New Delhi, July 3 -- The counter-drone system Ukraine spent three years building has a ceiling. It sits at approximately 300 km/h - the maximum speed of the interceptor UAVs that Ukraine has fielded in large numbers to bring down Russian kamikaze drones before they reach populated areas. Russia has now deployed attack drones that fly faster than that. The margin is not small: the newest variants reach 500 km/h. The people who built the interceptor system did not build it for this.

overwhelm not just with volume, but with speed profiles that force Ukraine's layered defenses onto a different and more expensive tier of response. Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson Colonel Yurii Ihnat confirmed the threat directly. "These drones are no longer w...