If you want to understand how Ukraine’s interceptor drones are evolving and improving but don’t have a lot of time, you can just take a look at the Litavr interceptor announced by the Ministry of Defense on 8 June. 

F-Drones’ Litavr has been in serial production since the fall but its specs have been classified until now. While its capabilities do not appear to be brand new or exclusive to itself, the features list reads like a map of all the ways Ukrainian engineering and battle testing of the past few years made their various interceptors so highly sought-after.  

That includes autonomous last-mile guidance, non-GPS navigation, radar integration, and the ability to control the drone from thousands of kilometers away. The company reportedly manufactures most of its own components, reducing dependence on China. 

All these things are instrumental to Ukraine’s goal of “closing the sky” to Russian weapons. The Defense Ministry set a goal of shooting down no less than 95% of Russian drones and missiles and has been steadily climbing towards that goal: from just over 80% shot down late last year, to 92% shot down in May. 

Last-mile autonomy

According to the MoD, the Litavr's key ability is the automatic pixel lock last mile guidance, in which a pilot controls the speed, while the drone does the rest. 

Semi-autonomous weapons are one of the major achievements of Ukraine’s military-industrial ecosystem. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov emphasized autonomy as a key technology. 

“Autonomy is one of the key areas of development of modern air defence,” he said in a 8 June statement.

“Technologies like this enable faster responses to large-scale attacks and more effective protection of Ukrainian cities. We are scaling solutions that have already proved their effectiveness in combat conditions.” 

Fedorov claimed that a Brave1 company has already created tech that automates 95% of the "entire interception process, from launching a drone to destroying a Shahed," which has been battle-tested in Kharkiv Oblast. 

AI-assisted navigational and target lock tools are present in a plethora of Ukrainian drones: from deep and middle strike UAVs, to FPVs, to interceptors, which were reportedly getting anti-Shahed modules in December.

Across Ukraine and around the world, companies and volunteer cooperatives are using the country’s archive of battlefield footage to train models to become progressively more accurate and deadlier in combat. 

Navigation and controls

Besides its daytime and thermal cameras, the Litavr has its own non-GPS navigation tools and integrates into existing radar systems through a proprietary software package. 

The announcement was light on details, but this is another demonstration of Ukraine creating solutions to the realities of Russia’s war. The skies and battlefields are full of jamming and spoofing, which makes GPS a highly-unreliable solution. 

Adaptations have included visual-inertial odometry, like the kind NASA's Mars drones use, beacon-based systems, AI that image matches preloaded terrain data, and tapping into nearby radar systems, like the Litavr does. 

The drone also incorporates a system that allows operators to steer them from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. 

This system has been in development for over a year and announced in April, with more than 10 manufacturers integrating it into their systems. Wild Hornets made a splash online with their announcement that an operator took down a target from outside Ukraine's borders.

Speed and range

The Litavr has a reported top speed of 350 kilometers per hour. This isn’t the first drone with such a claim—the MoD said the same thing of the JEDI Shahed Hunter presented in March—and other drones before it had similar claims made about them, like the Furia.  

However, 350 km/h is on the upper end of most interceptors in use these days. The more famous drones of this class like SkyFall’s P1-SUN has a reported top speed of 310 km/h and Wild Hornets’ Stinger reportedly hit 315 km/h in tests, though the website says it tops out at 280 km/h. This was a massive upgrade from earlier Sting, which could reportedly go up to 160 km/h.

Ukraine is pushing that ceiling higher. As early as December, the Brave1 Defense Cluster announced that Ukraine can now mass-produce a motor that can accelerate an interceptor to 400 kilometers per hour. The manufacturer, Motor G, makes more than 100,000 motors per month, according to the announcement.

The growing speed is needed to combat jet-powered Shaheds, whose speeds can climb up to 600 kilometers per hour, which is a drum MoD adviser Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov has been beating constantly. Ukrainian devs are working on the problem: for example, General Cherry and STRIX are reportedly integrating chemical boosters into their Bullet interceptors.

Litavr’s operational range of 40 kilometers appears to be comparable to the Sting, though the MoD claimed a record flight of 80 km for the former. The flight ceiling of 9 kilometers appears to be higher than many interceptors of Litavr’s type, which range from 3 to 7 km.

Reducing reliance on China

The manufacturing is also indicative of what Ukraine is trying to accomplish. F-Drones reportedly builds most of its own electronics, engines and flight controllers.

Ukraine's government has a stated goal to reduce its dependence on Chinese parts, which, while cheaper, also pose a security risk. If China stops the flow of parts for whatever reason, Ukraine's entire weapons industry can be in trouble. China also supplies many of the parts for the very Shaheds these interceptors are meant to stop. 

According to a December report by Zmiinyi (Snake) Island Institute, Ukraine's domestic manufacturers covered 70% of the need for communication systems for controlling drones, and 55% for analog video transmitters. The institute believes that Ukraine has the potential to cover 100% of the market in these three categories. 

At the time of the report, Ukrainian manufacturers produced just 25% of flight controllers for domestic FPV drones, 14% of the thermal cameras and 12% of the electric motors. However, the Institute projected that Ukraine can produce as much as 75% of flight controllers, 90% of thermal cameras and 50% of electric motors over 2026.