Russia has finally admitted what its actions have been screaming for months: it wants to win this war from the sky.
Not just with big, headline-grabbing missile salvos, but with something cheaper, dirtier, and far more constant — glide bombs and drones. Ukraine’s intelligence service says Moscow is gearing up to churn out up to 120,000 guided bombs next year, plus around 70,000 drones, including 30,000 Shahed-type knock-offs.
That’s not a strategy built around one decisive strike. That’s a plan to grind a country down, day after day, 200–250 bombs at a time.
The problem for Russia is this: Ukraine has seen the plan. And instead of just bracing for impact, it’s doing something much more dangerous for the Kremlin.
It’s adapting.
Over the past few months, Ukraine’s General Staff has quietly started talking about something new: counter-systems specifically aimed at Russian guided bombs.
Not missiles in general. Not drones in general. Bombs — the heavy glide munitions Russian jets lob from far behind the front line, letting them sail toward cities like Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa or Poltava without the aircraft ever crossing into Ukrainian air defense envelopes.
At a recent military capabilities meeting, Ukraine’s top commanders and intelligence officers laid out two uncomfortable truths at once:
- Russia is upgrading how it attacks — combining large missile and drone waves with guided bombs to overwhelm defenses.
- Ukraine can’t just keep using the same old tools to stop them.
So they’re rolling out new ones.
According to the General Staff, Ukraine has already destroyed around 100 Russian guided bombs between September and November. More importantly, they say “new systems designed to counter these bombs” are being tested right now — part of a wider package that also includes strike drones, interceptor drones, ground-based robotic systems, and combat modules mounted on unmanned platforms.
That last bit is key: this isn’t one magic gadget. It’s a whole layer being bolted onto Ukraine’s already complicated air-defense architecture.
Think of it like this:
- Patriots, NASAMS, IRIS-T, SAMP/T and the rest handle the highest-end threats — ballistic and cruise missiles, aircraft, some drones.
- Gun systems, MANPADS, short-range SAMs chase down low-flying drones and stray missiles.
- Now Ukraine wants a specific toolkit for guided bombs and mass-produced kamikaze drones — the things Russia is planning to spam by the tens of thousands.
The logic is brutal but simple: if Moscow is going to fight this war with industrial-scale cheap air power, Kyiv needs industrial-scale cheap counters.
That’s where the interceptor drones come in.
Two weeks ago, Ukraine officially kicked off mass production of home-grown interceptor UAVs, built on a platform known as “Octopus.” These are small, relatively low-cost drones designed to chase and ram or detonate near incoming threats — especially Shaheds and similar slow movers — taking pressure off missile-based air defenses.
The production lines started with three manufacturers, with 11 more preparing to join in. President Zelenskyy has publicly set an ambitious goal: up to 1,000 interceptors per day once the system is fully ramped.
It’s not hard to see the math they’re aiming for:
- Russia wants to produce 70,000 drones in a year.
- Ukraine wants the capacity to knock them down with interceptors that cost a fraction of a missile — and can be made in huge numbers.
Meanwhile, Western and European players are watching, and in some cases joining in. A Swedish startup is testing football-sized interceptor “mini-missiles” for drone defense. A new licensing deal between Ukraine and the UK aims at large-scale production of Octopus-class drones under Western support. NATO planners are looking at Ukraine as a live textbook for how to survive drone and bomb saturation in a future European war.
Ukraine, in other words, isn’t just buying air defence anymore. It’s becoming an air-defence lab.
Back to the guided bombs.
Russian jets have fallen in love with them for a reason. They solve several of Moscow’s problems at once:
- They’re cheaper than modern cruise missiles.
- They can be dropped from deep inside Russian-controlled airspace, meaning the aircraft stays relatively safe.
- With added glide kits and upgraded guidance, they can travel 200 km or more, hitting cities and frontline positions without the jet ever seeing a Ukrainian missile radar on its scope.
Used in bulk — 200 to 250 per day, according to Ukrainian estimates — they become a blunt but effective tool: crush trenches, flatten buildings, wreck infrastructure, and force Ukraine to either disperse or dig deeper.
Ukraine’s response so far has had three main layers:
- Shoot down the delivery platforms when possible.
F-16s and Mirage 2000s now in Ukrainian service add extra teeth to air defense, occasionally catching Russian aircraft off guard. - Jam and confuse the bombs themselves.
Electronic warfare tries to mess with guidance systems, especially when bombs rely on satellite navigation. - Develop dedicated “bomb hunters.”
This is the new part we’re seeing now: systems — some in cooperation with NATO — tailored to detect, track, and intercept guided bombs mid-flight. One such system was described earlier in the year as a kind of dedicated “hunter” for KAB-type bombs, with Ukraine saying it expected delivery and testing before the end of autumn.
The RBC-Ukraine piece confirms what that hinted at: these dedicated anti-bomb systems are now in testing, and the Air Force has already chalked up those ~100 bomb kills in the last three months as proof that it’s not just theory.
We don’t have full technical specs, and we shouldn’t — this is the sort of thing you don’t spell out for the enemy — but the trend line is clear. Ukraine is trying to make guided bombs less of a guaranteed hit and more of a gamble.
Of course, the Russians aren’t standing still either.
Drone warfare officials in Kyiv say Shahed-type drones are being upgraded too: new antennas, new guidance channels, even rear-facing cameras so they can spot interceptor drones chasing from behind and dodge them. Some Shaheds are being flown more like piloted aircraft now, with real-time operators trying to hit Ukrainian helicopters and jets mid-air.
It’s exactly what one Ukrainian innovation official called it: a cat-and-mouse technology game, where any advantage lasts a few months at best.
Ukraine rolls out interceptors → Russia adds cameras to its drones.
Russia floods a city with glide bombs → Ukraine tests systems to knock them out mid-flight.
Ukraine digitizes its command-and-control with systems like Delta to cut strike times from days to minutes → Russia tries to exploit bad weather and new angles to sneak around drones and sensors.
Nobody gets to stay comfortable for long.
So what does all this actually mean for the war?
First, the skies over Ukraine are going to stay dangerous. Even with new systems, nobody in Kyiv is pretending this is a silver bullet. Guided bombs are hard targets. Drones are cheap and plentiful. Russia is still able to combine both with missile attacks once or twice a week at large scale, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.
Second, the cost curve is shifting. Russia’s original hope was that cheap glide bombs and Shaheds would force Ukraine to burn million-dollar missiles on every incoming threat. Interceptor drones, bomb-specific counter-systems, and robotic modules push back against that logic. When you can bring down a $50,000 drone or bomb with something that cost a fraction of that, the economics start to tilt.
Third, Ukraine is turning survival into exportable knowledge. The Octopus interceptors, the bomb-hunters, the ground robots — these aren’t just wartime improvisations anymore. They’re turning into products. There are already licensing deals with the UK, interest from European startups, and think-tank papers quietly asking: what if Europe needs this at scale later?
Fourth, this is what 21st-century air war looks like. Not just big missile arcs on radar, but swarms of cheap flying munitions, layered defences, autonomous interceptors, real-time digital maps, and robots taking hits that would once have killed crews.
For Ukraine, the immediate question is simpler:
Can they get these new systems working, deployed, and multiplied fast enough to matter against 120,000 bombs and tens of thousands of drones?
We don’t have that answer yet. But we can see the shape of the attempt:
- Guided bombs are no longer treated as “unstoppable.”
- Interceptor drones are moving from prototype to routine.
- Robotic platforms are being armed, not just used for logistics.
- And every Russian strike now carries a little more risk that it simply doesn’t get through.
Russia is betting that sheer volume will break Ukraine’s will.
Ukraine is betting that smart defence can blunt that volume before it does.
Somewhere between those two bets, the future of this phase of the war is being written.
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