Six Ukrainian companies have begun serial production of miniature turbojet engines, according to Andrii Hrytseniuk, head of the defense cluster at Ukraine’s Brave1 defense innovation platform. The Ukrainian defense outlet Oboronka (Iryna Levytska) reported his statement on 17 October 2026 from an interview it conducted, and the Serpens Center for International Security repeated it in the October 2026 edition of its Defense Tech Monthly report, published in November. Neither source names a company, an output figure or an engine price, and the two sources tie the engines to interceptor drones, not to a specific weapon.

What was reported

  • Companies: 11 Ukrainian companies are developing miniature turbojet engines, and six of them have reached serial production, according to Oboronka’s account of the interview. The report from Serpens says the same.
  • Funding: Brave1 began funding this area in 2025 as a separate segment and works directly with manufacturers, according to Oboronka. Serpens calls it a dedicated funding program. No amounts or project counts are given.
  • First private producers: Hrytseniuk said no private company in Ukraine had made these engines before. Oboronka says setting up production took more than a year and a half; Serpens puts it at more than 18 months. Neither says when the clock started.
  • Purpose: Oboronka links the engines to scaling up production of new interceptor drones. Serpens describes the development as a step toward a domestic supply chain for next-generation drones, including jet-powered interceptors, and says domestic manufacturing could reduce reliance on imported engines.

What the sources do not say

Serpens adds that the number of companies producing at scale does not by itself establish their total output, unit costs or ability to meet demand, and that production volumes and delivery capacity will show whether the industrial base can support the wider expansion of jet-powered drone and interceptor programs. Oboronka’s article gives no thrust class, price, company name or output, and does not say what “serial production” means in quantity.

The $20,000 figure in the same report

A separate item in the Serpens report, based on a second Oboronka article of 18 October, covers a $20,000 limit. Hrytseniuk said two Ukrainian teams are preparing domestically developed surface-to-air missiles for combat use against Russian jet-powered Geran drones, and that one of the conditions was a cost cap of $20,000 for the missile. The sources attach this limit to the missiles, not to the turbojet engines or to interceptor drones. According to Oboronka, ten Ukrainian teams are working on missile projects of this kind, Brave1 began funding air-defense missile development in 2024, and the first prototypes took about two years. Oboronka gives rough market prices of about $100,000 a shot for a Stinger and up to about $500,000 for an AIM-9X, and Serpens says a conventional Geran is estimated at about $70,000 and the jet-powered version may cost tens of thousands of dollars more. Neither article names the two missiles or the teams.

Other reporting on engines and interceptors

  • Ukrainska Pravda, 18 October: Hrytseniuk told the outlet that 22 teams are developing high-speed drones aimed at jet-powered Geran-type drones and that 12 of them have received state funding through Brave1. Designs being explored include miniature turbojets, electric propeller drones and electric ducted-fan drones. The article says seven interceptor types are in use against the jet-powered drones and gives no cost or engine-maker figures.
  • Ukrainska Pravda, 3 November: Serhii Sternenko, a volunteer and former adviser to the defense minister, said Ukraine should reach roughly mass production of a countermeasure to jet-powered Shahed-type drones by the end of 2026. He said turbojet supply is the harder problem than electric motors and that a recent government decision meant to ease engine production will not take effect soon.
  • Defence Matters, 2 October: The outlet wrote that manufacturers, whom it does not name, say miniature turbojet engines are becoming one of the main constraints on interceptor production.
  • Reuters, 7 April: Ukraine depended on a few European suppliers, including PBS in the Czech Republic, JetCat in Germany and Destinus in the Netherlands, and unnamed Ukrainian defense-industry sources called the engine shortage likely the main constraint on missile-drone production. Maria Popova, head of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry, acknowledged shortages of turbojets and drone materials.

Lens covered interceptor makers in an earlier post on counter-drone interceptor startups.

Sources and notes

Sources: Serpens Center for International Security, a Ukrainian think tank, Defense Tech Monthly, October 2026 (pages 17 and 18 of the PDF, read in full from the page images); Oboronka, 17 October (turbojet engines) and 18 October (missiles), both by Iryna Levytska, read in Ukrainian through a translating summary; Ukrainska Pravda, 18 October and 3 November; Defence Matters, 2 October; Reuters, 7 April, read through a republished copy on MarineLink. The Oboronka pages do not print a year; Lens took it as 2026 from the Serpens report and Ukrainska Pravda. Hrytseniuk’s surname is spelled Hrytsenyuk in Oboronka’s Ukrainian text and Hrytseniuk by Serpens and Ukrainska Pravda. Lens did not watch the interview video that Oboronka and Serpens cite. The 11 and six figures come from one official’s statement relayed by Oboronka and have not been checked against any company or ministry list; a search summary indicated that a Ukrainska Pravda article of 21 October repeats them, but the page was blocked and Lens did not read it.

Image: A PBS TJ100 miniature turbojet engine, photographed 25 July 2014 by PBS Velka Bites (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Stand-in image: the engine is made by the Czech company PBS, which Reuters named as a European supplier to Ukraine; it is not a Ukrainian-made engine or a product of any of the six companies.