Russia is using drones with metal rods against the Ukrainian Armed Forces' UAVs

Instead of warheads — rods and "tridents" to pierce the styrofoam wings so the interceptor can be repaired and reused

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01 Apr 2026

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Russia is using a new tactic against Ukrainian UAVs: interceptor drones fitted with metal rods are increasingly appearing in the sky, staging a kind of aerial “duel”, The Telegraph reports.

According to the publication, some Ukrainian devices have wings made of polystyrene or foam, which increases their vulnerability to mechanical damage. Against this background, Russian operators are turning to simple but destructive physical methods of countering them.

In addition to metal rods, trident-shaped tools are also used for interception, designed to puncture the body or wings of drones and put them out of action without using explosives.

Ukrainian journalist and autonomous systems specialist David Kyrychenko describes how this practice has spread over the past year.

“On the Russian side, over the past year they have increasingly begun to use interceptor drones equipped with rods intended for physically damaging inexpensive Ukrainian drones.”

Professor Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute considers the main advantage of this approach to be the ability to recover and reuse the interceptor after a successful ram. At the same time, he warns that in practice strikes often damage the interceptor itself, and achieving a direct hit is more difficult than using a warhead.

Samuel Bendett, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, is also critical of the method.

“Using metal rods to stab a drone can turn into a catastrophe for both UAVs”

The Telegraph piece describes in detail how the emergence of “anti-drones” with simple mechanical striking elements is affecting aerial confrontation, and emphasizes that despite the apparent cheapness and recoverability of such interceptors, their effectiveness is limited by high risks of self-damage and the difficulty of achieving precise contact with the target.