Russia is replacing significant numbers of its familiar propeller-driven Shahed/Geran drones with faster jet-powered Geran variants. By August, Ukrainian military officials reported roughly 2,800 jet-powered drone attacks during the month, compared with about 1,600 in July and only 350 in June. Some Russian attack formations have consisted of as many as two-thirds jet-powered drones.

The most important new weapons include the Geran-4 and Geran-5, descendants of the Iranian Shahed technology Russia began using extensively earlier in the war. Russia has transformed that imported technology into a domestic weapons program, continually modifying engines, navigation equipment, communications, warheads, and flight profiles.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies describes the Geran program as an unusually rapid cycle in which battlefield experience produces design changes that can be tested, standardized, and introduced into production within weeks.

Russia’s rapidly increasing use of jet-powered attack drones represents another major evolution in drone warfare that has defined the war in Ukraine. The jet engine changes the tactical equation for Ukrainian defenders.

Traditional Shahed-type drones are relatively slow, allowing Ukrainian mobile air-defense teams, interceptor drones, and other inexpensive weapons to engage them. Jet-powered Gerans can travel considerably faster. Some exceed 400 kilometers per hour, sharply reducing the time Ukrainian defenders have to detect, track, and destroy them…

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Russia’s enormous manufacturing capacity helps explain the increase. Ukrainian Defense Intelligence estimated in August that Russian facilities, including the huge drone-manufacturing complex in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan, had reached the capacity to manufacture approximately 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 jet drones per month.

Russia was also believed to have accumulated a stockpile of roughly 6,200 Geran-family drones. These figures are Ukrainian intelligence estimates and cannot be independently verified in full, but multiple sources document the substantial expansion of Russian drone production.

Recent jet-powered drones have operated at approximately four to seven kilometers above the ground, putting them beyond the practical reach of many Ukrainian mobile defense teams. Reuters reported in September that Ukraine was intercepting only about 60 percent of the newer jet-powered drones, compared with approximately 90 percent for propeller-driven models.

Jet-powered drones could present Ukraine with a new military and economic challenge. Using expensive surface-to-air missiles or combat aircraft against comparatively inexpensive drones can rapidly consume limited resources, while many of Ukraine’s cheap interceptor drones were designed for slower targets. Engineers are consequently racing to develop faster interceptors, improved guidance systems and AI-assisted targeting.

Russia has demonstrated that it can take an inexpensive Iranian-designed weapon, manufacture it domestically, continuously modify it and eventually produce faster versions in enormous quantities. Ukraine must now adapt its defenses again.

The result is an accelerating technological arms race in which inexpensive autonomous weapons increasingly perform missions once reserved for cruise missiles and aircraft, and in which manufacturing capacity and the speed of innovation can be almost as important as the sophistication of the individual weapon.

Drones have become the weapons of choice for both Ukraine and Russia because they are easy to manufacture and employ. Despite the ease of use and low cost to create, drones have not given either side the ability to win the war, only to prolong it. 

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