The Russian Federation, in cooperation with Iran, plans to produce 6,000 “Shaheds” by 2025. This will enhance Russia’s position in the arms race.
A shahid production plant in the Alabuga special economic zone in Russian Tatarstan plans to produce 6,000 kamikaze drones by 2025. The Washington Post has internal documents confirming the cooperation between Russia and Iran in the production of “Shaheds”.
The papers cover the period from winter 2022 to spring 2023. According to them, cooperation is being implemented in the “franchise” format: Iran has shared with Russia the design documentation and its own components for the production of “Shaheds”, and the Russian side must, on this basis, recreate production at home, scale it up and solve problems with scarce components and logistics.
Iran and Russia plan to build 6,000 drones in the country by the summer of 2025.
If it succeeds, a sprawling new drone factory could help Russia maintain a dwindling stockpile of precision-guided munitions, thwart Ukrainian efforts to retake occupied territories, and dramatically boost Moscow’s position in the arms race.
The journalists also point out that despite delays and a manufacturing process heavily dependent on foreign-made electronic components, Russia has made steady progress towards its goal of producing a variant of the Iranian Shahed-136.
The documents show that the company’s engineers are trying to improve Iran’s outdated production technologies, using Russian industrial experience to produce drones on a larger scale than Tehran has reached, and with more quality control.
According to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia launched more than 1,900 “Shaheds” on the territory of Ukraine during the period of a full-scale invasion.
Earlier it was reported that the Russian Federation began to produce its own version of Iranian kamikaze drones, which attack Ukrainian cities.
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