For some time now, arms control experts have been picking through the shattered stays of the Iranian-built Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 kamikaze drones that Russia is using for every day attacks on Ukrainian cities. But autopsies of delta-wing drones downed in July are showing something recent: Shahed drones are being assembled in Russia, not Iran.
The Shaheds—designated Geran-2s in Russian service—are slow, with a cruising speed of 75 miles per hour. Ukrainian defenses now usually shoot down the overwhelming majority of every every day drone attack—sometimes all of them.
But Russia is playing a numbers game. Shaheds are very low cost by the standards of long-range weapons—perhaps $20,000 a bit, in comparison with million-dollar cruise missiles—and help divert fire away from fancier missiles when utilized in concert. Shaheds also can still cause considerable damage after they get through, forcing Ukraine to commit substantial resources to home air defense that would otherwise be protecting troops on the frontline.
Russia’s ability to sustain the drone terror campaign was seemingly tied to making sure a gradual supply from Iran, which falsely claims that the Shaheds were delivered pre-war. In actual fact, Iran’s traditional foreign policy establishment prefers a neutral stance within the Russia-Ukraine conflict, however the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps supports arming Russia to check weapons and receive Russian arms in return, including promised—but still undelivered—Su-35S fighters.
Russia’s initial Shahed order was for two,400 drones, and Ukrainian sources already count over 2,000 drones used on attacks in Ukraine. Nonetheless, early on, Russian sources made clear that by November 2022, there have been plans to cooperate with Iran on starting Russian factory production of Shahed drones. And that factory—situated within the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarsan in central Russia—reportedly began assembling drones earlier this 12 months.
Leaked documents indicate that Russia is spending $2 billion on this system—including $1 billion paid to Iran for a tech transfer, fairly than counting on reverse-engineering. The goal: deliver 6,000 more kamikaze drones—two-thirds of them produced entirely locally—to Russia’s military by September of 2025.
Dissecting Russia’s recent Geran-2
On August 11, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an organization that dispatches teams to research weaponry in conflict zones, published a report on two crashed kamikaze drones recovered in July. In keeping with their report, while previously recovered ‘Geran-2s’ were confirmed to be of Iranian origin, those crashed in July were different.
For clarity, this text henceforth refers back to the original Iranian drones as Shaheds and people assembled in Russia as Gerans, although Russia’s military may consult with each as Gerans, which stands for ‘Geranium.’
CAR first establishes that, much like their Iranian predecessors, the Russian-built Geran rely totally on components sourced from China, Switzerland, and america.
Nonetheless, 4 components are uniquely made in Russia that weren’t on the unique Iranian-built drones.
The skin of the brand new Geran-2 itself is different: while the Iranian drones incorporate a honey-comb pattern material between skin surfaces, the brand new Russian ones use fiber-glass over carbon fiber.
The changes are greater than skin-deep, though. The Geran-2’s satellite navigation, flight control and starter systems belong to the identical, novel production set, with parts coded respectively B-105, B-101, and B-103. These streamline the unique model’s more complicated Iranian architecture.
For instance, investigators recognized the B-105 satellite navigation unit as using a Kometa GNSS -system already identified in Russian-built Orlan-10 and Forpost surveillance drones and satellite-guided bombs, replacing the unique’s multi-component system.
Kometa relies on Russia’s GLONASS satellite network, is presupposed to be highly jam-resistant, and is available in a drone-optimal miniaturized variant weighing only 60 grams. While the Iranian Shahed incorporated 4 small, circular antennas on the baseplate of their satellite communication system, the Russia system has the antennas built right into a bump within the baseplate.
Meanwhile, the flight control unit featured recent 3D-printed plastic frames with diagonal striations onto which 4 circuit boards were attached, in addition to a metal-encased inertial measurement unit (IMU), which helps the drone’s computer estimate its position when GPS access is disrupted. The B-101 flight control unit again uses a unique setup on the Iranian Shahed, with physically separated flight control circuitry and IMU.
Lastly, the Geran-2’s B-103 starter unit is configured otherwise than that of the Shahed, and appears to have been built after March of 2023.
CAR’s report concludes: “The interior units documented by CAR within the Geran-2 UAVs indicate that the Russian Federation has distilled the principles of the Shahed series UAV, while simplifying its functioning by combining recent solutions with existing ones just like the Kometa, which have been battle tested in other weapon systems. In consequence, the Russian Federation will likely have the opportunity to supply more Geran-2 UAVs quickly to sustain its campaign in Ukraine.”
Small-minded schemes undermine Russia’s big drone dreams
The dire implications of Russia’s kamikaze drone production, nonetheless, are offset by reports inside Russia suggesting that the Geran-2 factory just isn’t as impressive as claimed. As reported in an investigation by Russian human rights group Protokol, teamed up with independent journalism outlet RZVRT,iIt relies on teenagers paid poverty wages in a forced labor scheme.
As specified by an article in Forbes, low taxes in poor Alabuga have attracted quite a few foreign investors. They left behind vacant factories after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. One factory complex, sprawling over an area akin to six football fields, was refurbished for 80 billion rubles (akin to $806 million USD) supposedly to construct “boats”—specifically, 2,000 boats per 12 months, with plans to ramp as much as 20,000 in 15 years.
This recent “boat” factory was began up by Alexey Florov, director of the Albatross LLC drone company, drawing on 50 billion rubles in startup money from state-owned VTB bank.
Apparently, “boat productions” goals usually are not yet being fulfilled, though, because the plant is currently turning out 70 Geran-2 drones monthly, with not more than 300 delivered by August. And people drones aren’t a lot produced as assembled—by teenagers ages 15 to 17 from the Alabuga Polytechnic College, working 12-hour shifts for around $350 monthly—from Iranian-supplied kits.
That is supposedly a form of volunteer work-study program—except, perhaps it shouldn’t be, considering that students who refuse to ‘volunteer’ are expelled with a advantageous akin to $1,700 to $4,200, depending on track of study. Students claim they’re sometimes made to work seven-day weeks, and have virtually no access to food during work hours.
This same institution also expels students based on their performance and participation in annual patriotic-themed paintball games.
The reports notes that teenage girls from Africa and Central Asia are also employed in low-skill service jobs within the factory after being recruited through dating apps.
Girls, in addition to male guest employees from Central Asia—often recruited based on familiarity with Farsi spoken in Iran—also can have their passports confiscated on arrival to discourage quitting.
Leaked documents attest that these employees lacked experience on the whole lot starting from learn how to operate forklifts to assembling drone components. Moreover, a report by the Washington Post states that 1 / 4 of the assembly kits supplied by Iran arrive in damaged condition, and that Russia is forced to buy smaller, less effective Shahed-131 kits too (dubbed Geran-1s or “little boats”).
Supposedly, a moderate amount of actual local production will begin in 2024, followed by some automated assembly lines, while the factory will expand 2.5 times in space to 100,000 square meters.
The Forbes article notes that this has the making of a “perfect scam,” on condition that the reliability of one-way drones just isn’t subject to great scrutiny, especially when most are getting destroyed before reaching their targets anyway. That reduces the risks of cutting costs using forced, unskilled labor. Meanwhile, the factory owner can request huge sums for long-term investments within the factory, which can not find yourself going to their supposed purpose.
Documentation shows that more experienced Russian drone-builders had turned down the Shahed-building project, hinting on the limited potential profits constructing such cut-price drones.
What do Russian-assembled Geran-2s mean for Ukraine?
Presently, one can only guess to what extent the Russian-assembled Geran-2s differ in performance from the Iranian originals. Among the recent Russian components seem potentially more efficient, and within the case of Kometa, may make the drone more accurate and resilient. Nonetheless, the manufacturing conditions don’t encourage confidence in the standard.
To be certain, if the Alabuga factory eventually manages to deliver 200 drones per 30 days, that may suffice to sustainably attack Ukrainian cities with 7 drones per day, indefinitely. Nonetheless, Russia still is dependent upon Iranian-supplied kits, until machinery for no less than partial Russian production is in place. Supposedly, it needs to be ready in 2024.
Despite Geran-2’s recent Russian components, it still relies totally on foreign components sourced from abroad, including the U.S. and China. According to the Post’s investigation, those include Texas Instruments flight control elements, accelerometers and other parts manufactured by Analog Devices (based inMassachusetts), Kintex-7 processors used for navigation and communications manufactured by AMD (based in California), and wing materials sourced from Metastar (based in China).
Many are common civilian parts, albeit under U.S. sanction, which Russia and Iran launder through a shifting network of third-party buyers (though, CAR notes the presence of no less than one seemingly military-grade component—a satellite GNSS unit specifically advertised as proof against GPS spoofing.) Thus, the vending firms usually are not themselves violating sanctions by selling these to Russia or Iran.
There’s also Iran’s Mado MD550 engine, cloned from a design by German company Limbach, which Russia hopes to eventually clone in turn.
Russia’s parts-trafficking operation could also be not possible to completely contain, and a few (perhaps most) Western manufacturers implicated in it likely don’t know where their parts are being redirected. Nonetheless, more concerted efforts to discover and block the proxies redirecting sanctioned microelectronics to Russia will be the most effective strategy to throttle Shahed production, together with production of other Russian drones.