February 7, 2023 | Defense News

How to help Kyiv go on a drone offensive

February 7, 2023 | Defense News

How to help Kyiv go on a drone offensive

Excerpt

Russia and Iran are planning to build a factory within Russia to produce thousands of Shahed-136 drones, which Moscow will use to continue its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. While the U.S. and its allies have provided Ukraine with air defense systems, Washington should also help Kyiv flip the script on Russia.

The key is to develop, mass-produce, and transfer Shahed-like drones to Ukrainian forces, enabling them to overwhelm and strike Russian targets in occupied Ukraine at the scale and frequency required to help defeat the invasion.

The Shahed-136 is an Iranian-developed suicide drone that Tehran transferred to Russia, along with its smaller cousin, the Shahed-131. It is a propeller-driven, carbon-fiber airframe that typically relies on satellite guidance, can carry a warhead of up to 40kg, and has a range of around 1000 kilometers. Most of its components are Western-madecommercially available, and not particularly complex, keeping production costs low, reportedly $20,000 to $30,000 per drone.

Perhaps due to this simplicity, Western militaries have mostly overlooked such systems — but that is a mistake.

Ryan Brobst is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Issues:

Iran Global Threat Network Military and Political Power Russia U.S. Defense Policy and Strategy Ukraine