Where Does Russia Get Its Seemingly Endless Supply of Drones? Key Points and Summary – Russia sustains its massive drone attacks on Ukraine by domestically producing a modified version of Iran’s Shahed drone, now known as the Geran-2.
-Despite sanctions, Moscow sources necessary electronic components through third countries like Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan, allowing it to manufacture these low-cost drones in large numbers.
-The core Russian strategy is to overwhelm and exhaust Ukraine’s more expensive air defense systems with “kamikaze” swarms.
-Experts suggest that to counter this, Ukraine must not only defend its skies but also target Russia’s drone production facilities and international supply chains, a difficult task for a nation with limited resources.
Russia and the Drones in Ukraine
WARSAW, POLAND – Russia’s military has launched thousands of missiles and drones at Ukraine – hundreds per night – over the past month.
These attacks continue to increase in both numbers and tempo.
This campaign, which seems to be designed to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population, has reached the point where the number of drones being launched on any given night includes more drones than any attack since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Since the war began, the US and its allies have imposed one sanctions package after another on Russia. Most of these are designed to prevent Moscow from acquiring the many components, propulsion units, guidance systems, etc., necessary to maintain its drone production.
However, despite all these efforts, the Russian drone factories appear to be churning out these unmanned aerial vehicles in increasingly greater numbers.
So, as a Ukrainian colleague whose company designs anti-drone systems asked me rhetorically, where does Moscow’s endless supply of drones come from?
“We’ve really seen a surge in the use of these long-range drones,” Fabian Hoffmann, a military technology expert at the University of Oslo, told the US media outlet Fox Business.
“They’re easy to manufacture, basically a wooden [air frame] construction with lightweight material and a warhead inside it. The biggest bottleneck in production will be procuring the conventional explosives, but the satellite navigation system, the inertial measurement unit, these things are fairly easy for Russia to produce or to get in the international markets,” he explained.
“The drones are not the same high military grade that we are used to in the West, but it is good enough,” he said.
The Beginning of the Drone Wars
Russia initially began its drone production when it acquired models of the HESA Shahed drone variants from Iran.
After seeing what considerable levels of destruction these drones could inflict and at such a low price the then-Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, decided to establish a licensed production program with HESA, one of the largest Iranian state-run aerospace firms.
This program was a large-scale effort, initially involving Iranian manufacturing engineers and drone experts traveling to Russia to set up production lines and then establish the supply chain Moscow needed to import the components and other inputs required.
In time, the Russians began tinkering with the design and the configuration of the original Iranian version evolved.
The Russian-modified variant of the Shahed is called the Geran-2 and is capable of being modified and upgraded regularly.
Many of these modifications are innovations designed to enhance the drone’s immunity to Ukrainian electronic warfare.
“There have been at least six fairly major adaptations that the Russians have made to the Shahed drones, including just painting them black instead of white so it is more difficult to shoot down at night,” Hoffmann said.
“Russia is now the Shahed expert, even though the drone comes originally from Iran,” he concluded.
Flooding the Zone
These drones that Russia is launching in such massive numbers against Ukraine are much slower in airspeed and carry a much less powerful warhead than any conventional missiles.
But their primary mission is to flood the airspace over Ukrainian cities and numerically overwhelm any defense systems.
In order to take down these drones, Ukraine is forced to use often ground-launched interceptor missiles that cost far more than the Shahed or Geran drones they are destroying.
These missiles not only carry a hefty price tag, but Ukraine’s air defense batteries can deplete their supply long before Moscow runs out of Shaheds to send against them.
Hoffmann explained there is an alternative to just acquiring more missiles or developing other countermeasures to the Russian drones once they are airborne. That would be to change to a strategy of attacking the drone launch sites, targeting Russia’s defense industries, specifically those enterprises that manufacture the parts for the drones. Those parts range from explosives, computer chips, and other advanced electronics.
“Trying to deal with the drone attacks just using missile defenses is a losing game. Europeans are heavily bolstering air missile defense capabilities, but it is not enough. Russia is expanding its offensive capabilities faster, and offensive weapons are cheaper to produce than defensive [ones],” he said.
Another possible route to shut down Russian production is to sanction third countries from where Russia has been able to circumvent international restrictions, which is where many of the drone component parts are sourced from.
Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan have been identified as primary pass-through sites for transferring higher-level sanctioned components to Russia, says Hoffmann.
He cautions that sanctions can ultimately harm the countries imposing them by disrupting trade and global supply chains, and increasing costs, he continued.
“Sanctions against Russia are hurting us [in the West] to some extent. But if you start sanctioning every other country that does business with Russia, it would hurt us even more,” Hoffmann said.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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