On Sept. 7, Russia launched its largest aerial strike of its war against Ukraine—860 Shahed drones and missiles in a single night. The targets weren’t limited to Ukraine. Two days later, 19 of these exploding drones crossed into Poland, forcing NATO fighter jets into the sky. A similar incursion against Romanian airspace followed just days later. These were not isolated incidents. They marked a broader pattern in which Moscow has made cheap, mass-produced exploding drones the centerpiece of its aerial campaign.
Over the past three years, Russia has scaled up its one-way attack drone launches significantly. At the start of the war, Moscow launched on average 150 to 200 of these drones per month, according to Ukrainian Air Force data analyzed by Center for Strategic and International Studies. Today, it produces and deploys nearly 5,000 monthly, averaging more than 1,000 per week. In 2025 alone, Russia has launched more than 33,000 Shahed drones and their variants against Ukraine. This number was only 4,800 for the same period last year. Meanwhile, cruise and ballistic missile launches have stayed relatively steady, as shown in the chart below.
The shift clearly shows Russia’s evolving strategy which includes saturating the air defenses, pressuring city centers, and forcing Ukraine to give up. Moscow thinks that it will win the war not through decisive tank offensives and precision strikes, but through endless attrition with low-cost, high-volume weapons.
Scalability is key to Russia’s low-cost drone strategy. Shahed drones were initially designed in Iran—the name literally translates to “witness” in both Persian and Arabic—and imported in the early stages of the war. Today, they are produced inside Russia at multiple sites, including factories in Alabuga and the Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant (IEMZ Kupol).
To sustain its output, Russia taps into international supply chains for electronic components, and it reportedly continues to use smuggled Western electronics as well. Manufacturing expanded further in recent months, especially at the IEMZ Kupol facility, where advanced variants such as the Shahed-238 loitering munition are being developed, according to reports.
This production capacity allowed Russia to innovate, develop different variants, and add the decoy systems to their launches based on battlefield feedback. The most advanced Geran-3 variant, for example, is said to have a range up to 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles). That capability means that Russia is not only able to send 19 of these drones to Poland, as it did recently, but could also strike even farther west. Targets in the Baltic states and parts of Central Europe are now within reach, and Russia has the capacity to launch these drones against multiple countries at once.
The challenge for the West is not the difficulty of intercepting these drones but doing so at a sustainable cost. Shooting them down with NATO fighter jets or sending expensive interceptors, as Poland did, may demonstrate resolve, yet it is financially unsustainable. This is because the cost to shoot them down with missiles or flying fighter jets is asymmetric. Russia can produce these loitering munitions for somewhere between $20,000 to $50,000, and some decoy versions cost even less. Defenders cannot afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to eliminate each one.
Ukraine has learned this in the field. Most of these Shahed(Geran) drones are being shot down by Ukrainian mobile anti-aircraft gunners since they are slow. Other cheaper options, such as interceptor drones and energy lasers, are becoming the primary choice. Western countries will need to follow a similar path if they are to withstand large-scale drone attacks.
Drones have played a central role for Ukraine as well. Early in the war, Kyiv’s drone arsenal was modest, relying heavily on Bayraktar TB2s and off-the-shelf quadcopters for reconnaissance and artillery spotting. Over time, however, Ukraine moved beyond reliance on foreign platforms and developed an ecosystem of its own. Through initiatives such as its “Army of Drones,” Kyiv has mobilized volunteer workshops, private firms, and state-backed programs to produce a diverse fleet of unmanned systems. It has built domestic production capacity, and now it is said to be capable of producing 5 million drone variants annually.
For Ukraine, pursuit of autonomous unmanned systems is the main vision for compensating troop shortages in Ukraine. First-person view (FPV) drones are good examples of this. On the front lines, FPV drones have become the workhorse, since they function as cheap precision-strike systems against tanks, artillery, and dugouts. Often paired with reconnaissance drones overhead, FPVs allow Ukrainian brigades to shorten the kill chain and strike within minutes of spotting a target. To counter Russian jamming—a strategy that disrupts the communication between drones and their operators—Ukraine has begun deploying fiber optic drones that are connected to their operators by cables, making them immune to electronic warfare and capable of flying 10 km (6.2 miles) to 15 km (9.3 miles). These innovations help offset shortages in artillery shells by replacing costly shells with targeted drone strikes.
Ukraine has also invested in scaling up production for longer-range systems. Unlike Russia, which directs salvos at city centers to maximize psychological pressure, Ukraine’s strategy focuses more on strategic infrastructure—oil refineries, depots, and military bases. In fact, Ukraine appears to be successful in that. Just recently, it was able to hit Russia’s largest oil refinery, which was 1,400 km (870 miles) away from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine aims to choke Russia’s logistics and weaken its economy—but the vastness of Russian territory makes these operations more difficult to sustain.
For Russia, the scalability of drone production has redefined its battlefield strategy. Russia is launching these drones in two forms: routine strikes and mass salvos. Routine strikes involve smaller, daily launches of loitering munitions, designed to keep steady pressure on Ukraine. Mass salvos, on the other hand, are far larger and coordinated and often paired with cruise and ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defense.
Our analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Relations revealed that, in 2022, a typical salvo involved around 100 drones and missiles and came once a month. By mid-2025, the average had risen to nearly 370 munitions, with salvos occurring about every eight days. At times, Russia has launched such large barrages at intervals as short as two days.
These peak salvos follow a clear logic in Russia’s battlefield strategy. The primary aim is not the destruction of specific targets but the psychological toll on the defenders and civilians. When Russia sends more than 500 one-way attack drones in a single night, the barrages often hit city centers such as Kyiv, spreading fear and uncertainty. Residents do not ask how many drones were shot down. What they experience are the sirens, the explosions, and the sleepless nights. That atmosphere of exhaustion and dread is exactly what Moscow is trying to create, weakening civilian morale and testing Ukraine’s resolve.
These operations also give Russia a way to expand the conflict both vertically and horizontally. Inside Ukraine, mass drone strikes allow Moscow to pressure multiple regions at once. Beyond Ukraine, as seen in the case of Poland, they enable Russia to extend the war’s footprint into NATO territory. Some decoy systems do not carry payloads, and Moscow can deny responsibility when they lose track of them farther west of Ukraine’s borders.
From the weapon-success perspective, the strategy looks inefficient. Shahed drones are slow and have a low probability of successfully hitting and destroying the target. Their precision is often poor, and their speed is below 200 km per hour (134 mph). For much of the war, their success rate was below 10 percent.
Yet, effectiveness cannot be reduced to raw numbers. By sustaining constant pressure, Moscow aims to erode morale, drain defensive resources, and force Ukraine’s supporters to question the long-term costs of backing Kyiv. Even if most drones are destroyed, the Shahed remains cost-effective because its purpose is attrition rather than accuracy.
Russia has also improved its drones over time. Early versions flew low, around 1 km (0.6 miles) or 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in altitude, and they were easier to intercept. This is visible in neutralization rates. Earlier, with limited launches as well as less saturated defense and early variants, the hit rate of these drones daily was around 7 percent to 8 percent. Newer variants are now difficult to intercept in traditional ways, and with recent drone swarming tactics, their hit rate climbed toward 20 percent in recent months.
The math matters. Even if accuracy had never improved, launching hundreds of drones ensures that more get through simply by weight of numbers. With both volume and effectiveness rising, the share that penetrates defenses is now far greater than in earlier phases of the war.
This campaign is consistent with Soviet and Russian military thinking. Early strategists long ago anticipated that advances in sensors, unmanned systems, and precision weapons would force armies to disperse and fight in fragmented, nonlinear ways, and that noncontact warfare would replace traditional massed battles.
The Shahed(Geran) drone fits this model precisely. It allows Russia to attack from afar, saturate defenses, and impose steady costs without relying on decisive ground maneuvers. It is attrition warfare in drone form, blending coercion with exhaustion. And Russia can do it in a very economical way.
By launching swarms night after night, Moscow has created a modern version of noncontact warfare that theorists such as Vladimir Slipchenko would immediately recognize. These drones are not intended to deliver tactical breakthroughs. Instead, their purpose is to grind down Ukraine and impose costs on its supporters.
The post Russia Has a New Low-Cost Battle Strategy appeared first on Foreign Policy.
