Russia is launching a faster Geran-5 at Ukraine that satellite jamming may no longer knock off course, a monitoring channel says

Russia has fielded a Geran-5 variant that can steer by images of the ground below without satellite navigation, the Ukrainian monitoring channel Polkovnyk GSh reported. A second Russian jet drone also filmed a strike on Kyiv live and relayed control signals to the drone that hit it, presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, said.

Russia's air war on Ukrainian cities has turned into a race of adaptations. As Ukraine got better at catching slow drones, Moscow made them fly faster, and now its jet drones also see for themselves and talk to each other.

A Geran-5 that reads the ground

The channel labels it the Geran-5 K5. Its DSMAC-type module corrects the drone's route by matching images of the ground below against stored references, like the one on Russia's Kh-101 cruise missile. The K5 also has a new fuselage, the channel said.

Because it flies faster than the Geran-4 and the standard Geran-5, it is often mistaken for Dan-T cruise missiles, the channel said. Official Ukrainian sources have not confirmed the K5 designation or the DSMAC-class system, Militarnyi noted.

The base Geran-5 carries a warhead of about 90 kg and cruises at 450–600 km/h, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) found in January. It relies on a jam-resistant Kometa-M12 satellite navigation system and a mesh modem. HUR's component list includes no terrain-matching optics.

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One drone struck, another filmed and relayed

Russia published footage of its 25 September strike on the Inkom business center in Kyiv, which killed four people, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The video was filmed from high above the target and fueled speculation about how it was shot. Beskrestnov dismissed the theories.

"Let me say right away: no secret satellites, no FPV from a Shahed, no Russian agents, no mysterious drones," Beskrestnov wrote.

Russia hit the building with a Geran-5, a jet-powered drone that functions as a small cruise missile. At the same time, a jet Shahed flew into Kyiv and circled the target at almost 3 km altitude, he said. It served as a mesh relay, passing radio signals to the Geran-5. It also filmed the attack and transmitted the video immediately. The Shahed then left Kyiv and destroyed a McDonald's warehouse.

Mesh networking lets Russian drones relay control signals through one another. Russia already flies its jet Shaheds under mesh control.

Status-6, an X account that monitors the war, reposted the Russian video and suggested a Gerbera-type drone had filmed it. Beskrestnov identifies the camera as the second jet Geran.

"This is certainly a complex Russian drone operation that requires precise calculations and coordination between pilots. I'm even sure they were sitting next to each other," he wrote.

New sensors across the Geran family

Russia's jet Shaheds sometimes switch off their engines before an attack and glide toward the target, Beskrestnov wrote. It is still unclear whether that is a malfunction or a deliberate move to approach slowly and precisely. In the same post, he showed a Geran-4 Seeker, a jet drone that hunts for targets with a front camera. It carries two mesh antennas on its tail, one pointing down and one up.

With colder weather, warm objects will become prey for Geran Seekers equipped with thermal cameras, Beskrestnov warned. He posted a thermal image of a locomotive that a Shahed operator filmed from 5–6 km away.

Ukraine catching up again

Ukraine's interceptors are catching just over half of Russia's jet drones. Beskrestnov confirmed on 19 September that a Ukrainian jet-powered interceptor works and has enough speed margin for different targets, calling it "functional, real, and ready for refinement." Separately, drone maker Wild Hornets says its STING interceptor is heading toward mass production after its first kills against jet Gerans.

Speed alone will not catch them, Beskrestnov argued earlier. Interceptors need machine vision to lock on and guide themselves in.

The threat is in the skies daily. On 28 September, a Russian jet drone hit the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv in the middle of the working day, killing a woman.