A Shahed With “Whiskers” Just Appeared in Ukraine—And They Have a Very Specific Purpose

Russia appears to be turning its jet-powered Shahed drones into specialized weapons for hunting Ukraine’s power grid, adding unusual whisker-like rods designed to trigger the warhead when the drone touches something as thin as a high-voltage cable.

The previously unseen modification was highlighted by Defence Blog on October 1 after Ukrainian volunteer Serhii Sternenko published footage of the drone.

The rods extend forward from the nose of the aircraft and appear to function as contact triggers, allowing the warhead to detonate the instant they touch a wire.

“And this is a whiskered Shahed with a specialized warhead for attacks on high-voltage power lines. Most likely the whiskers were added to close a contact and initiate the warhead when hitting small targets such as power lines,” Sternenko wrote.

According to Defence Blog, a similar configuration has been observed at another location, suggesting the modification may not be limited to a single experimental drone.

The reasoning behind the design is straightforward. A conventional impact fuse works best when the drone hits a solid object. A power cable, however, presents an unusually difficult target: it is thin, suspended in open space and may simply be clipped by the aircraft without producing the kind of impact needed to detonate the warhead.

A transmission tower poses a similar challenge because much of the structure consists of open latticework.

The forward-projecting rods effectively make the drone’s contact area much larger, allowing a cable to trigger the weapon before the fuselage passes through it.

And the “whiskers” appear to be only one part of a broader Russian effort to adapt jet-powered drones specifically for Ukraine’s electricity network.

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Category

War in Ukraine

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A day earlier, presidential defense technology adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov reported that Russia had used a specialized shaped-charge cutting warhead, known as KRSN, on a jet-powered drone for the first time.

The payload is designed not primarily to create a large blast, but to cut through strong metal structures.

According to Beskrestnov, the KRSN consists of a 40-kilogram, or 88-pound, main charge accompanied by four additional strike modules.

That makes it particularly suited for severing the steel legs of high-voltage transmission towers or structural elements of bridges.

Earlier, reports emerged that nearly 100 foreign-made parts have been recovered from jet-powered strike drones used during attacks on Kyiv and other regions, according to Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukraine’s presidential commissioner for sanctions policy.

The identified parts include hardware produced in the United States, China, Taiwan, European countries, Germany, and Japan.

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