Ukraine showed its Ai-Petri electronic warfare system outside the country for the first time this week, on a stand at MSPO 2026 in Kielce. The system jams drone control links and guided aerial bombs across 300 MHz to 6 GHz, and Ukrainian forces have been using it at the front since 2024.
It is a rotating platform on the bed of a pickup truck. Each module carries two jamming channels, a detection antenna and a radar that listens for the radio signatures of approaching aircraft. One logarithmic antenna covers about 45 degrees, and the platform turns through the full 360.
Two people set it up in ten minutes. In listening mode it draws 250 watts; jamming takes it to 2,000. Detection range runs to 20 or 30 kilometres depending on terrain.
Why the band matters more than the power
A jammer’s usefulness is decided by what it can reach, not by how loud it is. The 300 MHz to 6 GHz span covers the analogue and digital video links, the control channels and the satellite navigation bands that almost every small drone in the war depends on.
That span is also where the target keeps moving. Russian FPV designs have pushed video channels upward to escape fielded receivers, and Ukrainian manufacturers have answered with wider multi-band systems — InLab’s Stryi covers 300 to 2,500 MHz and 2,000 to 6,000 MHz on two independent 100-watt channels for the same reason.
Fibre-optic drones sidestep the problem entirely by trailing a spool of glass instead of transmitting, which is why they have spread through both armies. A jammer that covers six gigahertz of spectrum does nothing to a drone that emits none of it.
A company older than the invasion
Development began in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea. The system takes its name from Ai-Petri, the peninsula’s highest peak.
Tactical versions reached the front in 2024 and have been used alongside the 12th Special Purpose Centre. Reporting in Ukraine has put the number of Ai-Petri systems delivered to the army in the hundreds, including a batch of 25 handed over in October 2025 through a foundation run by former president Petro Poroshenko. FlightBrief has not independently verified those delivery counts.
Showing it at Kielce is a different act from fielding it. MSPO is where European ministries do their procurement conversations, and Ukraine arrived this year with more than 25 companies. A system with two years of documented use against the exact threat European air forces are now writing requirements for is the strongest thing any of them can bring.
The exhibition closes on 11 September.
