Russia Is Now Using Iranian ‘Swarming’ Attack Drones In Ukraine — Here’s What We Know

Images from Ukraine provide the first photographic evidence of Iranian-made drones used by Russia. The pictures, taken by an Ukrainian officer and posted on Twitter, appear to show the remains of a Shahed-136 loitering munition or kamikaze drone downed by Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of Kupiansk, Kharkiv Oblast. There have been rumors of the weapons for some days but this is the first visual evidence.

Loitering munitions differ from cruise missiles in that they are able to fly around looking for targets rather than being programmed before launch, and travel at comparatively slow speeds – the Shahed-136 flies at about 120 mph. Some are able to return to base if they do not find a target, though not this one.

Back in July the White House stated that Russia was in acquiring hundreds of military drones from Iran, that training was already ongoing and deliveries might have commenced. Iran has developed a substantial military drone industry over the last forty years: prevented from importing technology, they have built up a significant capability, producing a huge variety of different types. Iran has notably exported its drones to further its own aims, such as supplying Hezbollah with drones to attack Israel and the Houthis with drone technology to hit Saudi Arabia.

Little is known about the Shahed-136 It is produced by Shahed Aviation Industries who have a long history of drone development, including the successful Shahed-129 – a Predator lookalike – the Shahed-149 which is Iran’s answer to the larger Reaper and the Shahed-181 and -191 stealth drones based on technology reverse-engineered from a U.S. RQ-170 captured in 2011. Iranian drones may not be original, but they are effective enough to cause major concern to the U.S. and Israel.

The Shahed-136 is big for a loitering munition, said to be around 200 kilos/440 lbs., with a 12-foot wingspan and a range estimated at more than a thousand miles, but these figures are provisional.

The loitering munition brings the potential to hit precision targets from long range, a capability Russia needs urgently. At present Russia carries out long-range strikes with its dwindling stocks of unreliable ballistic missiles which have a reported failure rate of up to 60%.

Iran showed off the Shahed-136 in 2021 during the annual Great Prophet exercise in which a launcher, a container on the back of a truck, launched five of the drones with rocket boosters in quick succession. (If this is a standard container, then the wingspan is significantly less than 12 feet and more like 8).

According to the Iranians, the Shahed-136 is extremely accurate; their videos show it hitting multiple targets with high precision. Such videos are easily faked, but the strikes at Abqaiq were notable for their consistent accuracy. The terminal guidance system is unknown, but may include some form of optical or infra-red imager able to recognize and lock on to targets rather than simple GPS guidance.

While some have played up the Shahed-136’s swarming capability, there is no evidence of actual swarming technology allowing the drones to work together as a coordinated team (although Iran is known to be working in this area). Rather the idea seems to be to carry out saturation attacks to swamp air defenses with so many targets that some get through.

Other Iranian customers may already have used the Shahed-136 in action. U.S. analysts identified wreckage recovered after a drone hit the tanker M/V Mercer Street in 2021as coming from a delta-winged drone loaded with military explosives, and Houthi rebels used similar drones in their dramatic attack which set the Saudi oil processing plant at Abqaiq ablaze in 2019, leading some to call the Shahed-136 ‘Aramco Killer’ or ‘Beast of Aramco.’ If one was used to attack the M/V Mercer Street — a moving target — then clearly the Shahed-136 does have some from of terminal homing.

The remains in Ukraine had Cyrillic markings identifying the munition as “M214 Geran-2” (‘Geranium-2’), so the weapons may have been customized for the Russians to some degree rather than supplied from existing stocks. This may indicate the Iran-Russia deal has been in the pipeline for some time.

The new Iranian loitering munitions pose a potential threat to Ukraine, by threating command centers, artillery, air defense, logistics and other military targets, as well as civilian infrastructure. The slow, low-flying weapons may be fairly easy to shoot down by a coordinated defence system though, assuming it can cope with multiple targets at the same time. It may be an encouraging sign that the first sighting a a Shahed-136 was one brought down by defenders. Time perhaps to step up exports of those air defense systems that Ukraine has asking the U.S. for since the outset of the conflict.