Startup led by young Ukrainian engineer demos interceptor for U.S. Air Force

Thermopylae Aerospace, a California-based interceptor drone startup launched in June 2025 by a young Ukrainian engineer, said it completed a successful end-to-end demonstration of its SPART interceptor at Edwards Air Force Base, briefing senior Air Force Test Center leadership on the system during the “Game of Drones 26-2” event in mid-July.

“At 412th Test Wing, Edwards Air Force Base, during Game of Drones 26-2, our lean team completed a successful end-to-end demonstration of SPART, a novel interceptor platform designed to counter big drones asymmetrically,” said Yehor Balytskyi, founder and chief executive officer of Thermopylae Aerospace.

Balytskyi is a self-taught engineer who left Ukraine at 17 following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. He founded Thermopylae in June 2025, and the company raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding that November from investors including Naval Ravikant and Ukraine-focused venture firm UA1, growing from a two-person team to roughly five employees.

SPART is a pneumatically launched, foldable quadcopter interceptor built to counter larger drones, including Group 2-class threats such as Shahed-type attack drones, according to the company. It uses thermal guidance, reaches speeds up to 350 km/h (217 mph) and has a target flight time of up to 20 minutes, with a partial-reuse feature that allows recovery if the interceptor misses its target. Balytskyi said the system can be integrated onto UAVs, ground vehicles, maritime vessels and manned vehicles as host platforms, and is designed to be produced in high volumes at low cost.

Yehor Balytskyi, founder and chief executive officer of Thermopylae Aerospace, briefs Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, commander of the Air Force Test Center, and Chief Master Sgt. Sevin Balkuvvar, Air Force Test Center command chief, during the “Game of Drones” event at Edwards Air Force Base, California, July 16, 2026. Photo by Robert Cloys

“We built it from the ground up in a very short period of time,” Balytskyi said. “Proud of the team for getting us here.”

Balytskyi told the trade publication Janes in July that most Western drone interceptors rely on rocket motors and expensive components, making them costly to fire against cheap drones, and that manually piloted interceptor systems used in Ukraine depend heavily on individual operator skill rather than a scalable, integrated system. Thermopylae is building SPART as a lower-cost alternative meant to be produced and deployed at higher volumes than existing interceptor systems, according to Balytskyi.

Game of Drones is a recurring test event hosted by the 412th Test Wing’s Experimental Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base, in partnership with the Defense Contract Management Agency. The inaugural event ran Dec. 8-12, 2025, on the base’s Rogers Dry Lake, bringing together industry partners and Air Force Research Laboratory engineers for live testing of small unmanned aircraft systems and counter-drone hardware. The event supports the Department of War’s Drone Dominance initiative, which calls for accelerating the testing, acquisition and production of unmanned systems, and results can factor into placement on the department’s sUAS Blue List, a mechanism for rapidly vetting small drone systems for military use.

Balytskyi told DroneLife in July that Thermopylae was working within an Air Force evaluation window expected to last three to four months, after which the company hopes the Pentagon will approve a contract to procure SPART.