On June 30, in the Zaporizhia direction, units of the Defense Forces for the first time shot down a modification of the Molniya attack drone with elements of artificial intelligence – a device that flies autonomously, without an open radio channel for operator control. About the interception reported The company that developed the interceptor, and the details were made public by the head of the Zaporizhzhia OVA Ivan Fedorov. He specified that the operation involved the Special Purpose Police Battalion of the Main Police Department, the Posipaky interceptor division, the 39th anti-aircraft missile regiment, and the 23rd separate brigade of the Khortytsia NGU.
Why is it so difficult to shoot down an AI drone?
The device, which is controlled by artificial intelligence, does not have a control channel that could be used for direction finding. Advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine on radio technologies Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov in early March explained: even against a regular “Lightning” this is a non-trivial task: the drone only receives commands and does not transmit a signal in response, and the control frequency can theoretically lie anywhere in the range from 150 to 2800 MHz.
“We see chaos from frequencies, and it is difficult to find the same remote control in it,” the expert noted.
On July 1, Beskrestnov reported in his Telegram channel about the attack of the Russian UAV “Molniya” without a control antenna at all: the device carried only a camera and a computer. According to him, similar solutions had previously been recorded only on V2U drones, which the Russians used to train a neural network. Now it has appeared on the mass-produced cheap UAV “Molniya”. And this, according to the expert, is a “bad sign”. A few days later he warned that the Russians had begun to massively use such a modification in Zaporizhia, and added: “the UAV detector is no longer a rescuer.”
So the interception on June 30th was not due to signal suppression, but despite its absence. The target was locked for destruction.after physical detection, and several branches of the military took part in the operation.
At the end of April 2026, Beskrestnov explained on Channel 24 the logic of the Molniya UAV as a class. The Russians are trying to scale a solution that works not by complexity, but by mass: a cheap carrier from which they made a reconnaissance vehicle, an explosives carrier, and a minelayer.
The 50th Separate Brigade “Varyag” is testing new modifications of the “Lightning”, which the spokesman for the Southern Defense Forces Vladislav Voloshin characterized as one of the strongest units of unmanned systems of the Russian Federation.
We have already written that at the same time the Russians are testing and fiber optic analogue of “Lightning” with a range of up to 50 km. The goal is the same: to make the flight invisible to electronic intelligence and inaccessible to electronic warfare.
What exactly was used to shoot down the “Lightning” on AI?
The BULLET interceptor drone was developed by the General Chereshnya company. In December 2025, the device was codified by the Ministry of Defense after a series of combat tests in more than 20 units of the Defense Forces.
The declared characteristics of the final version are a maximum speed of 310 km/h, a range of up to 20 km and an operating altitude of up to 6 km. According to the manufacturer, targeting is provided by a proprietary AI-based system.
But the device is a tool. In this case, the tactics of interception and destruction were more important. However, the details of the operation are not disclosed: it can be assumed that they will try to scale up and improve the successful experience.
Currently, there are no proven systematic solutions for AI-based drone detection and interception. However, the experience of the Defense Forces and technological solutions from Ukrainian developers demonstrate the first solutions that may have an impact on further systematic solutions to counter modified Molniya models.