Ukrainian drone developers and manufacturers from the Wild Hornets workshop have upgraded their Sting anti-aircraft drone, allowing it to break a new speed record. If earlier it accelerated to 315 km/h, now the ceiling has grown significantly.
The creators did not disclose the new performance result but made a telling video showcasing the fruit of their effort.
Read more: 325 km/h: While Ukraine Breaks New Speed Record For Armed FPV Drone, Let's Take a Look at the World's Fastest
To illustrate how much the new version is superior in speed, let's compare it at least visually with the similar footage from earlier, published on August 11. In this clip, a Sting achieves a speed of 315 km/h, or 195 mph.
Defense Express cautiously assumes that this speed was achieved on a drone that had a payload simulator with a weight close to a warhead. In September 2024, when Wild Hornets were still developing their interceptor drones, a prototype was already able to reach a speed of 325 km/h without extra weight.
The design they chose still has potential to advance further. For example, a drone built by amateurs from South Africa exclusively to set the speed record for FPVs, called the Peregreen 2, achieved a ground-breaking 480.23 km/h in April 2024.
However, as we mentioned in one of our articles, there is a huge difference between a model created for setting records and combat unit optimized for mass production and threat engagements, especially since it needs to carry a warhead.
Regardless, in this case, speed is not the goal in itself; it serves a very specific purpose: the effective interception of russian reconnaissance UAVs and Shahed-136 killer drones. A higher flight speed not only enables the interceptor to catch up with its target faster, but it also helps the operator take down the threat before it escapes the interceptor's operating range, limited by the maximum communication distance and battery capacity.
The best Shahed killer, according to the Wild Hornets and our military — STINGSupport our production here:https://t.co/3uauzLwBYf pic.twitter.com/fw9LIzmsLe— Wild Hornets (@wilendhornets) August 6, 2025
On top of that, higher speeds create an opportunity to hit a larger number of targets within this time window, or give the operator a second chance if the first attempt at interception failed.
And in general, creating an anti-aircraft drone, especially against threats such as the Shahed-136, is an arduous and complex task. For comparison, the United States solved the speed dilemma in a rich way by making a cheap drone more sophisticated — until it turned into a genuine anti-aircraft missile with a rocket engine and a homing head for independent guidance.
Read more: Ukraine Scales Up Cheap Machine-Vision Drones — But Turning Them Into Shahed Interceptors Is Another Challenge
