From 10 Drones a Month to Nearly 100,000 — Inside Ukraine's Largest Drone Manufacturer | Marko Kushnir, General Cherry

September 3, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In December 2024, a single Ukrainian unit shot down more than 1,000 Russian drones using one type of interceptor. That unit was using drones made by General Cherry, a company that started in 2023 producing 10 drones per month and now has the capacity to manufacture nearly 100,000 per month. Marko Kushnir, the company’s director of communications, explains how Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers are racing to keep pace with a war that has no front line — only a kill zone.

The Kill Zone and the Drone Economy

The traditional concept of a front line no longer exists in Ukraine. Kushnir describes the battlefield as a single large kill zone composed of smaller zones that stretch from one kilometer to twenty kilometers deep. In these zones, drones rule everything. Armored vehicles and cars cannot move safely; soldiers can only travel on foot if they are lucky. This reality drives the demand for drones at an industrial scale.

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What you'll learn

1 Timestamped Navigation Outline
2 (00:00) **Introduction: Ukraine's Drone Manufacturing Landscape** - Guest Marko Kushnir, Director of Communications at General Cherry, one of Ukraine's largest drone manufacturers, is introduced
3 (01:02) **General Cherry's Product Line and Mission** - The company produces multiple drone types including interceptors, fiber-optic drones, and standard FPVs
4 (03:04) **The "Kill Zone" Concept** - The modern battlefield has no fixed front line, only a kill zone extending 1-20 kilometers where drones dominate
5 (04:32) **Company Origins and Symbolism** - General Cherry's name and branding come from the Zaporizhzhia region's cherry orchards
6 (06:01) **Ukraine's Drone Industry Scale** - Hundreds to thousands of drone companies operate in Ukraine, from garage startups to major manufacturers
7 (07:48) **In-House R&D and Military Collaboration** - General Cherry develops all technology internally with daily battlefield feedback from military units

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In 2023, General Cherry started making 10 drones a month. Today they're approaching 100,000. Marko Kushnir, communications director of one of Ukraine's top-five drone manufacturers, joins Craig Smith for one of the most operationally specific conversations available about what drone warfare looks like at industrial scale, from the daily feedback loops with front-line units that drive product iteration, to the $2,000 interceptor drone that can destroy a $100,000 Shahed, to the on-device AI targeting model that guides an interceptor to impact at 70% accuracy after the operator activates it and steps back.

The conversation's most important insights are structural rather than technical. Marko describes the fundamental asymmetry of the conflict with unusual precision: Ukraine's decentralized, startup-driven ecosystem produces new technologies faster than Russia's command economy, but Russia's vertical industrial structure copies and scales those technologies faster than Ukraine can stay ahead. He also expresses genuine alarm about fully autonomous AI drones, not from an ethical standpoint but from a practical one: any autonomous capability Ukraine deploys will be in Russian hands within weeks, making full autonomy a danger Ukraine would share immediately with its enemy.

The episode closes with his most far-reaching argument: just as the internet era created a cybersecurity industry that every organization eventually had to build, the drone era is now beginning, and every government, police force, and major corporation will soon need a drone security department to function safely in a world where drones are as common as smartphones.

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