Russia Is Replicating Iranian Drones and Using Them to Attack Ukraine

Military analysts have been watching to see whether Russia would be able to make its own one-way attack drones since the Iranian weapons entered the conflict, according to Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military drones at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research organization based in Virginia.

“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,” Mr. Bendett 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.”

“The ultimate goal for them is to maintain the capacity while making them more effective and actually driving down the costs,” he said.

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