logo
Swarms of Russian drones attack Ukraine nightly as Moscow puts new emphasis on the deadly weapon

Swarms of Russian drones attack Ukraine nightly as Moscow puts new emphasis on the deadly weapon

The long-range Russian drones come in swarms each night, buzzing for hours over Ukraine by the hundreds, terrorizing the population and attacking targets from the industrial east to areas near its western border with Poland.
Russia now often batters Ukraine with more drones in a single night than it did during some entire months in 2024, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate. On July 8, Russia unleashed more than 700 drones — a record.
Some experts say that number could soon top 1,000 a day.
The spike comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has given Russia until early September to reach a ceasefire or face new sanctions -– a timeframe Moscow is likely to use to inflict as much damage as possible on Ukraine.
Russia has sharply increased its drone output and appears to keep ramping it up. Initially importing Shahed drones from Iran early in the 3 1/2-year-old war, Russia has boosted its domestic production and upgraded the original design.
The Russian Defense Ministry says it's turning its drone force into a separate military branch. It also has established a dedicated center for improving drone tactics and better training for those flying them.
Fighting 'a war of drones'
Russian engineers have changed the original Iranian Shahed to increase its altitude and make it harder to intercept, according to Russian military bloggers and Western analysts. Other modifications include making it more jamming-resistant and able to carry powerful thermobaric warheads. Some use artificial intelligence to operate autonomously.
The original Shahed and its Russian replica — called 'Geran,' or 'geranium' — have an engine to propel it at 180 kph (just over 110 mph). A faster jet version is reportedly in the works.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that cooperation with China has allowed Russia to bypass Western sanctions on imports of electronics for drone production. Ukraine's military intelligence estimates that Russia receives up to 65% of components for its Geran drones from China. Beijing rejects the claims.
Russia initially launched its production of the Iranian drones at factory in Alabuga, located in Tatarstan. An Associated Press investigation found employees at the Alabuga plant included young African women who said they were duped into taking jobs there. Geran production later began at a plant in Udmurtia, west of the Ural Mountains. Ukraine has launched drone attacks on both factories but failed to derail production.
A report Sunday by state-run Zvezda TV described the Alabuga factory as the world's biggest attack drone plant.
'It's a war of drones. We are ready for it,' said plant director Timur Shagivaleyev, adding it produces all components, including engines and electronics, and has its own training school.
The report showed hundreds of black Geran drones stacked in an assembly shop decorated with Soviet-style posters. One featured images of the father of the Soviet nuclear bomb, Igor Kurchatov, legendary Soviet space program chief, Sergei Korolyov, and dictator Josef Stalin, with the words: 'Kurchatov, Korolyov and Stalin live in your DNA.'
Shifting tactics and defenses
The Russian military has improved its tactics, increasingly using decoy drones named 'Gerbera' for a type of daisy. They closely resemble the attack drones and are intended to confuse Ukrainian defenses and distract attention from their more deadly twins.
By using large numbers of drones in one attack, Russia seeks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and keep them from targeting more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often uses alongside the drones to hit targets like key infrastructure facilities, air defense batteries and air bases.
Former Russian Defense Ministry press officer Mikhail Zvinchuk, who runs a popular war blog, noted the Russian military has learned to focus on a few targets to maximize the impact. The drones can roam Ukraine's skies for hours, zigzagging past defenses, he wrote.
'Our defense industries' output allows massive strikes on practically a daily basis without the need for breaks to accumulate the necessary resources,' said another military blogger, Alexander Kots. 'We no longer spread our fingers but hit with a punching fist in one spot to make sure we hit the targets.'
Ukraine relies on mobile teams armed with machine guns as a low-cost response to the drones to spare the use of expensive Western-supplied air defense missiles. It also has developed interceptor drones and is working to scale up production, but the steady rise in Russian attacks is straining its defenses.
How Russia affords all those drones
Despite international sanctions and a growing load on its economy, Russia's military spending this year has risen 3.4% over 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which estimated it at the equivalent of about $200 billion. While budgetary pressures could increase, it said, the current spending level is manageable for the Kremlin.
Frontelligence Insight, a Ukraine-based open-source intelligence organization, reported this month that Russia launched more than 28,000 Shahed and Geran drones since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, with 10% of the total fired last month alone.
While ballistic and cruise missiles are faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Geran drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars — a fraction of a ballistic missile.
The drones' range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) allows them to bypass some defenses, and a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives makes them a highly effective instrument of what the Center for Strategic and International Studies calls 'a cruel attritional logic.'
CSIS called them 'the most cost-effective munition in Russia's firepower strike arsenal."
'Russia's plan is to intimidate our society,' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that Moscow seeks to launch 700 to 1,000 drones a day. Over the weekend, German Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding said in an interview that Russia aims for a capability of launching 2,000 drones in one attack.
Russia could make drone force its own military branch
Along the more than 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, short-range attack drones have become prolific and transformed the fighting, quickly spotting and targeting troops and weapons within a 10-kilometer (6-mile) kill zone.
Russian drone units initially were set on the initiative of midlevel commanders and often relied on equipment purchased with private donations. Once drones became available in big numbers, the military moved last fall to put those units under a single command.
Putin has endorsed the Defense Ministry's proposal to make drones a separate branch of the armed forces, dubbed the Unmanned Systems Troops.
Russia has increasingly focused on battlefield drones that use thin fiber optic cables, making them immune to jamming and have an extended range of 25 kilometers (over 15 miles). It also has set up Rubicon, a center to train drone operators and develop the best tactics.
Such fiber optic drones used by both sides can venture deeper into rear areas, targeting supply, support and command structures that until recently were deemed safe.
Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Russian advancements have raised new defensive challenges for Ukraine.
'The Ukrainian military has to evolve ways of protecting the rear, entrenching at a much greater depth,' Kofman said in a recent podcast.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump is ‘turning around the Titanic' on homelessness, Utah rep says
Trump is ‘turning around the Titanic' on homelessness, Utah rep says

Yahoo

time21 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump is ‘turning around the Titanic' on homelessness, Utah rep says

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday overhauling the federal government's approach to homeless policy in favor of a strategy more in line with the one being pursued in Utah. The presidential directive, titled 'Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets,' instructs executive agencies to encourage the use of civil commitment by states to move some homeless individuals into long-term institutional care. Following more than a decade of 'housing first' requirements from Washington, D.C., Trump's order makes federal grants conditional on prohibiting urban camping, abandoning 'harm reduction' tactics and meeting higher standards of accountability. The order garnered praise from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who has pushed hard to reset the state's homeless services amid record levels of chronic homelessness. But it also concerned some service providers who are skeptical that the law enforcement emphasis will be accompanied by additional funding. 'I'm grateful to the White House for making this important change,' Cox told the Deseret News in a statement. 'For too long, the federal government pushed a one-size-fits-all approach that left people on the streets and tied our hands when we tried to do better.' 'Utah has always believed that real compassion means getting people the help they need, especially those struggling with addiction or serious mental illness. This new executive order reflects the commonsense approach we've been calling for: treatment, accountability, and support — not just housing with no strings attached. It's good to see Washington finally moving in the right direction.' What will the order do? The Trump administration's new approach to homelessness will focus on 'protecting public safety' as the number of individuals experiencing homelessness reaches record highs, with nearly 771,500 people experiencing homelessness on one night in 2024, include more than 274,200 who were unsheltered. Recognizing that a significant portion of homeless individuals use hard drugs or suffer from serious mental illness, Trump's order instructs the U.S. Attorney General and secretary of Health and Human Services to remove federal obstacles to civil commitment. Civil commitment is a legal process that allows officials to court-order an individual into mental health treatment or confinement if they pose a risk to themselves or others because of severe mental illness or substance use disorder. Under Trump's order, relevant agencies will be tasked with helping state and local governments with guidance on how to adopt 'maximally flexible civil commitment' and other policies to forcibly remove those who present a threat to public safety. 'Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,' the executive action says. The White House instructed departments to prioritize grant money for states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on illicit drug use and urban camping; that require outpatient treatment or civil commitment for high-risk individuals; and that track sex offenders who are homeless. Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development are also now authorized to 'increase accountability' for homeless service providers by halting funds to supervised drug consumption programs and ending support for 'housing first' initiatives that don't promote recovery. A 'sea change' According to the lawmaker behind Utah's recent homelessness reforms, Thursday's executive order represents a 'sea change.' 'This executive order is like turning around the Titanic,' Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, told the Deseret News, 'We're going to prioritize providers and states and cities who take these innovative approaches, and recognize this is a human issue, not only a housing issue.' Over the past few legislative sessions, Clancy has spearheaded the governor's homelessness initiative by extending involuntary commitment times, prohibiting syringe exchange programs in certain areas and enhancing criminal penalties for drug possession in and around homeless shelters. These pieces of legislation — which also connected overdose survivors to county resources, expanded the state's homelessness database and codified a 'pathway to thriving' model — all passed the Utah Legislature unanimously. A separate resolution pressuring federal agencies to rescind housing-first restrictions on homelessness funding, which passed both chambers with all but two votes, is remarkably similar to the president's new initiative, Clancy noted. 'This isn't criminalizing homelessness,' Clancy said. 'This is saying, 'You need help, and as a society, we're not going to leave you out there to suffer. We're going to bring you inside and get you the best health care possible to help you heal.'' This approach requires a commitment to long-term treatment and prevention because mental illness and drug addiction drive homelessness just as much as economic factors, according to Clancy, who served as the executive director of Solutions Utah, a homeless policy advocacy group, before working as a detective at the Provo Police Department. Utah has already 'led the way' in reorienting policy conversations toward 'compassion through accountability,' and now the rest of the country 'will start moving in that same direction,' according to Devon Kurtz, the public safety policy director at the Texas-based Cicero Institute. 'The changes announced by the White House amount to a comprehensive restructuring of the national approach to homelessness,' Kurtz told the Deseret News. 'The executive order makes one thing abundantly clear: the era of recklessly inactive homelessness policy is over.' Concerns about cash But recent actions from the Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches in Washington do not inspire confidence that money will be provided to create the wrap-around services needed to accompany a law enforcement crackdown, said Rep. Grant Miller, D-Salt Lake City. Miller, a public defender who has proposed a 'homeless Bill of Rights,' said he welcomes the federal government shaking up its approach to homelessness, but the order's promise to invest in mental health treatment comes after historic cuts to Medicaid included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 'Medicaid is the No. 1 funding mechanism for us to get people into health care facilities,' Miller said. 'Without that funding that they just slashed ... I don't know that they saw the long-term connection.' Having seen the ineffectiveness of policies like civil commitment when those experiencing homelessness have nowhere to go, Miller said his greatest worry is that policies will lead to 'punishing poverty' instead of 'stabilization' through 'health care models.' On Wednesday, Cox, speaking at the 140th anniversary of the Utah State Hospital, drew attention to the fact that the number of beds for committed patients had decreased from 1,250 to 1,000 since the 1950s, even as the population increased from 700,000 to 3.5 million. Over the past two years, Clancy has initiated conversations about selling the old Utah State Hospital, and drastically expanding it into a system that spread across the Wasatch Front, but the issue has yet to gain traction. Michelle Flynn, the executive director of The Road Home, one of the largest networks of homeless shelters in the state, said Trump's order highlighted places where Utah has already made advances, but it failed to address a core issue: housing. 'The characterization of 'housing first' being 'housing only' is not correct,' Flynn told the Deseret News. ''Housing first' absolutely includes an intense amount of support services.' Flynn's worry is that a new restriction on funding 'housing first' initiatives could stop important funding for rental assistance programs that are essential for getting people off the streets so they can have their health issues addressed. The problem isn't necessarily a lack of sobriety requirements for housing, it's an unmanageable waiting list for mental health and substance abuse programs that leaves vulnerable individuals without the help they need, according to Flynn. 'The challenge is, where do we help people to go?' Flynn said. Solve the daily Crossword

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store