Ukraine is opening grant money for home-built air-to-air missiles and radars, aiming to shoot down Russia’s fastest drones without paying a huge price. The Defense Ministry, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and the Brave1 defense-tech cluster are launching the competitions, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara announced in an address to manufacturers, adding that a grant contest for turbojet engines will follow.

Ukraine is being forced to use expensive air defense missiles against relatively inexpensive Russian drones and cruise missiles. Developing cheaper interceptors, domestically produced radars and engines could change the economics of warfare.

The move comes as Russia leans harder on faster, jet-powered drones that strain the cheapest layer of Ukraine’s defenses. It also follows an earlier round of Brave1 grants that had already flagged anti-bomb systems and Ukrainian radars as priorities.

What Kyiv wants built, from navigation to radars that see the faint targets

Khmara laid out the threats the money is meant to answer: ballistic missiles, cheap cruise missiles, high-speed drones and guided bombs.

From Ukrainian producers, the ministry wants domestic navigation systems, stronger electronic warfare, radars able to pick out low-signature targets, and affordable designs that can be developed in quantity.

“Our requirements are clear: effectiveness, affordable cost, interoperability between systems, and sufficient volume of supply,” Khmara says.

The grants are one tool among others, meant to carry developments that can later scale for the Security and Defense Forces. Earlier, the ministry and Brave1 ran a large-scale test of drones with AI-assisted targeting.

The next contest targets the guided bombs Ukraine still cannot reliably stop

The minister singled out a separate job for manufacturers: new ways to counter Russia’s guided aerial bombs, known in Ukraine as KABs, and to blunt their use.

These are the glide bombs Russian aircraft release from a distance, and Ukraine has struggled to answer them without reaching the launch aircraft themselves.

“It is important to create innovative solutions that let us act ahead and prevail. We need asymmetric effect. We need technologies that change the rules of the game in our favor,” he argues.

Grants for turbojet engines, the ministry says, are the next step after the missiles and radars.

Automated gun turrets now serve in Ukraine’s Air Force and are destroying Russia’s jet-powered weapons, the Defense Ministry reported on 29 October. It gave no count for those jet kills, and it did not say what type of drones the turrets downed over Kyiv.

Jet drones are where Ukraine struggles most. From 1 to 26 September, Ukraine downed 55% of jet-powered drones against 90% of slower ones, partly because its interceptor drones fly at about 300 km/h, too slow to catch them. Yurii Cherevashenko, Deputy Commander of the Air Force, told a parliamentary inquiry commission on 6 October that jet-drone interceptors would arrive in the needed numbers no earlier than late November. Guns have limits too. On 5 October, Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said turrets had already downed Geran-5s, but that their range is short because their main weapon is a machine gun.

Air Force turrets against jet weapons

According to the ministry, Brave1, a defense innovation cluster, began developing automated turrets in 2024. The systems have since “moved beyond the experimental stage and become an integral part of air defense,” it said. In Air Force service, the turrets are destroying jet-powered Banderol munitions and Geran-5 drones.

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Russia first used the Geran-5, a 6-meter jet-powered strike drone, in early 2026. The Banderol, a jet-powered cruise missile, flies at 520–560 km/h and can reach 650 km/h.

Private teams, a familiar number

Separately, the ministry said turrets have destroyed more than 60 targets within the private air defense project. The project lets companies form anti-drone teams that work under Air Force command.

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Yet on 14 October, the ministry gave the same 60-plus total for all private teams. At the time, it named interceptor drones and heavy machine-gun turrets as their main weapons. Groups from six companies were on combat duty, about 50 groups had been formed in total, and some were still training. Nearly 100 companies had joined by then, up from 81 in mid-September.

The ministry says the project expands air defense “without placing an additional burden” on the military’s own air defense. It and Brave1 say they will keep integrating automated turrets into the air defense system.