Colonel Yuriy Cherevashenko has become the head of a new direction in the Air Force: he will head unmanned air defense systems and at the same time become deputy commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The order on the appointment was signed by Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal.
Colonel Yuriy Cherevashenko has become the head of a new direction in the Air Force: he will head unmanned air defense systems and at the same time become deputy commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The order on the appointment was signed by Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal.
According to the Office of the President, Cherevashenko was tasked with scaling up the use of interceptor drones in the Air Force and strengthening air defense with the latest weapons. The report states that the officer was involved in the creation of the first group of mobile rapid response air defense brigades and has recently been directly working with interceptors.
Public data indicates that Cherevashenko has a long-standing background in the air defense forces. In 2023, he was among the organizers of the formation of the first 30 mobile rapid response brigades, which strengthened the counteraction to enemy air targets on the ground. In open documents of the Kyiv Regional Council, he appears as the deputy commander of the air defense forces of the Land Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Cherevashenko started in the radio engineering unit, then worked at the headquarters of the Air Defense Forces of the Ground Forces, and with the beginning of massive drone attacks, he switched to a practical direction: mobile air defense brigades and interceptors.
The media also noted that in 2024, the colonel led a separate air defense group to protect the airspace over the capital.
The appointment comes against the backdrop of structural reform: in September, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrsky announced the creation of a new branch of the armed forces, namely the Forces of Unmanned Air Defense Systems. It was created to supplement the anti-aircraft missile forces and aviation with mobile units with interceptor drones to increase the density and flexibility of defense, especially over critical infrastructure and large cities.
Russia is actively using strike UAVs and guided aerial bombs, which forces Ukraine to increase the «echeloning» of air defense: from long-range SAMs to mobile groups and specialized interceptors. The institutionalization of a separate command of unmanned air defense systems is designed to accelerate the development of tactics, centralize training and logistics, and integrate new technologies into the overall air defense system.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Russian forces began using guided jet-powered aerial bombs to strike Ukraine. However, Ukrainian air defense systems are capable of shooting them down.
