British intelligence believes Russia aims to produce suicide UAVs independently in the coming months, but is still dependent on supplies from Iran.
"Russia almost certainly has deployed domestically produced suicide drones (UAVs), based on the Iranian Shahed series design. Domestic production would allow Russia to secure a more reliable supply of suicide UAVs," the British Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence report today.
British officials believe that the original suicide UAV systems purchased by Russia from Iran are of unclear combat effectiveness and that Ukraine has disabled most of them. This is considered the driving force behind Moscow's efforts to improve this UAV line with domestic technology and components.
"Russia is likely to aim to become self-sufficient in the supply of suicide UAVs in the coming months. However, it will still have to rely on some components and finished weapons imported from Iran via the Caspian Sea before achieving this goal," the report said.
The Russian Defense Ministry and Iranian officials have not commented on the information.
A Russian suicide UAV prepares to crash into a target in the capital Kiev, Ukraine, in late 2022. Photo: AFP
The suicide UAV is designed to be used once in a raid behind enemy lines. Unlike traditional large UAVs that can launch missiles, drop bombs, and return to base after a raid, the suicide UAV only launches a single attack.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month that Russia had used nearly 2,000 Shahed-136/131 suicide drones purchased from Iran to attack Ukraine since September 2022. Russia says it uses the domestically produced Geran-2 model, but Kiev and the West say Moscow actually uses Tehran's UAVs but repaints them to make them look like Geran-2s.
Tehran announced that it had transferred a series of Shahed aircraft to Moscow before the war broke out.
White House spokesman John Kirby said in June that the US had information that Russia had received the necessary supplies from Iran to build a plant to produce the Shahed-136/131 series, adding that the facility could be operational early next year.
However, the UK-based Conflict Armament Research (CAR) published a report last week showing that Russia has successfully copied and improved the Shahed model and started producing its own version of the Geran-2. The Geran-2 line appears to have been operational since March and the aircraft has participated in many raids on targets in Ukraine.
Vu Anh (According to Reuters )
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