Kyiv is bolting two Soviet-era missile systems together to knock down Russia's fastest Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones. Ukraine's 156th Maksym Kryvonis Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment has downed about 20 air targets using a Kub launcher firing under the radar and fire control of a Buk unit.

Russia has switched to jet-powered Gerans, faster drones that Ukraine's cheap interceptors struggle to catch, so more of them reach their targets. The damage from Russian strikes is set to reach up to $10 billion this year, according to Ukraine's Economy Ministry.

Meanwhile, Western resupply has thinned too. Deliveries of air defense missiles from partners fell threefold in the first half of 2026 against 2025, even though those partners hold the missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.

So crews stretch what they have. In the Kub-Buk hybrid, a Kub launcher cannot aim on its own, lacking a radar to light up a target for its missile, according to Militarnyi. A Buk has that radar, so the two fire together, the Kub sending its 3M9 missile where the Buk points. The pairing is possible because both come from the same Soviet design line.

Western missiles in Soviet launchers

The same regiment reaches for a second workaround as Buk missiles run short. Its crews have rewired launchers to fire American RIM-7 interceptors, a Soviet-Western mongrel that troops nicknamed Frankenstein and the US calls FrankenSAM.

The patchwork earns its keep. One crew commander said some of these machines have more than 34 air kills each, and a single launcher has sent up RIM-7s 131 times, Ukrainian troops said.

A layered answer

The hybrids are one thread in a wider web. Ukraine is stitching together a layered defense against the jet-powered Gerans, leaning on electronic jamming, fighter jets, and a new class of homegrown interceptor drones. Each tool has limits, and the newest interceptors still bring down only the occasional jet drone.

The bet now is on numbers. Ukraine aims to build up to 400 interceptor drones a month by the end of October to chase the faster Gerans, Zelenskyy said on 2 October. Until that scale arrives, improvised launchers like the 156th Regiment keep filling the gap.

Russia's jet-powered attack drones could eventually reach 800–900 km/h, and intercepting them will demand new piloting skills—so Ukraine has asked the makers of its interceptor drones to build simulators to train the crews, a senior Air Force officer told a parliamentary commission on 6 October, Suspilne reported.

Russia keeps modifying its jet Shaheds faster than Ukraine can field the drones meant to catch them, and Kyiv is now preparing crews for speeds its interceptors have never faced—a sign the air war is shifting from a contest of volume to one of raw speed.

The speed Russia hasn't reached yet

Colonel Yurii Cherevashenko, deputy commander of Ukraine's Air Force, told the commission that Russia's jet drones fly at around 600 km/h today but could eventually reach 800–900 km/h—speeds he said have not been recorded so far. That range sits near the cruising speed of a commercial airliner.

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Intercepting such targets will take specific piloting skills, Cherevashenko said. When an interceptor and its target move at roughly the same speed, he noted, the pilot barely perceives the difference in their speeds. To train for that, Ukrainian interceptor-drone makers have been tasked with building simulators where crews can practice against high-speed targets.

Where Ukraine stands now

Ukraine already downs 85% to 90% of Russia's slower, propeller-driven drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, but the jet models remain a tougher problem—Ukrainian interceptors scored their reportedly first kill of a jet-powered Shahed in November 2025. In a 28 September evening address, Zelenskyy put the jet-drone interception rate at about 57%, lower than required. Days later, he said Ukraine is testing five interceptor-drone models and could be producing about 400 of one of them by the end of October. Asked when jet-drone interceptors would arrive at the scale needed, Cherevashenko answered: "Not before the end of November."