Shahed Drones

What it is

The Shahed-136 is a loitering munition designed by Iran's HESA (Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company), a subsidiary of the Aviation Industries Organization, under direction from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The airframe is a delta-wing pusher-propeller design: 3.5 metres long, a 2.5-metre wingspan, 200 kg gross weight, powered by a Mado MD550 four-cylinder piston engine. It cruises at roughly 185 km/h with a maximum range of around 2,500 km and carries a 40 kg blast-fragmentation warhead. Unit cost runs between US$20,000 and US$40,000. The platform is not a precision weapon; it is designed for saturation, launched in swarms of dozens or hundreds to exhaust interceptor stocks faster than defenders can replenish them.

Russia renamed the type Geran-2 (Geranium-2) for operational use. Beyond Russia, Iran has supplied Shahed variants to Houthi forces in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria, making it the most proliferated expendable strike drone outside US or Chinese production.

History

HESA introduced the Shahed-136 into Iranian military service in 2021. Russia first deployed the drone against Ukraine in September 2022, drawing on stocks transferred from Iran. Between 2022 and 2025, Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics supplied an estimated 7,000 Shahed-136 units to Russia, per Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates.

In early 2023, Russia's JSC Alabuga, a state special economic zone in Tatarstan, signed a US$1.75 billion franchise deal with Iran to domestically manufacture Geran-2 variants, targeting 6,000 units by September 2025. Alabuga substituted GLONASS-compatible navigation units and Chinese electronic components for Iranian originals, accelerating output from roughly 7 units per workday in 2023 to around 20 by early 2024. By late April 2024, Alabuga had delivered approximately 4,500 of the contracted 6,000. By mid-2026, monthly Geran output exceeded 5,500 units.

Current state

As of July 2026, the Geran-2 campaign against Ukraine is the largest sustained loitering-munition offensive on record. Russia launched 4,335 Geran-type drones in April 2026 alone, a single-month record, following a single-night peak of 948 drones on 23-24 March 2026. The روسيا تطلق 74 صاروخا و496 مسيّرة على كييف في واحدة من أكبر هجمات الحرب, a combined 74-missile, 496-drone barrage over 11 hours on 2 July 2026, demonstrated Gerans integrated with Kinzhal and Iskander ballistic missiles to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences simultaneously.

Russia deployed the first jet-powered variant, the Geran-5, on 11 January 2026. Powered by a Chinese Telefly turbojet, 6 metres long with a 5.5-metre wingspan, it carries a 90 kg warhead and can be air-launched from Su-25 aircraft. The jet variant flies at significantly higher speed and altitude than the piston original, compressing Ukrainian defender reaction time. Russia has targeted roughly half of Geran output shifting to jet power by end-2026.

Relationships

The Geran-2 supply chain links Iran's IRGC-backed defence industry to Alabuga state production, with Chinese component manufacturers bridging Western sanctions chokepoints. Following the 2 July 2026 Kyiv strike, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas proposed sanctions on 5 entities and 1 individual involved in Geran component supply. The UN Security Council has documented Iranian drone exports to Russia as inconsistent with Resolution 2231, the JCPOA implementation framework.

On Ukraine's side, the saturation campaign has driven a counter-drone arms race. Ukraine's Lima and Pokrova EW systems claim more than 20,000 Shaheds and missiles disrupted by GPS/GLONASS spoofing, while حرب شاهد الروسية تبلغ حجماً قياسياً وتتحول إلى محركات نفاثة tracks how jet variants stress that electronic-warfare architecture by flying faster and higher than spoofing geometry was designed to handle. Houthi use of Shahed variants in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has separately disrupted commercial shipping.

What to watch

• Jet-Geran share of Alabuga monthly output and whether Ukraine's EW and kinetic intercept chains keep pace before Russia reaches its 50% jet-power target.
• EU and US secondary sanctions on Alabuga and Chinese component suppliers, and whether those sanctions alter Chinese export behaviour.
• Further Shahed-variant proliferation beyond Russia: Ethiopia, Sudan, and Venezuela have received or been offered variants, per UN panel and United Against Nuclear Iran reporting.
• Whether Iran's role as Russia's primary loitering-munition supplier reshapes Iran's broader posture as a global arms exporter.