![]() At the scale Ukraine needs to produce drones at, simply buying commercial parts is inefficient and a fundraising campaign would compete with funding streams for other kinds of drones. In short, therefore, Ukraine’s partners – including the UK – need to supply Ukrainian manufacturers with components for OWA drones. The UK’s promised drones might also fit the bill, but there are no signs that they will be delivered anytime soon. Attacks on Russian military and industrial targets on the scale of Russia’s Shahed campaign requires hundreds of systems in the coming year, not dozens. Nevertheless, for these strikes have practical and symbolic importance, there needs to be a consistent tempo and sufficient mass to challenge Putin’s air defences and damage the war effort. Targeting oil facilities is no joke – the Russian state relies on oil revenue and its leaders will divert precious air defense assets to defend them if they feel that there’s an enduring threat. With a sufficient range, a large inventory, and clever targetters, Ukraine can start forcing Russian defenders to protect every airfield, depot, refinery, and anything else expensive. Yet OWA drones will soon become a far bigger problem for Russia. While OWA drones are by no means invincible – they often lack the ability to change targets once in flight and are not as hardened to air defence or electronic attack – Russia’s 1,200 Shaheds have terrorised Ukraine for months, threatened their electrical supply, and now threaten grain exports cost an estimated $60 Million USD, far less than Russia spent on their inventory of advanced missiles. Western-made commercial technologies to build drones are becoming widely available, even to sanctioned countries like Russia and Iran, and commercial satellite services reveal the exact coordinates of potential military and industrial targets. ![]() Technology has made precision weapons like OWA drones cheap. Fifty kilograms may be a smaller warhead than most conventional missiles, but the effect is significant against soft targets like depots, radars, and oil facilities. Drones with a 2-metre wingspan or above can deliver 20 to 50 kilograms of explosives hundreds of miles. OWA drones sit at the intersection of lethality and sustainability. Ukraine launched high-profile drone attacks of their own, but cannot yet scale up production to match what Russia can buy and soon make. Russian officials are eager to expand their campaign and move production from Iran to new factories in Russia. Since late 2022 Russia bought and launched more than 1,200 Iranian-made Shahed drones at everything from substations near Kyiv to grain silos in Odesa, Reni, and Izmail. Attack drones are a permanent feature of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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