Inside the institution where Ukraine races to counter Russia's evolving drones

In a government office, researchers of drones and electronic warfare gather around a small metal device recovered from a Russian Geran drone. Its purpose —  to measure the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation.

"This is the most recent component we found, about a week or two ago," said one of the researchers.

Outside, a Russian drone’s jet engine roared — a sound that has become almost constant in Kyiv in recent months as advances in drone technology allow Russia to strike farther, more often and with greater precision. The small metal sensor on the table could make that threat even more vicious.

If it works as the researchers suspect, it could keep drones on course even when their satellite navigation is jammed, making the prospect of a winter under near-constant Russian attack even grimmer.

The researchers work at an institution under Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, and its work is rarely seen by outsiders. Here, specialists dismantle Russian weapons recovered from the battlefield or attacks to identify vulnerabilities, help develop countermeasures, and anticipate what Russian engineers might try next. The Kyiv Independent was given rare access on the condition that neither the institution nor the people inside be identified.

Their work is a race against time. The researchers estimate that developing an effective countermeasure usually takes four to six months, while Russia can introduce further modifications after two or three.

Regarding the sensor they found — in technical terms called a magnetometer — the researchers said they were still investigating its purpose and whether Russia might deploy it at scale.

But finding a new component is not the same as understanding it, and understanding it is not the same as having a way to counter it. And the Russian engineers who put the magnetometer in the drone face a similar gap. Fitting it to a handful of drones is not the same as being able to deploy it at scale.

What Russia’s drone wreckage reveals about the threats ahead

Inside the institution, the fluorescent-lit hallways were filled with pieces of missiles, drones, fuzes, and motherboards, all neatly organized and labeled. People move in and out, some in camouflage, others in jeans and plain shirts, some carrying paperwork, others pieces of military hardware.

There is the nose of a North Korean missile, taller than a grown man, and a large section of a Russian Oreshnik missile, its cylindrical body roughly as wide as a passenger car. On the other side of the hallway were several Russian Geran drones, their triangular bodies resembling black paper airplanes enlarged to more than three meters long (9.8 feet), with wings spanning roughly three meters.

Outwardly, the Russian Gerans still resemble the Iranian drones Russia began using to terrorize Ukrainian cities in the fall of 2022. Inside, however, successive modifications had made them markedly different from those early aircraft, and even from the first Russian-made Gerans that appeared by the summer of 2023.

To trace the drones' evolution, the researchers work backward from the ones they recover. They begin by identifying and documenting each drone’s basic features, then dismantle it to map its internal systems, trace its components to their manufacturers, and reconstruct how each part contributes to the aircraft’s operation.

The researchers explained that changes inside the drones often reflected the success of Ukraine’s defenses. A navigation system that had once guided an aircraft to its target could become vulnerable to jamming, prompting Russia to try something else.

"When the Russians see that the effectiveness is decreasing, they introduce other technologies," one researcher said.

But the two sides don't take turns. Russia can introduce another modification while Ukraine is still working out how to defeat the previous one.

On one of the tables lies a Canon camera recovered from one of the first iterations of Russian drones from late 2022 used for attacks on Ukrainian cities. Still in its original casing, it looked much as it would in a shop, except that its settings had been glued in place against the vibrations of flight.

The next example they recovered a few months later, a Sony, had been stripped of its casing, leaving its lens and colorful wiring exposed. "You can already see that it’s quite a development compared to the first sample," a researcher said.

Such details helped the specialists judge how far an adaptation had progressed. You can tell a lot from the workmanship and the way it’s put together, one researcher explained. Specialists look for whether a part was improvised and attached to a drone or whether the drone was built to carry it — a sign that an experiment might be entering regular production.

Sometimes the clue is simpler. Sometimes there are letters "E" or "EE" on a drone’s tail fins, which the researchers believe stands for "experiment."

Other clues had been deliberately erased. The researchers showed antennae chips with their identifying markings scratched off, an effort, they said, to hide the supply chains bringing American and European electronics into Russian weapons despite sanctions.

"Removing markings does not make identification impossible," one researcher said. But it can turn what might have been a glance at a label into an investigation requiring specialized equipment and scarce time.

Reconstructing Russian technology can take months or even years, hampered by a lack of specialized equipment, resources, and expertise in Ukraine, and even with help from foreign partners, some electronic components remain nearly impossible to decipher without access to manufacturers’ proprietary information, which they are often unwilling to share.

A threat long in the making

Hanging in the stairwell was a completely intact Geran-3 that had reached the institution in 2025, well before this autumn’s urgent calls to accelerate production of interceptors capable of catching jet-powered drones. It had run out of fuel and landed in sand without detonating.

At its rear was a silver jet engine, roughly the size of a large melon, replacing the propeller-driven engine that gave earlier iterations of these drones their familiar moped sound. Faster flight and higher operating altitudes made jet-powered variants harder for mobile teams armed with machine guns to engage.

A message written on the black body of the drone in white marker read "greetings to Serhii from the engineers." The researchers believed it was addressed to Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky on defense technology. One researcher found a small consolation: the Russians had misspelled "engineers."

The same recovered aircraft had carried another indication of what was coming this summer beyond the jets: a camera and a mesh modem. "(That meant it was) able to send back video footage and receive control signals," a researcher said.

The researchers have a collection of the palm-sized mesh modems in their office, which they identify as Chinese-made. Mesh modems allow drones to relay video and control signals through one another, extending communications beyond an individual aircraft’s direct connection to its operator.

One researcher compared the technology to repeaters used to extend Wi-Fi coverage through a house. Here, the repeaters are other drones. This allows operators to change targets during flight and pursue even moving targets, such as trains, rather than simply sending a drone toward fixed coordinates, the researchers said.

The video feed allows the Russian operator to watch a civilian building draw closer while continuing to steer the drone toward it. He is far from the people inside but can see who he is targeting.

"If it is a civilian site, he knows what he is hitting and how," one researcher said.

The next unknown

The institution has possessed evidence of Russian attempts to implement jet engines and mesh relays since last year. But what a single recovered aircraft could not establish last fall was how soon or whether at all the same hardware would appear in large numbers.

Half a year later, it did. Since this summer, jet-powered drones have targeted Ukraine, particularly Kyiv, on a daily, constant basis, with the sound of explosions a regular occurrence in the capital throughout the day.

The researchers described the interval before an effective response to a modification became available as a "window of opportunity" for Russia. Once a change proved useful, Russia could concentrate resources on producing and deploying it while Ukraine was still developing a countermeasure.

"They don’t wait for us to come up with a countermeasure," one of the researchers said. The engineers attribute this problem mostly to scale. Russia likely has institutions similar to theirs, just several times larger with more resources.

The magnetometer the researchers recently recovered was still at an earlier stage of their investigation. "We can’t say for sure what it is, until we’ve completed all the necessary research," one said.

It might prove a modest refinement rather than a breakthrough. To become a widespread threat, its integration would need to be refined and its production scaled up.

But even a slight edge could be enough, helping more aircraft stay on course and tilting the balance of the war further in Russia's favor.