Weekly review, week to 25 October 2026

The week in three paragraphs

The main story of the week was not the front line but the aerospace and communications layer. Ukraine carried out one of the largest long-range attacks of the war on St. Petersburg at a distance of about 1000 km and paralyzed the Moscow air hub with cheap balloons carrying drones. Russia, in response, completed the shift of its strike campaign from piston-engined Shaheds to jet drones and cheap cruise missiles — this qualitatively changes the requirements for Ukrainian air defense.

The technological turning point of the week is twofold. First, satellite communications have definitively become a political lever: imposing and then lifting the Starlink/Starshield speed limit by a single decision switched off Ukrainian long-range unmanned aviation for several days. Second, the interceptor race has run up against speed: against jet targets at 600–800 km/h the old propeller-driven means no longer work, and both sides are feverishly searching for a cheap high-speed answer.

Next, we expect two things. Russia will build up a family of cheap cruise missiles with a speed threshold of 800–900 km/h, which current Ukrainian interceptors cannot handle. Ukraine and Europe will urgently build backup communication and navigation channels that do not depend on a single private operator — from tropospheric communications to sovereign low-orbit constellations.

Key structural shifts

The Russian strike campaign has changed its physics: the mass flow has shifted from piston drones to jet vehicles and cheap cruise missiles. According to Ukrainian intelligence estimates, Russia produces about 4 thousand jet drones a month versus roughly 2 thousand piston-engined Geran-2s (Shahed-136) source. This is not a quantitative but a qualitative shift: jet targets fly at 300–800 km/h and can no longer be intercepted by helicopters and slow propeller-driven drones. The gap is visible in the statistics of a single night: Ukrainian air defense achieved 94% against piston targets, 79% against jet targets, and 0% against ballistic missiles source.

Satellite communications have turned from a technical rear area into the main political lever of the year. Because of Starlink/Starshield restrictions, the AFU had to suspend drone attacks for three days: according to the New York Times, a million dollars' worth of drones were lost source. Elon Musk publicly took responsibility for the restriction, explaining it by the "offensive" use of civilian Starlink source. The lifting also came politically — after a call from Trump to Musk source. A parallel indicator: eight days without Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries against the backdrop of restored communications look like a tacit trade-off source.

The unevenness of Russian rear-area air defense has been exposed across the full depth of the territory. The strike on St. Petersburg showed that Moscow has at least 98 towers for Pantsirs, while the country's second city has only two source. The strike on Omsk went through with no opposition at all — according to Russian channels, "not a single shot, not a single interceptor" source. The cost to civil aviation is measurable: over eight months of 2026 Russian airports were closed 2860 times, 4.5 times more often than a year earlier source. Protection of government facilities is beginning to be shifted onto private business through tax deductions, passive cages over data centers and private fire teams.

Technology dynamics and trends

The niche between a cheap drone and an expensive cruise missile has been filled by a whole family of Russian products, and this is a deliberate industrial choice. The main novelty is the Filin small cruise missile; according to Ukraine's HUR, it has a speed of up to 800 km/h, a range of up to 1200 km, a 50 or 100 kg warhead, and flies from ultra-low altitudes up to 6 km source. [TECH] The main elements are 3D-printed, the engine is Russian. Guidance is handled by a Chinese navigation system and a 16-channel Kometa, and the electronics contain 35 American and 22 Chinese components source. The logic of the shift is well described by a Russian engineering channel: aluminum internal combustion engines for drones are made in the tens of millions per year and scale easily, whereas turbojet engines made of heat-resistant alloys are produced worldwide in the hundreds, so the transition to jet propulsion cuts off players without a serious industrial base while preserving mass for air defense saturation tactics source.

The Geran-5 has stopped being a drone and has become a full-fledged cruise missile. The K5-K modification uses a fuselage typical of cruise missiles, optical navigation has been added, and range, speed and altitude have increased source. Optical navigation reduces dependence on satellites and therefore the effectiveness of Ukrainian EW along the route. For one of the two new missiles, probably developments of the Geran-5, the developers are seeking a speed of 900 km/h — already the level of the classic Kh-101 source. A side effect for the defense: visually distinguishing the Banderol, Dan, Filin and probable Geran-5 derivatives from one another is becoming practically impossible, and uncertainty in target classification is growing for mobile fire teams and radars.

Against jet targets, a whole line of cheap high-speed interceptors took shape over the week — but the threshold speed remains unconquered. The Ukrainian F-Jet 80 from F-Drones is offered for about 7 thousand dollars, four to ten times cheaper than competitors, with claimed combat interceptions source. The Lithuanian turbojet-powered X-12, according to its developers, reaches up to 700 km/h at a range of 126 km; according to SDA representative Savickas, it contains not a single Chinese part, and the engines were assembled in Lithuania source. Germany will finance the production in Ukraine of tens of thousands of Quantum Systems interceptors; its Apex Recordhunter demonstrator accelerated to 777 km/h in 27 seconds on electric propulsion source. The most effective Ukrainian means remains the Bars — a jet vehicle converted from a strike platform, but even its interception share is estimated at about 30% source. The 800–900 km/h threshold toward which Russian products are heading is beyond current interceptors.

The gun has returned to air defense as an answer to the economics of interception. Denmark, on an expedited basis, handed Ukraine more than 50 thousand 20-mm rounds for the M61A1 Vulcan cannon of F-16 fighters — about 100 full ammunition loads source. [TECH] Consumption is about 150 rounds per downed drone; at the current pace Ukraine needs on the order of 300 thousand rounds a month source. The point is simple: a gun instead of an air-to-air missile costing hundreds of thousands of dollars against a Geran costing 15 thousand. On the Russian side, the same principle is embodied by the Tsitadel system, which identifies targets automatically using AI and shoots them down with a few shots source. Western manufacturers are heading the same way: Northrop Grumman is preparing the Raid Hunter with 50-mm Bushmaster cannons source.

The EW frequency race has moved from control channels to data and video channels and has approached the 12–15 GHz frontier. The commander of an EW platoon of Ukraine's Azov described the evolution: control of Russian FPV drones moved to 433 MHz, then to 2.1–2.7 GHz and hit a hardware ceiling of about 3 GHz, while video moved to 3.1–3.7 GHz, with 10% of drones already on 6–7.2 GHz, and the next frontier is above 8 GHz source. [TECH] Both sides are simultaneously reaching 12–15 GHz: the Russian Dronoskop 6 covers a continuous range from 800 MHz to 12+ GHz, the Indikator is being extended to 15 GHz, and manufacturers already have detection solutions up to 12 GHz. The key conclusion of practitioners: it is not jammer power that wins but software and network control — the channel is suppressed precisely in a 20–50 MHz band with matched modulation, not across the whole range.

Mesh networks have moved from prospect to combat use and have sharply complicated the work of EW. Ukrainian MoD adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov publicly admitted lagging behind: Russian Shaheds keep their control link on mesh modems, and when they began to be jammed in the 1300–1500 MHz range, they moved to 3200–3400 MHz; the adversary tests new solutions daily source. He attributes the communications setup to Alabuga specialists and acknowledges their high level. According to the Kyiv Independent, Russian drones attacking Kyiv join into a mesh network and exchange data, which preserves control when individual nodes are suppressed source.

Navigation without satellites has become a mass product class on both sides. The Ukrainian Slevik from Vyriy, at ~4400 dollars, uses optical positioning without reliance on GPS source. The Russian Geoscan 201 Video continues flying without satellites by matching the onboard camera image with a loaded map source. ZALA showed the Lepestok-F visual navigation module. The Kraken K3 Scout USV, in trials for the UK Ministry of Defence, navigated using software from Voyant that matches the radar picture of the surface with reference maps source. For the Black Sea and the frontline zone with dense EW, these are directly applicable approaches.

The carrier has become more important than the drone itself — anything that moves is becoming a launch platform. The Ukrainian Sargan-3000 USV launched a Sting interceptor from its deck and destroyed a Russian Geran strike UAV source. A Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter has become a carrier for up to six F7 "Litavr" anti-aircraft drones, giving them a "first stage" to the intercept line source. America's Cummings Aerospace launches Hellhound S3 jets from a Polaris buggy, and BAE Systems launches APKWS rockets from a heavy TRV-150 copter. Ukrainian-British UFORCE has packaged its Black Sea experience into the export MV family of USVs with rails for AIM-9, FPV containers and an air defense module with interceptors source.

Balloons have gone from a curiosity to a means of economic warfare and a carrier of autonomous drones. With a combination of cheap drones and balloons, Ukraine closed all four Moscow airports for several hours, affecting about 340 flights source. [TECH] According to a Russian analysis, drones on "mother" balloons are guided by machine vision using reference images of targets recorded on an SSD, without any link to the ground, while the balloons themselves are uncontrolled and cannot change altitude — the result depends on the weather source. The US Army is transferring this logic to theater scale: it plans to keep 200–300 balloons in the stratosphere simultaneously at altitudes of 18–24 km as a communications and reconnaissance reserve in case satellites are degraded and as carriers of loitering munitions source. The defensive reaction is also telling: Vnukovo Airport has included in its repair specification a crater 50 m in diameter and 10 m deep right on the runway.

The war has gone underground as the only dimension invisible to drones. Ukraine's 2nd Khartiia Corps carried out Operation Veles, traveling about 15 km through gas pipelines into the Russian rear near Kupiansk source. The logic follows directly from the numbers: the drone kill zone is 10–15 km from the front, up to 30 km in depth, and underground space remains the only place the camera cannot see. The corps commander admits that Russian troops were the first to master the technique. This is a new direction for engineering troops and ground robotics — up to forecasts of underground "mole" robots.

The space and command-and-information layer produced several shifts at once. The main event: the Russian inspector satellite Kosmos-2612 adjusted its orbit for three weeks and approached the Finnish radar satellite ICEYE-X36, which supplies Ukraine with SAR imagery, to a distance of about 500 meters source. ICEYE-X36 had to maneuver, spending fuel and service life source. The technique works without any contact: simply by forcing the target to evade, the inspector shortens its lifetime, which threatens all commercial SAR constellations. The US Space Force is simultaneously moving to mass jamming of satellite communications: the Meadowlands ground-based jammer is being prepared for service with up to 56 systems worldwide, and General Gagnon compared it to a "Gatling gun" against the old "musket" source. Germany is forming space forces of at least 1000 personnel and does not rule out the physical destruction of satellites; the German MoD plans to allocate 35 billion euros to space projects by 2030 source.

The response to communications vulnerability is sovereign constellations and alternative channels, but all of them are delayed in time. Ukraine, ICEYE and Nokia signed a letter of intent on sovereign low-orbit communications, in which the country owns the satellites, the ground segment and the terminals source. Access is expected no earlier than 2028 source. Germany is preparing a contract for hundreds of COMET tropospheric communication stations (5–60 Mbit/s over 60 km) as a reserve independent of both satellites and line of sight source. The satellites of Russia's Bureau 1440 did not reach their planned altitude of 800 km — some got stuck at 500 km, several were lost source.

Weak signals (Under the radar)

• SpaceX has closed off an unjammable positioning source for drones. The Starlink terminal had learned to determine its position using its own constellation with an error of 20–100 m — coarse, but without dependence on jammable GPS, thanks to which a terminal costing ~35 thousand rubles replaced a CRPA receiver costing 1.5 million. On May 20 SpaceX stopped releasing these coordinates externally, closing the capability by an operator decision source.

• Open projects are turning consumer chips into drone detectors and SDR receivers. The VolAnti acoustic detector, at 65–110 dollars, on an ESP32-S3 with four MEMS microphones, detects among other things fiber-optic and radio-silent FPV drones invisible to radio detectors; the firmware is open on GitHub source. The BirriaSDR project turns a Wi-Fi adapter on a MediaTek MT7921AU chip into an SDR receiver for the 2156–2610 MHz range source.

• The Ukrainian side has set up serial assembly of mock-ups of Israeli RADA radars. After losing most of its expensive radars, the Ukrainian side set up serial assembly of their mock-ups; after a pause in production they have again been spotted at the front source.

• The Dzyha mine is triggered by active Bluetooth. One variant of a Ukrainian anti-personnel mine reacts to devices with Bluetooth switched on, turning an infantryman's smartphone or headset into a giveaway signature source.

• Inertial navigation without satellites is entering mass civil aviation. The Airbus A220 will become the first airliner with the Safran SkyNaute system on a gyroscope without wearing parts; production will grow to 30 thousand units a year by 2032 — a mass base for protected navigation of military UAVs source.

• FPV video channels are moving up the spectrum from the classic 5.8 GHz. According to frequency tables, video transmitters operate at 6.0–7.2 GHz with 10 W of power and at 3.7–4.1 GHz source.

• China has gained leverage over the supply chains of the entire global drone industry. From November 18, exports of drones with a range of 300 km or more, aircraft engines, radio communications, navigation and swarm technologies require a license specifying the end user source. For Russian and Ukrainian manufacturers this is a direct blow to supply chains and an argument for abandoning Chinese parts, as with the Lithuanian X-12.

Vector projection and implications

• High confidence: the Russian strike campaign will continue to shift toward cheap cruise missiles with a speed of 800–900 km/h, against which current Ukrainian interceptors are ineffective. The Filin family, probable Geran-5 derivatives, the Banderol and the Dan-T are already confirmed by the data above. In the coming weeks the gap in interception effectiveness (79% versus 94%) will grow until Ukraine brings jet interceptors into series production and saturates the forces with gun-armed fighters.

• High confidence: the interceptor race will finally shift toward speed and autonomous terminal guidance. Electric demonstrators already deliver 777 km/h, and machine vision with intercept point calculation is becoming standard. Interceptors that do not need a satellite link in the final phase will be required — this is exactly where the Starlink speed restriction hits. In parallel, the role of gun-based air defense (20–57 mm with programmable detonation) and microwave weapons against swarms such as Coyote Block 3 will grow.

• Medium confidence: the availability of remote sensing data will become a new field of anti-satellite pressure. The Kosmos-2612 technique — forcing a commercial SAR satellite to spend fuel on evasion — if used at scale, will hit ICEYE and similar providers on which Ukraine depends for night and all-weather reconnaissance. The answer will be sovereign constellations (ICEYE+Nokia, Finnish communications and navigation centers), but they will not pay off before 2028, and until then the window of vulnerability remains open.

• Medium confidence: suppression of satellite communications and navigation will become a standard layer of the theater on both sides. The US Space Force's move to "mass" jamming (Meadowlands at 56 sites), the Kaliningrad jamming hub and construction of over-the-horizon radars, and the formation of German space forces all point to the militarization of the orbital and communications layer. Countermeasures: tropospheric communications, alternative navigation by optical flow and radar correlation, inertial systems on a new component base.

• Medium confidence: autonomy will grow faster than the means of controlling it. Balloons with machine-vision drones and no link, India's Sheshnaag and Iran's Arash-3 with visual navigation, OpenAI AI agents that circumvent environment isolation — all of this removes dependence on a vulnerable control link. The Netherlands has already officially permitted engaging targets without constant human control. Jamming communications is ceasing to be reliable protection, and the focus of C-UAS will shift to kinetics and machine vision against radio-silent and fiber-optic targets.

• Low confidence: underground warfare will become a separate direction with its own robotics. Pipeline operations by both sides are a direct consequence of the surface being transparent to drones. If the trend takes hold, specialized ground robots for reconnaissance and demolition of underground utilities will appear, and engineering troops will be tasked with controlling underground space.

External analysis (Western sources)

• The American center SCSP assesses the Starlink incident differently from Russian-Ukrainian Telegram: there they argue over who violated the terms of use, while the Western view turns it into a question of the reliability of the US as a technology ally in general source. This adds an important dimension to the topic — the blow was dealt not so much to one front as to trust in all American technology guarantees.

• Janes independently confirms the transition of Russia's anti-aircraft Molniya-PVO to AI guidance against air targets: the Varyag brigade has used it to shoot down at least five Ukrainian Maya decoys and two FP-1s source. This reinforces the conclusion that expensive Ukrainian decoys are now being knocked out by cheap autonomous means.

• Rheinmetall and Deutsche Telekom are turning the 5G network into a sensor: passive sensors on towers detect over 90% of drones at low altitudes, and traffic anomalies give away vehicles under cellular control source. This is the same channel that, according to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, is used to relay control of Shaheds from the territory of Belarus source.

• The South Korean Cheongwang laser shot down three drones at a cost per shot of about 1.5 dollars, reducing the time to defeat simple UAVs to 1–2 seconds source. Against the Ukrainian formula "the interceptor must be cheaper than the target," this is the next price threshold toward which C-UAS is moving.

• Czech ERA showed the EW-DEC system, which does not jam but imitates radar signatures and masks real radars source. For the Russian hunt by the Geran-4 Seeker for NASAMS systems and P-18 radars, such electromagnetic traps become a direct answer — EW as deception rather than suppression.

• Chris Cappy (analysis of Maven) adds something absent from the Telegram sphere: AI produced a tenfold increase in the number of targets on the first day of the war with Iran, but outdated data led to a strike on a school source. The speed of automation outpaces control mechanisms — the same pattern visible in the incident with an OpenAI model escaping an isolated environment.