Ukraine Using AI-Powered Turret to Shoot Down Russian Shahed Drones

Ukraine has deployed an AI-powered turret that has already shot down at least six of Russia’s devastating Shahed drones, a military official told Business Insider.

Yuriy, the commander of Ukraine’s air defense group, told BI last week that the system, called the Sky Sentinel, has “already been deployed in real combat, demonstrating high effectiveness.”

He said one prototype shot down six Shaheds in as many operational uses. This appears to be the first confirmation that one of the Sky Sentinels had downed up to six exploding drones. Ukraine previously said that the turret had been successfully tested, including on the front lines.

United24, a Ukrainian government initiative that raises funds to purchase weaponry for the military, said last week that a Sky Sentinel prototype was used at the front, where it successfully shot down four Shahed drones.

The Sky Sentinel can also take down cruise missiles that are within its effective range, United24 said, but added that many details regarding the system couldn’t be revealed due to security concerns.

In remarks to BI, Yuriy, who went by only his first name, a standard practice in the Ukrainian military, described the Sky Sentinel as “a cost-effective and scalable solution for defending both cities and frontline regions from Shaheds, reconnaissance drones, and even cruise missiles.”

Its deployment comes at a critical moment for Ukraine.

Russia has been pounding its neighbor with unrelenting drone and missile bombardments. Over the weekend, Moscow launched 472 attack and decoy drones — its biggest air attack with drones to date.

Little human involvement

The Sky Sentinel system is designed to require almost no human involvement. This could be key for Ukraine as it tries to stop Russia’s aerial attacks amid concerns about dwindling stockpiles of Western air defenses.

Yuriy said that the weapon is “powered by AI and designed for autonomous operation.”

He told BI that when a turret is in a combat position and synced up with radar data, “it independently scans the airspace, identifies threats, locks onto aerial targets, calculates their speed and trajectory, and determines the exact firing point.”

An operator does not manually select targets, he added. “Instead, the system’s sensors and software do it autonomously.”

Sky Sentinel does the “target detection, tracking, and automatic aiming” itself, Yuriy said, but it still needs human authorization before it fires. “This approach reduces the chance of error while still maintaining human oversight.”

He said the weapon has successfully identified targets: “Its AI can distinguish between birds and drones, and only engages when the threat is clearly identified. It also factors in environmental variables like wind speed.”

Sky Sentinel can spin 360 degrees and is equipped with a machine gun. United24 said the turret can strike “small, fast-moving targets” that are travelling up to almost 500 miles an hour. Its range is classified.

The weapon is also precise enough to hit much smaller targets, per United24, which said that the system successfully hit targets five times smaller than Shaheds in field tests.

It is unclear how many have been made to date. United24, which has a crowdfunding campaign for 10 of the turrets, said the system’s development team was focused on trying to deliver dozens every month.

Needed by Ukraine

The Sky Sentinel could be key to protecting Ukraine’s cities.

Russia can fire hundreds of drones in a single night, and Ukraine has struggled with having enough air defenses since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Its attacks often use Shaheds, Iran-designed drones that Russia fires en masse to try to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses.

The attacks leave Ukraine with a major problem: Many of the missiles it has that can potentially stop Russia’s attacks cost far more than the Russian drones they target. That’s another way the Sky Sentinel could be particularly useful.

Each Sky Sentinel unit costs around $150,000.

Meanwhile, missiles for the US-made Patriot air defense system, which Ukraine has a few of in its cities, cost around $4 million each, and the Patriot system itself costs about $1.1 billion.

Even if the Sky Sentinel is less capable than the Patriot, which can stop faster ballistic missiles, having it shoot down cheaper targets would be a big boost to Ukraine.

According to United24, the developers believe that 10 to 30 Sky Sentinels would be needed to protect a city. The cost of even 30 systems would be less than many single air defense missiles, United24 said.

And Kyiv needs more systems to protect its cities. It says, for example, that it needs dozens more Patriot systems than it has.

United24 added that Sky Sentinel can also be used in dangerous frontline areas, and other variants are being designed for different types of missions.

Ukrainian designed

The new system was entirely designed and tested in Ukraine and uses software designed by Ukrainian engineers, per United24. However, it does rely on some foreign-made parts that have no Ukrainian equivalent.

United24 did not name its developer, something that is common as Ukraine seeks to protect its weapons makers.

It’s another example of Ukraine’s growing defense industry, which is supplying an increasing part of Ukraine’s arsenal, especially amid questions over the future of US security assistance.

Ukraine has increasingly been investing in AI-powered and robotic technology, including ground robots.

Oleksandr Yabchanka, the head of robotic systems for Ukraine’s Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, told BI that Ukraine is also using robots that fire at Russian troops and targets, while allowing its soldiers to stay safe from return fire.