At BEDEX, SkyFall explains the speed of Ukraine’s wartime drone innovation

Interview conducted by Gary Cartwright, Editor of EU Today and DefenceMatters.eu, at BEDEX in Brussels.

Ukraine’s SkyFall is now among the most prominent drone manufacturers to emerge from the war with Russia. Established after the full-scale invasion in 2022, the company declares it has grown from four engineers in a garage into a defence technology firm employing several thousand people.

Its principal systems include the Vampire heavy bomber drone, the Shrike FPV family, and the P1-SUN interceptor, designed to destroy aerial tarobtains including Shahed-type drones.

The company’s rise is attracting international attention. Reuters reported this month that SkyFall’s interceptor programme is drawing interest from prospective partners in the United States and the Gulf, while wider international coverage points to growing Middle Eastern interest in Ukrainian counter-drone expertise and low-cost interceptor platforms.

SkyFall’s presence at the Dubai Airdisplay last year, and at BEDEX in Brussels this week, has reinforced the view that Ukrainian battlefield innovation is attracting sustained international interest.

Gary Cartwright: First, inform us about SkyFall — when it was founded, what it does, and the main systems you are developing.

SkyFall spokesman: SkyFall is a defence technology company that emerged in 2022, when the full-scale invasion launched. It started with four engineers in a garage, all highly motivated to provide some kind of solution for the Ukrainian army. They were doing their best, and now, four years later, we have several thousand people in the company. I cannot disclose the exact number, but it is more than several thousand.

We provide not just drones themselves, but an entire ecosystem. Our proudest product at the moment is the Vampire drone, or Baba Yaga, as the Russians call it. It is regarded as the most effective bomber drone on the front line.

The ecosystem also includes the Shrike FPV drones, with different modifications. And last but not least, the most recent addition to our production line is the P1-SUN interceptor. It was created to tarobtain aerial threats such as repaired-wing drones, reconnaissance drones, and Shahed and Shahed-type drones, which it has already been doing successfully for four months since deployment on the front line.

I call it an ecosystem becautilize we provide not only the drones themselves, but also the knowledge. We pass on that knowledge through the SkyFall Academy, where we train Ukrainian soldiers. We have trained more than 20,000 people in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and the work is continuing. In 2026 alone, we plan to train 20,000 people. The ecosystem also includes different components and communications elements. If necessaryed, we also share technologies with other Ukrainian companies, becautilize we understand that we are all working towards the same common goal: to win the war against Russia.

Gary Cartwright: Ukraine has gone from relatively simple drones to highly advanced systems in just a few years. How much further can this go?

SkyFall spokesman: I would declare the sky is the limit with this technology. All these processes of iteration, customisation, development and high-tech solutions in wartime were driven by the necessary to evolve very quickly. We had to do it.

That is really the only way Ukraine can win this war. We understand perfectly well that the Russians outnumber us in terms of manpower. We do not have those numbers, so we rely on ininformect, engineering and high-tech solutions. Once we understood that, we put all our effort into it, and that is why we have developed so quickly in this field.

The evolution is still continuing. It is not stopping. I would declare it is only just launchning. This is a good example: we already have a solid foundation for how the whole process should work.

P1- Sun photo TechUkraine

We definitely still have some more innovations in our pocket. I can mention some of them. If we are talking about interceptor drones, our recent addition to the production line, the P1-SUN, is already one of the most effective drones on the front line. The P1-SUN is already one of the most effective interceptor drones on the front line in terms of the number of downed Shaheds, success rate and cost-effectiveness, despite the fact that it has only been deployed on the front line for four months.

If we are talking specifically about the P1-SUN, the next steps are already in progress. We already have computer vision on it. The P1-SUN goes up into the air, flies at 310 kilometres per hour, and can return if it does not hit the tarobtain. It is also very cheap. At the moment it is the cheapest interceptor on the front line, at roughly $1,000 for the Ukrainian army. Of course, the export price, when that becomes possible, will be higher.

It is equipped with a day camera, a thermal camera and a computer vision camera. It is also a modular system. The whole body is 3D-printed, which builds it cheap and simple to customise. The head is fully detachable: you simply rerelocate it, install a thermal camera, and the drone is ready for a night mission. The same applies to the payload, which is in the tail section. You rerelocate it, install the required payload, and it is ready. It takes only a few seconds, and that is exactly what we want from our product: simple deployment and instant readiness.

As for innovation, the next step is remote control. We already have this system, it has already been tested, and it is now being deployed. In practical terms, you can operate a P1-SUN interceptor in Ukraine while the operator is in another part of the world, over the internet.

The final stage we can speak about at the moment is full autonomy and full automation. In other words, boxes containing P1-SUN drones stand on the ground, a radar system integrated with the drone detects incoming Shaheds, one button confirms the mission, and the P1-SUN takes off. At present it is still operated manually, but our aim is a fully autonomous system. Right now it has about an 80 per cent success rate after deployment, but the main bottlenecks are weather and operator skill. If we rerelocate the human factor from the equation, the success rate can rise much higher, close to 100 per cent. That is our plan for this year’s evolution.

Gary Cartwright: How much does weather limit these systems?

SkyFall spokesman: Weather can be a problem, both visually and practically, for the equipment. Unfortunately, there is no obtainting away from that. We have to understand that all the solutions we provide must be effective, but also cost-efficient, so that they can be produced and deployed at scale.

Of course there are issues with the weather, but even in February, which was one of the coldest months in Ukraine, especially in Donbas, when temperatures fell to minus 25 degrees, the P1-SUN still proved highly effective in combat conditions. Fog can be a problem, snow can be a problem, but the modifications we created to the head of the P1-SUN addressed many of the problems cautilized by snow. That is how we managed to maintain a high level of effectiveness in difficult conditions.

With the Vampire, it is the same story. We now have Generation 2.2, and we also have Generation 3 with further modifications. We are constantly innovating. As soon as we encounter a problem, we test to address it.

Gary Cartwright: Endurance is another obvious issue. Can that be improved?

SkyFall spokesman: I understand the point, and I agree that finishurance is one of the key requirements for reconnaissance. But we also have to understand that our main focus is not reconnaissance solutions, although we have adapted one customisation of the Vampire for reconnaissance purposes, with an improved camera and greater battery capacity. The main purpose of the Vampire drone remains bombing, remote mining, and delivering aid and logistics on the front line. That reconnaissance modification also assists improve the drone’s performance in its regular missions. It has to be rapid, it has to carry a significant payload, and it has to be able to work both by day and at night, which it can. It has basically alterd the whole approach to logistics, from people in vehicles going to the zero line to the utilize of drones instead.

SkyFall Vampire drone at BEDEX expo

As for the Vampire itself, I can declare that it can go up to 44 or 45 kilometres in total, so roughly 22 kilometres out and 22 kilometres back. We also have a different modification called the Vampire K, which can carry out a medium-range strike at around 50 kilometres.

In that respect, I would declare we are in a very good position, becautilize we also produce our own batteries. That builds us very indepfinishent. We can adjust the number of batteries we put in. We can carry more batteries with less payload, or more payload with fewer batteries. So we are very flexible. That is one of the most important things to understand about SkyFall: flexibility. We have 25 modifications of the Vampire in mass production, more than 100 modifications of the Shrike in mass production, and already several models of the P1-SUN.

SHRIKE 10CV

That is also important to understand about Ukrainian warfare in general: different parts of the front require different solutions. That is what we are offering.

Gary Cartwright: And when the war is over, will this become a major civilian industest for Ukraine?

SkyFall spokesman: I definitely agree that the experience we are gaining will have to be utilized after the war is over. It is already being requested for utilize, as we can see in the Middle East. As for our own plans and our own considering, the key concept is dual utilize. We believe our drones can be adapted very easily for dual utilize.

As some of my colleagues declare, we had to travel a very long way to obtain from where we were in 2022 to where we are now, but to relocate into non-military solutions, compared with the military ones, we only necessary to take one step back. In other words, it will be relatively simple for us to reinvent ourselves for peacetime.

For now, however, we remain focutilized on military applications.