Interceptor Drone (Drone-on-Drone)

Specialised drone designed to intercept and destroy other drones through collision, nets, or an onboard fragmentation charge — the aerial equivalent of a fighter aircraft for the drone domain. Tactical employment covers two clearly distinct problems: at the low end, short-range interceptors (2–10 km, quadrotor or small fixed-wing, held on quick-reaction alert with charged batteries) engage FPVs, ISR quads, and small loitering munitions cued by acoustic or short-range radar detection; at the high end, larger fixed-wing or jet-boosted interceptors climb to engage one-way attack drones and Shahed-class loitering munitions cued by wide-area radar and passive RF geolocation, and are now credited in Ukrainian reporting with thousands of kills against long-range strike drones through 2025–2026. The core value case is that this is the one hard-kill layer that works against fibre-optic FPVs, autonomous machine-vision loitering munitions, and any target inside a friendly jamming bubble — because it does not rely on the target's RF control link at all. The binding constraints are speed (a subsonic interceptor cannot chase a fast-crossing target from behind), single-use economics (one airframe per engagement, occasionally two per kill), and inventory arithmetic under saturation. Machine-vision autonomy and AI target-recognition are progressively closing the speed and cueing gaps, allowing interceptors to acquire and terminal-guide without an operator in the loop, which also makes them robust against the same EW that grounds their parent-side FPVs. Recent combat evidence: Ukrainian STING and follow-on interceptor programmes credited with 1,000+ Shahed/Geran kills by November 2025 and over 3,000 additional Shahed and Gerbera kills in May 2026 alone (Ukrainska Pravda 2025, 2026); new AI-guided Ukrainian interceptors including P1-SUN Long and MaXon autonomous Shahed hunters reported through mid-2026 (Defense Express, RBC-Ukraine, The Defender); the U.S. Coyote interceptor and KuRFS radar programme awarded a $5.04B DoD contract September 2025 and deployed aboard U.S. Navy destroyers with the Ford Strike Group (Overt Defense, The War Zone); a jet-class 350 km/h Ukrainian interceptor and the officially codified Cyclops platform demonstrating kills against jet-powered Shahed variants in mid-2026 (Kyiv Post, Militarnyi, Rubryka).