A Soviet-designed passenger turboprop, built to ferry 17 commuters between regional airports, now hunts kamikaze drones at night over Ukraine. The Antonov An-28 — a boxy, twin-engine workhorse that first flew in 1969 — has been converted into an airborne interceptor platform, launching small killer drones from its wings to destroy incoming Russian Shaheds. It has 222 confirmed kills and counting. The latest evolution is the most radical yet. Instead of relying solely on its door-mounted machine guns and the pilot’s night-vision goggles, the An-28 now carries P1-Sun, Sting, and Merops AS-3 interceptor drones on underwing hardpoints. It launches them in flight, mid-intercept, turning a turboprop transport into a flying drone carrier.

From Passenger Plane to Predator

The An-28’s transformation began out of desperation. Ukraine needed a cheap, available airframe that could loiter at low altitude for hours, carry a sensor pod and a gun, and survive in airspace too dangerous for fast jets but too slow for Shaheds to dodge. The An-28 fit perfectly. Its two Pratt & Whitney engines give it range and endurance. Its low stall speed lets it fly slow enough to match a Shahed’s 115 mph cruise. And its Soviet pedigree means spare parts exist across the former Eastern Bloc. Ukrainian pilot Tymur Fatkullin, who flies combat missions in the An-28, has documented the aircraft’s evolution on social media. Early missions relied on a door gunner with a machine gun and an infrared camera feed. The pilot would receive vectors from air traffic controllers, close to visual range using NVGs, and the gunner would engage. Crude, dangerous, effective. But the gun has limitations. It requires closing to point-blank range with a drone that might be carrying a warhead. The interceptor drones change that equation entirely.

A Three-Drone Arsenal

The P1-Sun, built by Ukrainian firm SkyFall, is the workhorse of the new system. Its airframe is 3D-printed, modular, and designed to be expendable. It can reach 280 mph and climb to 16,400 feet — fast enough and high enough to catch even the newer jet-powered Geran-3 variants that Russia has started deploying. The P1-Sun closes on its target and destroys it through direct collision. Think of it as a guided bullet launched from a flying platform. The Sting, made by Wild Hornets, fills a similar role. It was recently tested in combat from the An-28 for the first time, adding redundancy and competition to the interceptor supply chain — critical in a war where production bottlenecks kill as surely as enemy fire. The American-made Merops AS-3 Surveyor is the premium option. It can operate autonomously or under remote pilot control, carries onboard sensors for target tracking, and can destroy via direct collision or proximity detonation. At an estimated $15,000 per unit — potentially as low as $3,000 to $5,000 at scale — it is dramatically cheaper than the $30,000 to $50,000 Shahed it is designed to kill.

The Economics of Drone-on-Drone Warfare

This is where the An-28 story becomes strategic, not just tactical. Every Shahed that Ukraine shoots down with a surface-to-air missile costs Kyiv far more than it costs Moscow to launch the drone. A single NASAMS or IRIS-T engagement can run into six figures. The math is unsustainable. Interceptor drones flip the ratio. A $5,000 drone killing a $40,000 drone is a trade Ukraine can make all day. And launching from altitude gives the interceptor a head start — it is already airborne, already at speed, and can cover more ground than a ground-launched equivalent. The An-28 acts as a reusable launch rail in the sky. The concept is not without risk. The An-28 is slow, unpressurised, and has the radar cross-section of a small barn. It survives because Shaheds fly at night, at low altitude, in waves — and because Russia’s air defences in Ukrainian airspace are limited. If Moscow ever decides to send a fighter after the turboprop, the mission profile changes overnight. But for now, a 57-year-old Soviet design is rewriting the rules of drone defence — one $5,000 interceptor at a time.

Sources: The War Zone, Defence Blog, Ukrainska Pravda, Defense Express