Russian Shahed loitering munitions fight escalating ‘sword and shield' battle with Ukrainian air defences

Image of a downed Shahed-136, which was discovered by the police on 17 March 2024 in Vinnitska Oblast in central Ukraine. (National Police of Ukraine)

Russian Shahed loitering munitions and Ukrainian air defences are fighting what Alexey Boyarski, professor at Leiden University's Department of Theoretical Physics, called a ‘sword and shield' battle with Ukrainian air defences at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference 2025 held in London on 17 and 18 June.

Boyarski said 175 Shaheds were used in the attack on Kyiv on the night of 16–17 June. The Ukrainian Air Force reported on social media platforms on 17 June that Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with 440 systems and decoys, including 280 Shaheds. It said, “The air attack was repelled by aviation, anti-aircraft missile troops, electronic warfare, and unmanned systems units, and mobile fire groups of the defence forces of Ukraine. According to preliminary data as of 1000 [h local time], air defence had neutralised 428 enemy air strikes, [of which] 262 were shot down and 166 were lost.”

Boyarski contrasted the hundreds of Russian Shaheds now being fired by Russia on Ukraine each day with up to 10 earlier in the war. He said Ukraine deployed 14,000 acoustic sensors to detect and track aerial targets including Shaheds, which, according to Boyarski initially flew low like cruise missiles and needed to be destroyed efficiently to keep costs down, including by upgraded Second World War machine guns.

This resulted in the Russians flying Shaheds higher – above 2,000 m – at altitudes at which they are