Russian Shaheds Now Have Jet Engines, Armor, AI, And Armed Escorts

Russia’s Shahed campaign against civilian targets is intensifying. Last night a wave of the drones struck Odessa, destroying a four-story residential building and damaging several others, including a 23-story apartment complex which caught fire forcing 600 people to evacuate.

Ukrainian intelligence warns that Russian attacks may escalate from a few hundred Shaheds a night to a thousand. At the same time Russia is rapidly evolving both the technology and the tactics of its low-cost attack drones.

Hardware Upgrades: Jets And More

Made under license from Iran, the Shahed-136 is a simple design with a two-cycle piston engine driving a propeller and making a noise like a lawnmower, and an airframe made of carbon fiber cloth and honeycomb so basic that a report from thinktank RUSI notes it “can effectively be manufactured by any DIY handyman.”

But a succession of modifications have made the Shahed more deadly. Earlier we saw a black ‘stealth’ coating and several new warheads including a thermobaric version for demolishing buildings and to maximize casualties, as well as jam-resistant navigation and other upgrades.

In a more significant modification some Shaheds are now appearing with turbojet engines. Iran showed off the Shahed-238, a jet-powered version of the Shahged-136 in 2023 it is not clear whether this is the same drone. In fact there is some confusion as the Iranians have also paraded a jet-powered version with the label Shahed-136 in September 2024, so there may be several different designs. Analyst Shahryar Pasandideh, who has studied this in detail, suggests there are at least three versions.

While there had been rumors of jet powered Shaheds in Ukraine for some time, we have only recently had confirmation from wreckage recovered – like this report from Defence Express of June 11^th.

The jet powered Shaheds are very much faster– perhaps 300 mph against 120 mph – giving less warning time and making them much harder to shoot down. They streak across the sky with a loud whine very unlike the ‘moped’ sounds of the basic version; this video appears to be a jet-powered Shahed attack from June 18^th.

The turbojet version is likely to be significantly more expensive and difficult to make, so we may see a high/low mix of the two types to make defense more complicated.

Other hardware upgrades have also appeared. According to one unconfirmed Ukrainian report from the commander of a Mobile Defense Unit tasked with shooting down Shaheds, some are now armored:

“Recently, the Russians began to protect the engine compartment of Shaheds with armor plates, and the fuel tanks were moved from the wings to the inside of the hull,” states the commander in a Telegram Post. “Now it is not enough to shoot through the wing – you need to hit either the aileron or the engine.”

In a third development, a downed Shahed was recently retrieved with a camera and machine vision system powered by a commercial AI processor. Again, such developments had been rumored but not confirmed until Ukrainian electronic warfare authority Serhii ‘Flash’ Beskrestnov posted details with images on his Telegram channel on June 18th.

This system is likely to enable vision-based navigation. This would remove the reliance on satellite navigation, which has been something of an Achilles Heel. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, last month 36% of the incoming Shaheds were brought down by jamming their navigation. Getting a visual navigation system to work reliably is not a simple task – hence this recent technology challenge from the German government – but if the Russians have succeeded they can make their Shaheds jam-proof and the number getting through may rise significantly.

Tactics Upgraded

At the same time, the Russians are changing attack drone tactics. As previously noted, having initially come in at low altitude to avoid radar – sometimes flying down river valleys – Shaheds now come in at high altitude to stay out of the reach of anti-aircraft guns until they reach their target. They then dive on their targets from altitude. This tactic now comes with a twist.

According to Alexander Kovalenko writing in Odessa Journal, Shaheds now pause midway during the descent:

“Now, they tend to descend to 1 km altitude, stabilize the airframe, and then initiate a dive,” says Kovalenko. “This is because accuracy from 2.5 km significantly reduced, while at 1 km altitude the deviation is within acceptable limits for the Russians.”

Unfortunately this does not make them easier to shoot down.

“This stabilization phase is short, but during it, mobile groups equipped with weapons such as DShK or Browning M2 [i.e. heavy machineguns] are unable to successfully engage the kamikaze drone,” says Kovalenko.

Previously we have seen Shaheds mixed in with smaller decoy drones to distract defenders. And in some regions close to the border, the escorting drone may be a weapon.

“Often, the Shahed groups fly in pairs with the Lancets, which attack the air defence units when they are within range – primarily in the Sumy and Kharkiv directions,” notes the same post by an air defence commander quoted above. “For the Lancet, this is a priority target.”

The Lancet loitering munition is a smaller attack drone. A camera in the nose enables the operator to locate and attack targets on the ground, typically tanks and artillery. The maximum range is perhaps 40 kilometers, so Lancets can only support Shaheds in attacks in border regions, but their presence could make things considerably more dangerous for the mobile air defense units.

It is easy to see how this sort of defence-suppression capability could develop, especially now that FPV carrier drones are starting to see action.

Facing The Ever-Evolving Threat

Russia has been using the Shahed for less than three years and has only been making them itself for about half that time. But, unlike legacy systems such as cruise and ballistic missiles, the drones have adapted rapidly to counter defensive measures. This mutation rate is perhaps the biggest lesson of the long-range drone war: the threat is constantly evolving

Last month Ukraine downed 82% of incoming drones and is continuing to field innovative, low-cost protective systems including interceptor drones and AI-controlled gun turrets. But, as President Zelensky noted at the G7 summit, additional funding from allies to speed the development and production process could save a lot of lives. And not just in Ukraine; long-range drone attacks are likely to be a feature of any future war.

Iran may cease to be a supplier of such technology. But Russia has taken over and Shaheds and their clones will proliferate.

Meanwhile in Ukraine the Shahed attacks, and civilian deaths, continue.