Russia is planning to mass produce a version of Iranian attack drones that President Vladimir Putin's forces could use to bombard Ukrainian cities for years to come, a report says.
An independent UK-based research group, Conflict Armament Research, inspected the wreckage of two drones found in Kyiv in July that appeared to be Iranian Shahed-136s but which had electronic modules that matched those from Russian surveillance drones, The New York Times reported.
The single-use drones, called Geran-2, appear to be Russian-made versions of the Iranian drones, the researchers said.
Russian forces began using Iranian-made drones to strike cities across Ukraine last year.
The small, propellor-driven weapons can be packed with explosives that detonate upon impact, which is why they are often referred to as "kamikaze" drones.
"This new version will allow Russia to sustain its attack patterns and its reliance on these one-way drones," Damien Spleeters, who led the group's investigation, told The Times. "So the fact that they make it domestically will allow them to continue to rely on it."
A Russian engineering team has been secretly tasked with building a production line to operate around-the-clock building attack drones at an industrial site 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region, The Washington Post reported. Its aim is to domestically build 6,000 drones in the next two years.
The Geran-2 drones are built with different materials to the Shahed, and they also appear to have been adapted to better suit Russian needs, per the Times report.
The Russian drones are made with fiberglass over layers of woven carbon fiber, which is different from the honeycomb type of material used in the Iranian drones, The Times noted.
The performance of the Russian-produced weapons has been "variable"
The two drones that Conflict Armament Research inspected also contained electronic modules called Kometa in their guidance sections — these have previously been found in Russian drones.
Ukrainian news outlets also published photos of the drones that they say appear to have been made in Russia.
The UK's Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update on Wednesday that the performance of the Russian-produced weapons has been "variable" and that Ukraine has been able to neutralize the majority of them.
Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military drones at the Center for Naval Analyses, told The Times that analysts have been waiting to see if Russia could make its own versions of the Iranian drones.
"We've now seen in Russian media that these are, in fact, domestic assembly, and there are changes introduced in the design based on their own needs," he said.
"This is indicative of Russians trying to come up with a drone that's just as capable as the original Shahed that could then be scaled up in significant quantities," he added.
"The ultimate goal for them is to maintain the capacity while making them more effective and actually driving down the costs," he said.
After Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Western states imposed strict sanctions to curtail Russia's access to foreign-made technology.
But Russia has continued to find ways to acquire many of the military supplies it needs.
"Our findings also raise questions about export control and counter-diversion measures, as we see a lot of the components we found are made after February 2022," Spleeters told The Times. "So if they can keep on getting them, there's an issue, obviously."
