Last month, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was hit by an Iranian Shahed drone, causing extensive damage. Earlier in the month, the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia and the Consular office in Dubai were also hit.
The Shahed drones that hit the diplomatic outposts as well as air bases in the region were an upgraded version of the drone design sold to Russia. Moscow vastly improved several key aspects of the drone, which made it harder to track, harder to shoot down, and more deadly when it struck its target.
The Shahed-136 is Iran's drone workhorse. It has a range of about 1,200 miles and is relatively slow, cruising at about 120 MPH. They used to be easy to spot on radar from a distance, which meant almost all of them were intercepted.
To increase its chances of success, Iran would launch several dozen drones at a time, hoping to overwhelm the enemy's air defenses. These "swarm" tactics proved largely unsuccessful.
In 2023, Iran sold the rights to make the Shahed to Russia. Moscow immediately set about the task of improving them.
David Kirichenko, Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, points out that Iran's main problem was that there were 19 different varieties of the Shahed drone. “Russians did a relatively good job by concentrating on developing one platform, upgrading, and getting feedback on Shaheds,” says Kirichenko.
Those upgrades included painting the drone using black paint that contained particles of radar-absorbing carbon, making it a simple stealth coating. It was still visible to most radar systems, but the operator had less time to give a warning of its approach. It made Iran's swarm tactics more effective as more of the drones would slip through to their targets.
Other Russian improvements made the Shahed-136 even deadlier.
The original Shahed-136 has a 100-pound warhead comprising an explosive core in a metal casing—which becomes lethal shrapnel when the warhead detonates. “As the rate of interception went up, the Russians improved warheads so that if even a few got through, they would do significant damage,” says Kirichenko.
And the variations keep multiplying.
One upgraded Shahed has a precursor charge that can punch a hole through a concrete wall, and then detonate a main explosive charge inside a steel cone. This explodes inside fortified structures rather than just damaging the exterior.
Other versions add incendiaries such as chunks of magnesium-aluminum alloy, which burn at high temperature and start fires. There is also a pure incendiary version filled with a gelled petroleum mixture like napalm.
“As the rate of interception went up, the Russians improved warheads so that if even a few got through, they would do significant damage,” says Kirichenko.
In addition to adding incendiaries, the Iranians are now adding a thermobaric mixture for the high explosive, which gives a much greater blast effect.
One drone countermeasure is to jam its radar, making it nearly impossible to reach its target. Russia added a powerful anti-jamming Kometa military-grade satellite navigation system.
"Russia has repeatedly upgraded the Shahed with additional receivers known as CRPA [Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna], which can blank out jamming," notes Popular Mechanics. “The Russians have increasingly been able to combine Kometa-family CRPA with GNSS navigation [Global Navigation Satellite System], and we know the Iranians are using Kometa,” says Kirichenko.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system has proved to be very effective against Iranian drones, even when Tehran launches several hundred Shaheds at a time. The Russian upgrades have made the drones more effective, but hardly invulnerable.
Still, no group of countermeasures are 100% effective against these drones, which is why they represent the future of warfare.
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