Russia’s Jet Powered Shahed Kamikaze Drone Is A Massive Drawback For Ukraine

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A deadly Russian attack on Kyiv and different cities in a single day included using the jet-powered variant of the Shahed drone , a number of Ukrainian officers stated. The strike highlighted rising issues that these weapons are more durable to trace and intercept than propeller-driven Shaheds due to how briskly and excessive they fly. Till alternate options are discovered, these drones would require Ukraine to make use of costly and valuable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) that may price tens of millions apiece. This looming problem is one thing we predicted intimately final yr, which you'll learn extra about here .

The assault included eight jet-powered Shaheds amongst greater than 300 launched, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat said . Whereas only a small fraction of the strike package deal, these drones can evade many present Ukrainian air defenses.

“Mainly, on radar it's displayed as a cruise missile by flight parameters, as a result of the pace there will be 500-plus kilometers per hour (310mph),” he defined. “Not all signifies that we use at this time can intercept such targets.”

There are reviews from Ukrainian spotters that the RF has launched a number of jet powered Shaheds at Ukraine tonight. The sooner pace of those UAVs can defeat interceptor drones and makes it more durable for cellular gun crews to trace and shoot them down. #OSINT #UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/1v5lZ62v3J

— OSINT Intuit 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇬🇪 (@UKikaski) July 30, 2025

At the very least 13 individuals had been killed and greater than 130 injured on this newest barrage, which additionally included eight Iskander-Ok cruise missiles, Ukrainian officials state .

For the reason that evening hours, our rescuers, firefighters, medics, and all the mandatory emergency companies have been working on the websites of Russian missile and drone strikes. The Dnipro, Poltava, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv areas have been affected. The capital was the first goal of… pic.twitter.com/Cn8VMXoijE

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 31, 2025

The jet-powered drones seem like a model of the Shahed-238 drone that Iran first presented last November . In keeping with documents that were leaked in April 2023, the Shahed-238 has a spread of between 620 and 1,240 miles and might climb to an altitude of as much as practically six miles. The warhead weighs 50 kg (about 110 kilos) and its turbojet engine produced a most pace of as much as 600 kmh (about 370 mph).

Compared, the fundamental Shahed-136 reportedly has a most vary of two,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and a cruising pace of 180km/h (111mph), an analogous pace as a small normal aviation mild plane.

<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" height="561" width="1024" src="https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?strip=all&quality=85&w=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-6328021" srcset="https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=50&h=27 50w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=280&h=153 280w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=289&h=158 289w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=300&h=164 300w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=308&h=169 308w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=370&h=203 370w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=394&h=216 394w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=580&h=318 580w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=660&h=362 660w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=704&h=386 704w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=730&h=400 730w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=768&h=421 768w, https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09/shahed-238-variants.jpg?w=1024&h=561 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"/> From left to proper, variations of the Shahed-238 with (possible) radar, inertial/GPS, and electro-optical/infrared steerage modules. Iranian State Media

“Such traits make the Shahed-238 just about unattainable for each cellular hearth teams outfitted with small arms and cannon weapons and for interceptor drones with electrical motors,” the Ukrainian Militarnyi defense news outlet posited .

That evaluation concurs with what we wrote last November. “Much more superior air defenses shall be extra challenged by a lot higher-performance Shaheds. Decreased response occasions would make taking them out more durable, particularly when employed in giant numbers and when a part of layered assaults that may embrace each kinds of Shaheds, in addition to cruise and ballistic missiles.”

The howling sounds of the latest Russian “Shahed” assaults on Odesa point out that some are the most recent variant, the turbojet-powered “Geran-3”. They signify a major problem for gun-based air defenses on account of their diving pace of 700km/hr. https://t.co/mNSkKmcBOS pic.twitter.com/u9JXUICXvb

— Roy🇨🇦 (@GrandpaRoy2) April 25, 2025

Whereas not the primary use of those weapons, Russia’s deployment of jet-powered one-way assault drones comes as Ukraine is already struggling to defend towards the improved capabilities and ways of the propeller-driven Shaheds and the vastly better numbers through which they're being produced. Among the many countermeasures to this downside have been the creation and use of interceptor drones. They're primarily based on uniquely-configured first-person view (FPV) drones Ukraine has been utilizing to counter Russian reconnaissance drones for the previous yr. These counter-air FPV drones should fly sooner and better than their normal FPV counterparts used for placing floor targets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lately known as for the manufacturing of 1,000 of those interceptors a day. Nonetheless, Ukraine’s prime tech official earlier this week warned that these might not be efficient towards the jet-powered Shaheds.

Predicting that Russia “will certainly change to jet drones,” First Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov stated Ukraine wants to spice up its means to defeat them.

“We have to work on this,” he stated on the government’s national television broadcast Monday night . “They're already integrating varied options that permit Shaheds to bypass interceptors, and we're implementing different options. Due to this fact, it is a each day change of ways.”

🔴 Ukraine is being warned to organize for jet-powered Shahed drones that fly sooner, hit more durable, and are more durable to intercept. https://t.co/op7U5NyrH4

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) July 28, 2025

One famous Ukrainian military-political observer instructed that Russia used the jet drones on this assault to find out the effectiveness of the brand new interceptors.

“It's fairly doable that at this time’s use of a bunch of jet drones was attributable to testing such a method of destruction towards anti-aircraft drones,” Alexander Kovalenko stated on Telegram Thursday . “In different phrases, it's doable that the Russians had been looking for out how efficient anti-aircraft interceptor drones are towards jet kamikaze drones. This suits nicely with the present makes an attempt of the [Russians] to discover a fast resolution to counter anti-aircraft drones apart from altering the ways of utilizing Shahed-136 and finishing up their further modernization.”

Whereas Ukraine is creating interceptors that might counter the jet-powered Shaheds, creating them at scale is proving to be a problem on account of Russian assaults on manufacturing services and provide chain points, Fedorov famous.

“In parallel with scaling and discovering individuals for scaling, buying elements, companies should continually change places, work on the safety of their manufacturing,” he stated.

There's a query, nevertheless, about simply what number of of those weapons Russia could make. Whereas they're now making 2,000 propeller-driven Shaheds per month with plans to spice up that to five,000, including jet engines makes them more durable to supply.

Inside Russia’s Geran-2 drone manufacturing unit in Tatarstan

Uncommon footage reveals the Alabuga plant’s mass manufacturing of tens of 1000's of lethal kamikaze drones

Designed to assault in relentless swarms — 'Gerans' punch by way of Ukraine’s defenses — outmaneuvering even F-16s pic.twitter.com/5bghxrtRPl

— RT (@RT_com) July 20, 2025

“Such drones, in comparison with the traditional Shahed-136, have two main drawbacks that restrict their use — the complexity of manufacturing and worth,” Militarnyi noted . “As a result of their a lot larger speeds, drones want to face up to a lot better masses, in order that they will need to have a stronger physique and extra highly effective steerage drives, which should be manufactured with better precision and smaller tolerances than will be allowed on slower drones.”

The drones’ turbojet engines are one other issue. These are extra complicated and costly to supply than the small reciprocating engines utilized by the Shahed-136s. This might restrict manufacturing scalability and would pull sources away from producing extra -136s for each jet-powered by-product constructed. China, which is supporting Russia by way of offering supplies and elements for its wartime buildup, may very well be a vital facet of supplying what’s wanted to supply these engines.

With all this in thoughts, it stays to be seen whether or not Russia can scale up the manufacturing of the Shahed-238s to make them a distinguished risk. There may be additionally an open query of whether or not Ukraine will have the ability to develop interceptor drones able to mitigating that risk. As we famous earlier, that is particularly essential as a result of the price of these weapons is a fraction of the value of high-end SAM able to reaching altitudes that jets cruise at.

A single AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) fired by certainly one of Ukraine’s Nationwide Superior Floor-to-Air Missile Programs (NASAMS) which have shot down loads of Shaheds prices roughly between $500,000 and $1 million . In the meantime, Patriot PAC-3 interceptors price about $4 million a bit.

At the very least for now, it’s most probably that we are going to see jet-powered Shaheds layered-in with Shahed-136s in an try and complicate mass assaults and thus Ukraine’s means to defend towards them. However Russia clearly sees the Shahed-136 as a technique to bleed Ukraine of superior interceptors, that are more and more scarce, on the lowest doable price, which might open the nation as much as unfettered assaults by extra damaging weapons.

Contact the writer: howard@thewarzone.com

Howard is a Senior Employees Author for The Warfare Zone , and a former Senior Managing Editor for Army Instances . Previous to this, he coated navy affairs for the Tampa Bay Instances as a Senior Author. Howard's work has appeared in varied publications together with Yahoo Information , RealClearDefense , and Air Drive Instances .