Russia plans to produce 32,000 combat drones each year by 2030

Europe, News January 9, 2024 , by IRIA No Comments

Russia’s state-owned media agency has reported that Moscow plans to produce more than 32,000 combat drones by 2030. Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov announced that the country is aiming to fulfill 70% of its demand with domestically produced drones.

“The annual production volume of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – excluding educational UAVs – is planned at 32,500 units,” Belousov told TASS in an interview. “At the same time, it is planned that the share of Russian UAVs will make up 70% of the market in this type of UAV,” he added.

Backed by the Russian government and announced at the end of December 2023, the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems” project aims to boost domestic drone production for various industry sectors. The government plans to allocate a $7.7 billion budget to the project until the end of the decade, Belousov said during his interview.

Last year President Vladimir Putin said that UAVs could be used across virtually all industries, not just the military. According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Russia produced around 6,000 units of commercial and military drones during 2023.

Moscow has been widely using combat drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles for its military operations in Ukraine since February 2022. Following the sanctions imposed by the Western world, Russia has been relying upon Iranian-made cheap Kamikaze drones and UAVs.

*^{Video grab of Russian Orion drone destroying the Aidar command post of the nationalist battalion. (Video grab by IRIA)}*

Swarm drone attacks

Russia’s swarm drone attacks initially confused the Ukrainian air defense systems as they were harder to detect than conventional missiles while shooting down cheaply-made drones with expensive air defense missiles was not the most cost-effective strategy.

In recent times, Ukraine changed its air defense strategy to develop more cost-effective ways to counter Russian drones, that are easily detectable due to their noisy petrol engines, slow speeds, and lack of stealth capabilities.

Ukraine is now using FPV (First Person View) drones, small UAVs originally meant for commercial and civilian use but modified for the battlefield, as a cheap but effective option for reconnaissance and attacks.

Ukraine said in December 2023 it planned to produce more than 11,000 medium, and long-range attack drones in 2024, as well as one million FPV drones, widely in demand on the front line.

Ukraine FPV Drone — *^{A Ukrainian serviceman of the 35th Separate Marines Brigade operates an FPV drone at a training ground. (Image Credit: Sofiia Gatilova/Reuters)}*

Around the start of the new year, Russian forces launched a record 90 Iranian-made Shahed drones over Ukraine in a drone storm attack. Ukraine claimed to have intercepted at least 87 of the Russian drones, but the attack resulted in 7 deaths in the Black Sea port city of Odesa.

In a similar attack in the western city of Lviv, Russian attacks severely damaged a museum. University buildings in the town of Dubliany were also damaged, although no casualties were reported.