Ukraine makes custom micro-missiles to slap down jet Shaheds
Jet engines on flying mopeds sounded like a nightmare until local engineers decided to treat air defense like a high-speed video game.
Russians slapped jet engines on their flying lawnmowers to make them faster, and intercepting them currently looks like top-tier movie stunt work. Right now, F-16 pilots are essentially dogfighting these drones, chewing through them with 20mm cannons. It works around half the time, but scrambling fighter jets for budget suicide drones is expensive and slightly unhinged.
Enter the domestic response. Zelensky announced that by late October, Ukraine starts combat testing domestically produced small missiles engineered specifically to swat jet drones out of the sky. Several prototypes are entering the field right now, with immediate mass production lined up the second they prove they can hit what they aim at.
Nothing screams peak modern warfare quite like building bespoke miniature rockets just because the adversary put a turbo booster on a lawnmower.
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