Explainer | ‘Suicide drones’ vie for supremacy over Ukraine
- Russian forces have used Iranian-made suicide drones to strike cities across Ukraine’
- At US$20,000 apiece, the Shahed drone is a tiny fraction of the cost of a cruise missile
They are precise, small in size, able to effectively penetrate air defences when fired in groups and above all, they’re cheap.
In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, killer drones have cemented their reputation as a potent, cost-effective weapon that can seek out and destroy targets while simultaneously spreading the kind of terror that can fray the resolve of soldiers and civilians alike.
They’re also quickly surpassing missiles as the remote weapon of choice. Known as “the poor man’s cruise missile”, the flying death machines can flood any combat theatre much more cheaply.
Russia’s unleashing of successive waves of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over Ukraine has multiple goals – taking out key targets, crushing morale, and ultimately draining the enemy’s war chest and weapons as they try to take them out.
How do wartime drones work?
The Shahed drones that Russia has rebranded as Geran-2 are what are known as loitering munitions, which are also in Ukraine’s arsenal.