casualty evacuation and logistics. Ukraine's defense ministry said last month that the number of these kinds of missions carried out by robots has jumped more than threefold since January.

The deployment of a heavy-lift drone for an evacuation, an unusual mission, underscores Ukraine's growing efforts to use uncrewed systems in unconventional battlefield roles.

Rumania ha puesto fin a una crisis política que se prolongaba desde el pasado 5 de mayo cuando el Gobierno del liberal Ilie Bolojan cayó tras una moción de censura impulsada por el Partido Social Demócrata (PSD) y la ultraderecha de Alianza para la Unión de los Rumanos (AUR), al investir este martes a Luca Niculescu como nuevo primer ministro después de tres intentos fallidos. El diplomático logró articular una mayoría suficiente al sumar 280 votos a favor y 58 en contra en el Parlamento, gracias al respaldo de los socialdemócratas, el Partido Nacional Liberal (PNL) y la Unión Democrática de Húngaros en Rumanía (UDMR). Por el contrario, la Unión Salvar Rumanía (USR), de centro derecha, y las facciones ultranacionalistas se han opuesto.

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