To see the identify of drones that Russia sends almost every day to Ukraineone wonders how inexhaustible their sources on this space are. Simply through the evening from Wednesday to Thursday, Ukrainian Air Force reported two waves of mixed assaults on Ukrainian soil utilizing 659 Shahed-136 unmanned automobiles, 19 missiles and 25 rockets. Final March, Russia launched a median of 208 drones per day.
Because the begin of 2026, the Ukrainians have seen 15,963 Russian drones of the Geran-2 sort, the Moscow-made model of the Iranian Shahed-136 mannequin, crash on their territory. In line with theInstitute for Science and International Security (ISIS), over the past fifteen months, at least 70,501 units of this sort have taken off from Russia to attempt to attain targets in Ukraine. And these staggering figures don’t even consider the opposite unmanned automobiles deployed by Putin’s military, such because the Gerbera or Itlamas fashions.
Massive-scale industrialization
The Geran-2s are due to this fact mainly Iranian drones, now manufactured beneath license instantly in Russia. “It’s fairly straightforward to elucidate that Russia has so many drones as a result of it has industrialized their manufacture on a big scale,” explains to 20 Minutes Xavier Tytelman, aeronautical and protection marketing consultant and specialist within the struggle in Ukraine. For this, a huge industrial advanced was created within the Yelabuga particular financial zone in Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation.
In line with the Middle for Technique and Worldwide Research (CSIS), evaluation of satellite tv for pc photographs “exhibits continued enlargement of infrastructure on the Yelabuga drone manufacturing facility till early 2026.” The aeronautics specialist estimates that “round 200 Geran-1 and Geran-2 sort drones go away this manufacturing facility each day”. A manufacturing facility which is now not a secret, the Russian navy tv Zvezda having devoted to it, in July 2025, a video report displaying the mass manufacturing of those machines.
In itself, the Geran-2 design isn’t an engineering folly. In line with the Phenomenal World web site, the drone’s wing is a delta wing 3.50 m lengthy and a couple of.50 m broad fabricated from fiberglass. The Geran-2 is powered by a 50 HP thermal engine geared up with a propeller that resembles a bike engine. By way of electronics, the primary variations had been so simple as potential, with an autopilot, GPS and knowledge module. The benefit is that this machine flew at practically 200 km/h and will carry a navy load of 40 kg over 2,000 km. By way of manufacturing prices, the accessible figures vary from $7,000 to $50,000 per unit relying on the gear, though with a extra recurring value of $35,000. Or round $2.5 billion from Shahed-136 despatched to Ukraine since January 2025.
Economically worthwhile, for the second
However the price of interception of those drones by the Ukrainians is especially excessive. “With Sting-type interceptors at 2,000 euros every, the Ukrainian military manages to cease greater than 90% of the Shahed-136s despatched by Russia,” assures Xavier Tytelman. To not point out the digital warfare techniques put in place by kyiv which made it potential to jam the steerage of drones, and even ship them again to the sender. “The Russians needed to considerably modify their drones to attempt to counter this by integrating new steerage techniques, which considerably elevated manufacturing prices,” specifies the professional.
Nonetheless, no less than till then, using drones is economically worthwhile for Russia. According to the CSIS“precision bombing by Shahed-136 sort drones prices Russia round $350,000 per goal hit” whereas using a Kh-22 sort missile prices “round a million {dollars} per goal hit”.
Our file on the war in Ukraine
Regardless of the whole lot, the drone struggle appears to be tipping in favor of Ukraine which, final March, “launched extra drones than Russia for the primary time”, explains the aeronautics professional. Particularly since, in accordance with him, Moscow ought to quickly run out of parts to fabricate its drones. “The chips delivered by China are of poor high quality and Russia isn’t able to manufacturing this kind of parts itself,” he specifies.
