Russia invested $3 billion in Shahed drones production - Defense News

According to official Russian statistics, a total of 900 companies are involved in the production of various types of drones in Russia, 70% of which are small and medium-sized businesses, with a total of 7,000 people employed in the industry.

In particular, for the period 2022-2025, the Kremlin has allocated at least 243 billion rubles, or $3 billion, exclusively for the development of the drone manufacturing industry.

All this explains why Russia now has so many Shaheds and other long-range drones for massive strikes against Ukraine.

The agency notes that over the next three years, the Russians plan to spend another 112 billion rubles, or the equivalent of $1.38 billion, on the deployment of all types of drones. This amount does not include the corresponding costs for drones directly in the Russian military budget.

The specificity of the situation in this case is that Russia quite often disguises its expenditures on the drone industry under supposedly civilian programs, such as programs to create drones for agriculture.

This approach has yielded results for Russia: between 2023 and 2024, the total production of drones increased by at least 2.5 times, and long-range drones by at least 5 times.

For the period 2025-2027, Russia is also allocating 21 billion rubles formally for the deployment of research and development centers in the field of unmanned technologies, which will be distributed throughout the territory of Russia.

The scale of production in the Alabuga zone should be highlighted separately, where tens of thousands of workers are involved in the production of Shahed kamikaze drones, also known as Geran-2.

Currently, the occupying company Albatros, which previously formally dealt with so-called agricultural devices, is responsible for this project.

Russia scales up drone production

According to Oleh Aleksandrov, spokesperson for the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, Russia plans to manufacture 2 million FPV drones in 2025 alone.

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, stated on national television that the Russian army is already integrating various solutions that will allow Shahed drones to bypass Ukrainian interceptor drones.

He noted that Russians will soon begin to switch to jet drones, and therefore, Ukraine already needs to work on solving this problem.

For more details on how Shaheds have become smarter and what Russia has built into Iranian drones, see the article by RBC-Ukraine.

At the same time, yesterday, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said that on July 30, up to 8 such jet-powered Shaheds were spotted over Ukraine.