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The war in Ukraine has entered a stage of tactical saturation where volume, rather than sophistication, has become The decisive weapon. Russia It has increased And much the use of Shahed drone swarms in Russian territory under the Geran denominationmanaging to pierce Ukrainian defenses at an unprecedented rate. How much? A video has revealed what is about to happen.
Swarm war. I remembered The Financial Times that, according to official data, between April and June 2025, the percentage of drones that managed to impact their objectives reached 15%tripling the success rate of the previous three months. It We count: On the night of July 9, he marked a record when Russia launched 728 Drones and Shahed, along with Kinzhal and Iskander Balistic missiles, in a clear attempt to saturate and overflow the Ukrainian aerial defenses.
This tactic demonstrates that the massive use of cheap platforms can overcome expensive and sophisticated defense systems, exposing a critical point: the imbalance between cost and effectiveness in modern combat.
Gera-3 and a lethal machine. The technical improvements introduced by Moscow in their drones have raised their effectiveness notably. Among them stands out The Geran-3a vturbocharged arizing capable of reaching speeds of up to 800 km/h in chopped, which makes it almost invulnerable to the traditional anti -aircraft weapons mounted in trucks, such as heavy machine guns.
In addition, current shahed can fly to greater altitudeavoiding the optimal impact areas of terrestrial defenses. This change, rather than reflecting Ukrainian weakening, shows the Russian capacity to quickly adapt its attack doctrine and exploit the weaknesses of the adversary. The Night wavespersistent and combined with more sophisticated missiles, they seek to wear not only the technical defenses of Ukraine, but also the moral of their population and force political concessions through exhaustion.
A horror factory. And this is where Russia’s last announcement appears. Moscow He has revealed to the world which describes as its greatest and more Secret drone plant: Alabuga’s industrial complex, in the Tartaristan region, where Geran suicide drones are assembled. The plant, located in the Yelabuga Industrial Park and officially launched in 2023, appears In a video of the Russian military channel Zvezda, who does not spare to show adolescents operating work stations and manipulating technological pieces in assembly lines.
According to Timur ShagivalievExecutive Director of the Special Economic Zone of Alabuga, the installation has multiplied by nine its planned production, reaching a monthly rate of 5,200 units Between attack drones and lure models, which converts it, he says, “the largest plant of its kind in the world.” The scene, no doubt, is disturbing: teenagers building weapons designed to kill a great distance, while the Kremlin presumes a relentless manufacturing capacity.
Geran-2, cheaper. If the third version is the most advanced, its predecessor, the direct version of the Shahed-136 Iranian, is the drone Factory Key. We talked about a 3.5 -meter device with a 50 kg eye, a cruise speed of 300 km/Hy a range of 1,800 km. Its estimated cost of between $ 35,000 and $ 49,000 makes it an affordable massive destruction tool, ideal to saturate enemy defensive systems.
Compared to western interceptors such as Patriot missile (valued at several million dollars per unit) The Geran-2 embodies an asymmetric disruption: cheap, resistant, easy to manufacture in mass and with a devastating psychological effect.
New strategic threshold. To the Russian drone industry, with that Alabuga factory At the head, news has been added that has put Ukraine alert. Russia prepares to achieve unprecedented attack capacity: the simultaneous launch of 2,000 drones against kyivaccording to the German general Christian FreudingHead of the Working Group for Ukraine of the Ministry of Defense of Germany.
This figure, which completely redefines the scale of the unmanned war 2 million FPV and 30,000 long -range drones or lure, According to reports of Ukrainian external intelligence (Szru).
Overwhelmed defense. Ukraine, meanwhile, has responded to all this machinara with a combination of classic techniques In interceptor drones. In fact, Zelenski recently announced a according to Eric Schmidtformer executive director of Google and current leader of Swift Beat, for the co -production of hundreds of thousands of drones, including interceptors.
According to the Ukrainian president, these devices are already Broving dozens of Shaheds In each attack and begin to demonstrate good results, with hundreds of confirmed eliminations in just one week. In any case, to be effective against the new flight profile of Russian drones, these interceptors must reach speeds of at least 200 km/hy altitudes of up to 6 km, capacities that allow to counteract saturation attacks that easily overflow the Ukrainian mobile units armed with technology from the mid -twentieth century.
Adaptation without truce. The scenario is part of a dynamic of continuous evolution Between offensive and defensive: A cycle of innovation and counter-innovation that accelerates exponentially. Andrew Turner, former Air Marshal of the Royal Air Force and current director of Saibre Capital, summed up in the Times This dynamic as a “persistent staircase and countermeasures that in Ukraine is renewed every 14 days.”
Thus, the conflict has become an accelerated laboratory of unmanned air war, where the decisive factor is no longer the number of fighters or tanks, but the ability to produce and adapt swarms of autonomous machines at a faster pace that the enemy can respond.
A single color. In short, the drone war In Ukraine it has reached a new level of complexity. On the one hand, Russia has managed to integrate successfully volume, speed and saturation to create a constant threat that escapes traditional air defense schemes. On the other, Ukraine, with foreign aid, begins to build a defensive layer equally decentralized and reactive based on interceptor drones.
In this confrontation of swarms, the balance does not lean simply by the number of weapons, but by the speed with which each side Learn, adapt and scale Your production. The aerial battlefield has become an industrial and algorithmic competition, where software, distributed manufacturing and AI are replacing cannons and missiles as decisive tools of military power.
And on that new board, the war is taking a single color.
Image | Zvezda/Rutube
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