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Engineers at the facility, which when fully developed is expected to measure 100,000 square metres, are said to be using Russian industrial expertise to produce drones at a larger quantity and with a greater quality control than Iran has ever achieved.<\/p>\n
They are also attempting to update the drones and make them capable of carrying out swarm attacks in which the UAVs autonomously coordinate a strike on a target.<\/p>\n
Russia has lagged behind other major militaries with regards to drone development, hence the reason it has sought Tehran’s help to catch up.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin has used its Iranian supplied drones to attack targets deep inside Ukraine to devastating effect.<\/p>\n
UAV attacks have taken out air defence systems, as well as destroying critical power grids and most recently grain stockpiles.<\/p>\n
The prospect of Russia being able to launch regular drone strikes using hundreds of them per attack is causing serious concerns among Western security experts.<\/p>\n
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Reuben Johnson, a defence expert and adviser to the US Pentagon, told Express.co.uk that although Ukraine currently holds a drone advantage over Russia, this could all be set to change.<\/p>\n
“It will be a game changer on the battlefield if they can ship all those drones in steady numbers,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if we really know how many they can build per month.<\/p>\n
“The Russians are doing their best to try and flood the zone. And really it is the only thing they have got left.”<\/p>\n
The Iranian Shahed-136 contains many Western sourced parts – documents seen by The Washington Post reveal that over 90 percent of the system\u2019s computer chips and electrical components are manufactured in the West – mainly by US firms.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Johnson doesn’t believe that will present much of an obstacle for the Russians, despite sanctions and export restrictions.<\/p>\n
Don’t miss… <\/strong> “The Russians will do some import substitution on some of the stuff because they probably won’t be able to buy the US components – but it is fairly simple stuff to make.<\/p>\n “They will be able to get parts from China or elsewhere because none of the components in the drone are complicated.”<\/p>\n He added that most of the parts in a Shahed-136 could be found in a US garage door opener.<\/p>\n The Ukraine conflict has seen a significant increase in the use of drones, which military experts say are changing the nature of modern warfare in several significant ways.<\/p>\n Mr Johnson said the use of UAVs in Ukraine contained many lessons for NATO armies.<\/p>\n “You don’t have to always have a big huge heavy drone like the Predator that costs US$20m or a tactical aircraft that costs tens of millions of dollars dropping precision munitions on a target with a very sophisticated guidance system,” he explained.<\/p>\n “Now what you’ve got is something very cheap and you can drop weapons with pinpoint accuracy at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n “The second thing is that drones can go into places where a regular tactical aircraft might not survive – these drones are small and hard to spot, so are not always easy to shoot down.<\/p>\n “And lastly we are getting to the point where we are going to see drone-on-drone warfare.<\/p>\n “They are becoming so widespread that we are going to have countries out there with drones to kill other people’s drones.”<\/p>\n
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