Russia collaborating with Iran to build 6,000 drones by 2025: WP
Iran is helping Russia create thousands of drones (Photo: Getty Images)
A leak of classified documents reveals that Moscow, with the assistance of Iran, is advancing towards its goal of mass-producing drones that it could potentially use to strike Ukrainian cities, according to The Washington Post.
According to the article, engineers from a once-thriving industrial center deep within Russia were engaged in secretive planning. The team was covertly tasked with building a production line that would operate around the clock, manufacturing self-destructive drones.
The program's security was overseen by a retired Russian FSB employee. Highly skilled workers had their passports confiscated to prevent them from leaving the country. In correspondence and other documents, engineers used encrypted language: the drones were referred to as "boats," their explosive devices as "bumpers," and Iran, the covert technical assistance provider, was referred to as "Ireland" or "Belarus."
Russia's billion-dollar arms sales agreement with Iran was made in November, 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. Its goal is to produce 6,000 drones in the country by the summer of 2025. This number would be sufficient to address the chronic shortage of frontline UAVs in the Russian army.
Assembling Shahed drones in Russia
Previously, the U.S intelligence revealed that Russia had begun using domestically produced Shahed drones.
Additionally, since September 2022, Iran has been supplying the necessary components for assembling the UAVs.
In June, the coordinator of the US National Security Council at the White House, John Kirby, stated that Iran was actively assisting Russia in building a Shahed drone production plant, which was expected to be completed by the end of the following year.
