AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
- Western analysis says Russia is pushing for a capability of launching 2,000 Shahed drones in one salvo.Ukraine has been barraged with growing numbers of one-way attack drones, reaching up to 728 a night.With the Kremlin surging Shahed production, Ukraine and its allies will need cheaper air defenses.
The Kremlin is building its way toward a reality where it can soon launch 2,000 Shahed one-way attack drones in one night, according to two recent Western assessments.
Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding, the German defense ministry's commander of planning and command staff, said in a Bundeswehr interview aired on Saturday that Russia was "striving to further increase production capacity" of its Shaheds.
"They want to expand the drone attacks we just talked about," Freuding said. "The ambition is to be able to deploy 2,000 drones simultaneously."
"We need to consider intelligent countermeasures," he added.
In a separate assessment on Sunday, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote that Russia's per-night use of Shahed drones increased by 31% each month in June and July.
"ISW assesses that Russia may be able to launch up to 2,000 drones in one night by November 2025, should this current growth trend in drone usage continue," its analysts wrote.
However, they added that Russia likely wouldn't be able to consistently sustain 2,000 drone launches per day.
Still, such capacity would be a stark jump from the fall of 2024, when Russia was launching roughly 2,000 drones a month at Ukraine.
Shaheds are long-range Iranian exploding drones with estimated ranges of 600 to 1,200 miles, depending on the design. This year, Russia has continually increased the number of Shaheds and decoy drones it launches a night at Ukraine, recently peaking at 728 uncrewed aerial vehicles in one salvo earlier this month.
Russia's Shahed production on the rise
As these numbers surge, Ukraine and its allies fear that Russia's nightly attacks will overwhelm Kyiv's air defenses.
"There will be 1,000 units per day and more. I'm not trying to scare anyone," wrote Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, wrote on July 4 about Russia's Shahed capacity.
The Shahed is of Iranian design, but Russia has also been manufacturing its own versions of the drone locally in the Yelabuga Special Economic Zone since early 2023. Western governments and analysts say some vital parts for production come from China.
In April, analysts from the International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote that satellite imagery showed that the area of Shahed-producing facilities has doubled since 2023.
"Despite a steady flow of Shahed-136s from Iran, Moscow is heavily investing in its own production facilities," the IISS analysts wrote.
Ukraine has periodically tried to strike Yelabuga with its own long-range fixed-wing drones, but it's unclear if the factories have sustained any significant damage.
Kyiv's military intelligence also said in February that it had found production markings on some attack drones that mention the city of Izhevsk, possibly pointing to another production line there.
NATO and Ukraine need cheaper defenses
Freuding, the German general, said that against such quantity, it would be nonsensical to rely on expensive Western interceptors such as the Patriot system to destroy Shaheds.
"We essentially need countermeasures that cost two, three, four thousand euros," he said. By comparison, a single Patriot system costs the US government $1.1 billion, and one of its missiles can cost about $4 million.
Ukraine now uses a multilayered air defense network against Shahed waves, including surface-to-air missiles, air-launched missiles, and mobile fire groups that try to shoot down the Iranian drones with machine guns. A locally made interceptor drone, the Sting, is becoming popular, too.
But Russia also fires ballistic missiles in tandem with the Shahed drones, and these require more advanced, long-range air defenses such as the Patriot to intercept. Kyiv is trying to persuade the US and its allies to provide it with more Patriot systems.
