In a Telegram announcement on January 27th, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov announced that Counter-UAS systems are already protecting energy facilities in Ukraine from Russian drones.
In October of last year, Ukrainians raised UAH 150 million ($4.08 million) in funding in less than two days to purchase Counter-UAS systems capable of countering the airborne threat.
Multiple technologies protect energy facilities
The systems are meant to detect and mitigate the threat with technology that includes radars, radio frequency (RF) jammers, and a drone-based hunter-capture platform, the Fortem DroneHunter F700.
In the Telegram post, the Deputy Minister described the hunter-capture platform, “The Fortem DroneHunter F700 is an autonomous drone with radar control and artificial intelligence. It flies at a speed of over 100 km/hour, intercepts, and lands enemy drones.”
Six of the systems have been purchased so far, according to Federov. The funding for the systems was made possible due to a fundraising campaign by UNITED24, Oleh Horokhovsky’s Monobank, and blogger and volunteer Ihor Lachenkov. UNITED24 was launched by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as the main venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine.
