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

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 days ago

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.