The UK will produce interceptor drones for Ukraine under an expanded agreement, according to Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal on Thursday.
Shmyhal, who visited London this week for the Ramstein meeting to discuss Western military aid for Ukraine, said the first thousand drones will soon be delivered to Ukraine.
Shmyhal said he discussed the technical implementation of the project with UK Defence Secretary John Healey as part of an expanded agreement previously discussed between President Volodymyr Zelensky and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
While Shmyhal did not elaborate on the project’s details, such as the type of drone and the financing mechanism or costs, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) wrote on Wednesday that the drone is a joint British-Ukrainian developed product.
The MoD said the drone is called “Project OCTOPUS,” describing it as an “advanced new air defence interceptor drone” in its press release.
It said the drone was developed in Ukraine with British assistance – a product of an intellectual property agreement signed and expanded in the summer of 2025.
“The drone developed under Project OCTOPUS was designed by Ukraine with support from UK scientists and technicians and has already proved successful on the battlefield, proving highly effective against the Shahed one-way attack drone variants used by Russia – despite costing less than 10% to produce than the drones they are designed to intercept,” the press release states.
The drone is the first joint project under the expanded agreement, the MoD wrote, without naming either the UK or Ukrainian manufacturers involved.
The planned production volume is listed as “thousands per month” without a specific number. The MoD also did not disclose details of the drone’s financing.
The MoD said the UK is also to boost the overall number of drones supplied to Ukraine.
“The UK will also invest a record £350m [$474 million] this year to increase the supply of drones to Ukraine from a target of 10,000 in 2024 to 100,000 in 2025,” it wrote.
The MoD hailed it as a win-win scenario to “support British jobs and strengthen both UK and Ukrainian national security” while referencing Russia’s drone incursion into Poland on Wednesday, in which billion-dollar NATO stealth fighters were used to hit Russian drones worth mere thousands of dollars.
Ukraine’s interceptor drone lessons
With Russian drone attacks surging to a record 805 in a single night this September, Ukraine has increasingly turned to interceptor drones as a more cost-effective defense method, with some success.
Each Russian or Iranian Shahed drone costs under $50,000 and can reportedly fly up to 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles). Effective countermeasures must be much cheaper, making interceptor drones a cost-efficient alternative to missiles like the Stinger, which cost $120,000-$150,000 each.
Ukraine has been experimenting with both expendable and reusable versions of interceptor drones – often building on the lessons learned from the first-person view (FPV) drones it has frequently used on the front.
While some interceptor drones act as kamikaze units, ramming into drones to bring them down, other companies are experimenting with onboard shotguns to reduce costs by making them reuseable.
3DTech, a Ukrainian manufacturer, experimented with a six-barreled recoilless shotgun put underneath a regular FPV quadcopter, while another manufacturer, Besomar, fitted their fixed-wing models with shotgun barrels.
Technari, an Odesa-based company, experimented with a jet-powered fixed-wing drone, also using shotguns to take down the drones.
The Ukrainian government has boosted investment in interceptor drones in recent months, as the future supply of Western air defense grows uncertain and expensive missiles are often reserved for intercepting Russian missiles.
In July, Kyiv regional officials announced plans to scale up its air defense network over the capital using interceptor drones, with Hr.260 million ($6 million) allocated to buy more equipment, expand training, and create additional units to help down Russian drones over the region.