- Ukraine is mobilizing every possible defense against Russian drones
- The latest drone-hunter is a civilian Antonov An-28 transport plane
- A gunner can fire from the An-28's open side door
- The type's slow speed and easy handling make it an effective drone-killer
Ukrainian forces have borrowed an Antonov An-28 light transport from a civilian operator, potentially a hobbyist flying club, and turned it into their latest drone-hunter.
As Russia's drone swarms grow bigger, Ukraine's defenses are getting simpler. And cheaper.
A photo that circulated online recently depicts an An-28 with 59 kill markings painted on its fuselage, most of them indicating shoot-downs of Shahed one-way attack drones.
Why expensive missiles fail the drone test
The 200-kg Shahed has become Russia's main weapon for striking Ukrainian cities. The $50,000 drone carries a 50-kg warhead thousands of kilometers under satellite guidance.
A Russian air raid on the night of 4 October included no fewer than 496 Shahed-style drones, 57 of which got through Ukrainian defenses. Even this high 89% intercept rate lets dozens through. No missile stockpile can handle that.
The Ukrainians throw the drones off course with signal-jamming electronic warfare and shoot them down with ground-based guns and missiles and ground-launched interceptor drones.
One of the most efficient defenses is also one of the oldest. Borrowing tactics from World War I pilots, Ukrainian airmen fly light planes within meters of the Shaheds—and pepper them with gunfire from an open canopy or hatch.
A $500,000 missile for a $50,000 drone is a losing trade. An An-28 sortie costs a few thousand dollars and can bag multiple targets.
World War I tactics in 2025
The first World War I-style drone-killer was a 1970s-vintage Yakovlev Yak-52 training plane that downed dozens of drones over southern Ukraine—and was so successful the Russians targeted the plane at its base.
More Yak-52s followed, along with a Zlin Z-37T crop-duster. And now at least one An-28.
- The An-28 is a twin-engine turboprop with a 6.5-ton maximum takeoff weight and space for 19 crew and passengers
- It cruises at around 320 km/h (200 mph), nearly twice the speed of the 185 km/h propeller-driven Shaheds it hunts
- The much rarer jet-powered Shahed-238 variants fly at 600 km/h
The Ukrainian army operates many, if not all, of the ex-civilian drone-hunting planes.
Cheap air defenses
Cost is the driver. With designs from Iran and parts from China, Russia is ramping up drone production—and driving down the cost of each drone. It's possible a Shahed costs a quarter as much today as it did before Russia's wider war on Ukraine starting in February 2022.
A surface-to-air missile such as a German-made IRIS-T might cost $500,000. Ukraine and its allies simply can't afford to produce enough missiles to down every Shahed. But an ex-civilian Yak-52 or An-28 might cost just a few thousand dollars to fix and fuel for an hours-long flight. And the ammunition from its cockpit or door gunner costs a few dollars.
"Russian drone strike packages against Ukraine will likely continue to expand as long as Russia is able to increase its long-range strike drone production," the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained.
Europe's drone wall could use this
European countries are planning a "drone wall" defense against potential Russian attacks. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Romania, Denmark, and Bulgaria back the plan. They're preparing for the same cheap drone swarms Ukraine faces every night.
Ukraine's lesson is that no single system works. You need expensive missiles for high-value targets. Mobile guns like Gepards for close defense. Electronic warfare for navigation disruption. And cheap planes with door gunners. The An-28's 59 kills prove it.
Russia copies the tactic
Civilian-style planes work so well against drones that Russia is beginning to use them, too. So is the United States, although the latter is arming its militarized crop-dusters with relatively pricey laser-guided rockets.
The only cheaper defenses against Shaheds are:
- Electronic jamming, which can disable satellite navigation over a wide area
- and mobile gun vehicles such as Ukraine's ex-German Gepards.
Jamming has one downside: it also disables Ukrainian communications. And there are just 80 or so Gepards in the Ukrainian inventory—too few to protect all of Ukraine's big cities, given their short firing range (just a few kilometers).
A gun-armed plane can crisscross the airspace between a city and the likeliest vectors for attacking Shaheds, potentially downing multiple drones in a single sortie—and at a cost much lower than the cost of the drones themselves.
