Numbers of more than 1,600 Russian drones are fixed on Shahed-136 with "K" markings, and more than 2,600 – on drones with "Ы" markings.
How quickly Russia is stockpiling Shahed attack drones
In the Russian Federation, there is a fairly active and large-scale accumulation of Shahed-136 type aircraft-projectiles, which the enemy produces independently from kits and buys them ready-made from Iran.
This is reported by Defense Express .
From its own sources, the publication learned about the current numbers in Shaheds, which were shot down today, February 11, at night, when the enemy attacked with 45 aircraft-projectiles, of which 40 units of the Air Force were shot down.
In general, in this attack, the Russian Federation used Shaheds marked "K", the numbers of which exceeded 1600, as well as "Ы" with numbers over 2600.
We will remind that "K" is used to denote Russian-made drones, which have their own design features compared to Iranian drones. And the "Ы" marking corresponds to an Iranian-made drone, but it differs from the first version of the Geran-M by the installation of a Russian navigation system.
For the first time, information about their use appeared at the beginning of July 2023. Thus, in total, during this period, the enemy produced more than 1,600 such UAVs, and another 2,600 units were received from Iran in ready-made form, or assembled from kits already received in the Russian Federation.
That is, from the conditional July 2023 to almost mid-January 2024, the enemy launched more than 3,200 Shaheds, in addition to the first version marked "M", which is no longer fixed.
It should be noted that the rate of their production in the Russian Federation as of the beginning of 2024 is estimated by GUR MOU to be within 330-350 units of Shahed-136. At the same time, this number is not constant, because there are problems with the stable acquisition of all nodes and aggregates, so the indicators can "jump" every single month.
In addition, the use of enemy Shahed drones is obviously affected by weather conditions.
If you look at the statistics for the last months, then, according to the reports of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in December 2023, the enemy launched more than 600 air-to-air missiles, which is a record number. And in January 2024, the enemy — 274 Shahed, and in 11 days of February — 171 units.
Does Russia feel the lack of "Shaheeds"
The latest Russian attacks using a small number of "Shaheed" do not indicate that the occupiers feel a lack of kamikaze drones of Iranian development.
It says absolutely nothing, that's for sure. It cannot be claimed that there is a shortage ("Shakhediv", — ed.). How can there be a shortage, if there were 500 in September, then hundreds are used again every month, said Air Force spokesman Colonel Yuriy Ignat.
As an example, the spokesman cited New Year's Eve, when the Russians launched about 90 kamikaze drones over Ukraine, most of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defense forces.
Today we decided to use four. Sometimes it even happens that one or two are used at night to test our capability and are launched as a reconnaissance target to see how we will respond to this or that threat.
Yuriy Ignat
Spokesman of the PS of the ZSU
