Iran has shipped its first plane loads of combat drones to Russia, part of a deepening plan between the two countries for Moscow to use the weapons against Ukrainian forces.
Biden administration officials said Russian cargo planes have flown at least two kinds of Iranian drones to Russia that the U.S. expects Moscow to use in Ukraine to carry out missile strikes, surveillance and electronic warfare.
Transport planes departed Iran on August 19 hauling at least two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, both capable of carrying munitions for attacks on radars, artillery and other military targets.
The U.S. expects Tehran to deliver hundreds of drones to Russia as Moscow tries to counter the flow of military support that the U.S. and its allies are giving to Kyiv. Ukrainian forces have launched a major counteroffensive in an effort to reclaim territory in southern Ukraine that Russian seized early in the war.
The delivery underscores how Iran has emerged as one of the world’s most prolific purveyors of drone technology, which has helped its allies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, U.S. and Israeli officials have said.
So far, however, U.S. officials said Moscow’s new military supplies from Tehran are proving to be unreliable. U.S. officials said that the drones have experienced numerous failures, but they declined to provide more details.
In early tests by the Russians, the Iranian drones experienced numerous failures, the officials said.
“There are a few bugs in the system,” said an allied security official whose government closely monitored the transfer. The official agreed to discuss sensitive intelligence on the condition that his identity and nationality not be revealed. “The Russians are not satisfied,” the official said.
The initial delivery of the Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series drones to Moscow is believed to be the first installment of a planned transfer of hundreds of Iranian UAVs of various types, Biden administration officials said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Mohajer 6
The Iranian drones could help fill a crucial gap in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. Russia, which has 1,500 to 2,000 military surveillance UAVs, has relatively few attack drones of the type that can deliver precision strikes against targets deep inside enemy territory. Ukraine, by contrast, has used Turkish-made combat UAVs to wreak havoc on Russian armour, trucks and artillery since the early weeks of the conflict.
Russian planes flew to an Iranian military facility to pick up the drones over several days in mid-August. The allied security official said the initial shipment included two models of Shahed drones, the Shahed-129 and Shahed-191, as well as the Mohajer-6. All are considered to be among Iran’s top-of-the-line military drones, designed for attacks as well as surveillance.
The deal was negotiated over several months by a team led by Brig. Gen. Seyed Hojjatollah Qureishi, the chief of the supply and logistics division of Iran’s Defense Ministry, and Russia’s military attache in Tehran, the security official said. Under the arrangement, Iranian technical experts traveled to Russia to help set up the systems, and Russian military officers underwent training in Iran, the official said.
While Iran has supplied military drones to armed proxy groups such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, it has rarely, if ever, tested such models against the kinds of sophisticated electronic jamming and anti-aircraft systems used in Ukraine, said Michael Knights, a military and security expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“These Iranian drones have not operated in a sophisticated air-defense environment before,” Knights said. “The closest they’ve come to that is with [Houthi strikes against] Saudi Arabia or against U.S. bases in Iraq, and they have generally not done well. So I wouldn’t be surprised that, in a more intense environment like Ukraine, that they would have some problems.”
Rob A. Lee, a Russia military expert and a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute said:
“One of Russia’s biggest problems right now is its air force can’t interdict things behind Ukrainian lines. They don’t have many long-range UAVs that can strike targets behind enemy lines. So they can’t prevent Ukraine from reinforcing its positions and restocking supplies . . . And a lot of their UAVs are getting shot down or lost to electronic warfare.”
While Russia is apparently seeking to ramp up domestic production of such drones, it is hampered by Western sanctions and export controls, which have stanched the flow of semiconductor chips essential to producing such weapons, analysts said.
“They’re relying on the black market, but the needs are vast. You need chips for everything from precision-guided missiles to aircraft to tanks, not to mention nonmilitary items in their own domestic industries. So there’s lots of demand in Russia for chips, and if Russia can procure fully made drones from Iran, it doesn’t need to use its precious supply of black market chips to make its own drones.”
said Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington-based think tank.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described news articles about the drones as “informational attacks,” in comments to reporters Tuesday. “As for our relations with Iran, as you know they are developing dynamically,” he said.
Iranian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Photo: Shahed 129
Sources: Wall Street Journal; Stars & Stripes;