Ed JONES / AFP via Getty Images
- Ukraine has been paying drone makers $20,000 for each Russian Shahed they destroy.
- Its new defense minister said it's helping Ukrainian forces receive 40,000 interceptors this month.
- He said the program focused on Chernihiv, one of the regions most saturated by Shahed flights.
Ukraine is set to receive 40,000 interceptor drones in January, thanks in part to a reward system that pays firms for every kill scored against a Russian Shahed, the country's defense minister said.
Mykhailo Fedorov said on Tuesday that Kyiv had rolled out a program inviting defense companies to test their small interceptor drones in Ukraine, paying them $20,000 for each Shahed drone their product destroyed.
"At the time, no one believed in it," Fedorov said at a press briefing. "But now, by this month, 40,000 interceptors are expected to be delivered to the military."
Often short of munitions and weapons, Ukraine invites defense firms from around the world — though mostly NATO countries — to test their products on the battlefield.
Fedorov, who was appointed defense minister last week, said the payment program had focused on the Chernihiv area, which sits between Kyiv and Russia's western border. Long-range attack drones launched from that border must fly over Chernihiv to reach the Ukrainian capital, and the region thus sees some of the heaviest Shahed flight traffic.
Interceptor drones in Ukraine are generally small, first-person-view drones designed to fly at high speed to catch Russia's Gerans, delta-wing explosive-carrying drones closely based on the Iranian Shahed.
The most common type of Geran that Ukraine faces can cruise at roughly 6,500 feet and fly at up to 115 mph.
Because Russia can launch hundreds of these at a time, resource-strapped Ukrainians have prioritized keeping the cost of interceptor drones as low as possible. A typical one costs roughly several thousand US dollars.
Fedorov said on Tuesday that Ukraine's military had been actively looking into interceptors since at least February 2025. The technology has evolved rapidly over the last year, with Ukrainian firms still experimenting with designs at the start of 2025 and now scaling up manufacturing for mass production.
Receiving 40,000 interceptors a month would mean that Ukraine can deploy more than 1,000 of them a day — an initial production goal set by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In a separate press briefing on Monday, Zelenskyy repeated that his country was now able to produce about 1,000 interceptors per day.
"But that is not enough," he said. "Because, frankly speaking, our interceptor drones have already outpaced the number of our operators."
Zelenskyy said that Fedorov and Ukraine's chief commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, have been assigned with recruiting, training, and deploying more troops who can fly interceptor drones.