John Ismay
NY Times, Aug. 10, 2023
“The ultimate goal for them is to maintain the capacity while making them more effective and actually driving down the costs.”
Russia has begun making copies of attack drones it acquired from Iran last year and is using them in combat against Ukrainian forces despite sanctions imposed to cripple the country’s weapons production, according to a report issued Thursday by a weapons research group.
The researchers traveled to Kyiv in late July and inspected the wreckage of two attack drones that were used in combat in southeastern Ukraine. Both appeared to be Iranian Shahed-136s, but they contained electronic modules that match components previously recovered from Russian surveillance drones, according to the report.
Additionally, the materials used to build the two drones and the internal structure of their fuselages differed greatly from those known to have been made in Iran, the researchers said.
The investigation was conducted by Conflict Armament Research, an independent group based in Britain that identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition used in wars. It is the group’s 10th published account of its work in Kyiv, where researchers have analyzed Russian military hardware collected on the battlefield by Ukraine’s security services.
Uncrewed aerial vehicles have been used by both combatants in the war. Some are reusable and designed for surveillance missions, built like small airplanes. Others are commercially available quadcopters that can spy on enemy troops or attack them by dropping small grenades from above.
The Shahed, however, and others like it are so-called one-way attack drones or kamikaze drones — small propeller-driven aircraft that do not need a runway to launch, and explode on impact.
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