The Shahed has become a new reality of war, one that the US military and Gulf allies have failed to counter. Ukraine is coming to help them adapt.
March 14, 2026
The Shahed UAV came as a surprise for the United States and Arab allies in the war against Iran.
Iran – the birthplace of the Shahed – used drones of this type against dozens of targets both in Arab countries and against US military facilities in the Persian Gulf region.
It turned out that the allies were not prepared for massive assaults by cheap flying wings with warheads of up to 90 kilograms – and in two weeks they used more multi-million dollar Patriot missiles against ~$20k Iranian drones than they had transferred to Ukraine.
A photograph taken on December 27, 2025 shows an Iranian-designed Shahed 136, (Geranium-2) drone used by Russian Army flying over Kyiv during a Russian drones and missiles attack, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine. A Russian drone and missile barrage on Kyiv and its suburbs killed one person, wounded two dozen and cut off heating and electricity for hundreds of thousands of people left in freezing temperatures on December 27, 2025. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)
Meanwhile, Ukraine has been repelling combined enemy attacks for three and a half years, which in a single aerial assault can include hundreds of Shahed and dozens of different types of missiles. Moreover, the rate of intercepted and downed Shahed has reached a record 90%.
How is this possible? How has the Shahed changed, what are Russian Shahed doing in the Middle East, and why were the allies unprepared for them?
Ukrainian experience. How the Shahed has changed
According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), as of September 2025 nearly 50,000 Shahed UAVs of various types had been launched against Ukraine. The first attack took place in September 2022. But massive aerial assaults involving 100, 200, and often up to 400 and even 700 Shahed simultaneously began around the turn of 2024 to 2025.
According to some media outlets, as of March 2026, nearly 57,000 UAVs of this type had been launched against Ukraine.
The first thousands of Shahed were supplied to Russia by Iran. These were Shahed-136 UAVs – a delta-wing drone 3.5 meters long, weighing more than 200 kg with a loud two-stroke engine, a “flying moped” as Ukrainians called it (and to some it sounds like a lawnmower), carrying up to 50 kg of explosives, and flying along a predetermined flight path.
The Shahed was developed in Iran in the 2000s as a simple and cheap drone for mass employment. Its cost was about $20,000, making it one of the cheapest loitering munitions.
A drone flies over Kyiv during an attack on October 17, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine officials said on October 17, 2022 that the capital Kyiv had been struck four times in an early morning Russian attack with Iranian drones that damaged a residential building and targeted the central train station. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)
This made it easy prey for Ukrainian machine gunners.
One service member who has been working against the Shahed for three years told us: “The optimal flight altitude for a Shahed’ is about 500 meters above ground level (AGL). Because the internal combustion engine works best at that height. At first they were very clumsy, flew at one altitude, along a predetermined trajectory, and did not maneuver.”
However, according to the 1129th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which protects Kyiv, the Shahed has changed dramatically over three years.
Regiment spokesperson Dmytro Bielik explains: “They have evolved very, very seriously. The first Shaheds, for example, could carry only 50 kilograms of explosives – much less than now. Now up to 80 kilograms. At the beginning it was a gadget that flew along preset coordinates, barely maneuvered, was easily suppressed by electronic warfare, was not manually controlled, and could not operate in mesh systems, meaning it could not interact with others.”
The Shahed is essentially a loitering munition. It was immediately discovered that its tactical and technical characteristics, particularly its aerodynamic properties, are incredible for such a size. According to several aviation experts, “the Shahed is the best thing they have seen among all UAVs used in this war.” It is not surprising that this aspect has remained unchanged.
But everything else the Russians quickly began to modernize.
Bielik says, “First, antennas with greater segmentation were installed, meaning they became more protected from electronic warfare. Then an inertial self-positioning system in space was installed, improved control systems appeared, and the peak of creativity, in my opinion, was the installation of the Starlink system on this UAV, which made it possible to control the Shahed in real time.”
Remains of a Russian Geran-2 (Shahed) drone in downed in Ukraine’s Vinnytsia Oblast, March 18, 2024. Photo: National Police of Ukraine.
The seriousness of such modernization was quickly noticed in Ukraine – at least twice manually controlled Shahed attacked moving trains deep in the rear with incredible precision, threatening logistics.
That is why, following a request from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Elon Musk blocked all Starlink systems on Ukrainian territory of except officially registered ones. This dealt a serious blow to the concepts of using the Shahed, but it did not reduce their attacks.
In addition, the tactics of their use changed, along with the numbers. If earlier Shahed entered in groups of just a few units, then with the scaling up of production in Russia the Russian army gained the capability to employ several hundred UAVs simultaneously.
The Russian-produced models are now called Geran and Geran-2.
This handout photo taken and released by Armed Forces of Ukraine shows the wreckage of allegedly Iranian-made suicide (kamikaze) drone, which was shot down in the town of Odessa, on September 25, 2022, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On September 23, 2022, Kyiv said one civilian was killed during a drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odessa and that an allegedly Iranian-designed Shahed-136 unmanned vehicle was shot down by Ukrainian forces during the attack. (Photo by Handout / Armed Forces of Ukraine / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY CREDIT
“Tactics change constantly,” Bielik says. “Earlier there were moments when air defense destroyed all UAVs. So the Russians began experimenting with altitudes. They can fly at altitudes of more than 4 kilometers so that machine guns cannot reach the Shahed, or at extremely low altitude to make it harder to detect by radar”
Like in this video from Myrhorod. Poltava region.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/KucherMykola/?ref=embed_video
“Both tactics have their advantages and disadvantages. At high altitude, in low temperatures and thin air, the engines start having problems; at extremely low altitude, without feedback, it is difficult to guide it because of terrain and buildings. Plus at low altitudes the effectiveness of machine-gun groups increases.
“Therefore detecting firing positions, trying to bypass them, making corrections to the flight path – this is standard tactics, as is exhausting air defense [munition stockpiles]. But our intercept rates are also improving because we have adapted to these new tactics.”
Overall, according to Defense Express analyst Oleh Katkov, the Shahed has become a universal platform that can be used for reconnaissance, as an attack drone, and as a tool of aerial terror. And they differ greatly from the Shahed that was once supplied by Iran to Russia. Katkov says:
“The evolution is enormous! The difference is simply astronomical despite the same external appearance.
“In Russia there has been a simplification of the design, a transition to Chinese components, new methods of manufacturing the body [carbon fiber], a new Chinese engine which is a copy of a similar German one and is less noisy, and new two-way communication systems.”
It was exactly such a modernized Shahed that recently attacked the United Arab Emirates.
Fragments of an unmanned aerial vehicle with the characteristic Russian Geran-2 markings were found near the strategically important deep-water Jebel Ali port, Dubai, UAE.
Remnants of a Geran-2 that attacked the port of Jebel Ali, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Telegram channel Russians in Dubai)
According to preliminary data, the drone was shot down by the UAE air defense system while repelling a large-scale attack amid the current escalation in the Middle East.
“We don’t know whether this is an isolated case or a mass one, because many drones are shot down over the Persian Gulf. But judging by the markings, this ‘Shahed’ was produced in the spring of 2024,” Katkov believes.
In other words, Russia is not just supporting Iran but is sharing technologies with it in the reverse direction – technologies that during the war have long surpassed Iranian ones and turned the Shahed into a formidable weapon that becomes a problem precisely because of its cheapness and mass use.
In addition, as we wrote earlier, in Russia Shahed were developed specifically for attacks on civilians, for aerial terror – with a large number of damaging elements and with an incendiary mixture in the form of a thermobaric charge. One anti-aircraft service member told us:
“They did not become widespread because the dispersion of small elements is possible only when detonated in the air, which is extremely difficult, and a thermobaric munition can burn out an apartment but not destroy a building. Therefore, I suspect the Russians abandoned mass use of such types, betting simply on explosives in the warhead.”
However, this does not exclude the possibility of using such attack UAVs by the regime of the Iranian ayatollahs.
H2:: How to counter them? Ukrainian experience
Countering Shahed has also evolved in Ukraine – from the simplest methods, when they were the most primitive in their original version, to complex comprehensive solutions once they turned into a sophisticated modernized multi-purpose weapon. One service member from the air defense systems told us:
“First of all, it became clear that shooting them down with missiles is very, very expensive. This is possible only if it becomes clear that the Shahed target is, roughly speaking, more valuable than the interceptor missile.
“Overall, one of the tasks of the mass use of Shahed drones is precisely to exhaust air defense munition stocks. Therefore comprehensive solutions are needed. That is how systems of mobile groups armed with various types of anti-aircraft and missile weapons appeared.”
For a long time, the use of electronic warfare systems was effective – many Shahed drones were “landed” – diverted from their intended target – this way.
In addition, fighter aircraft have been successfully used against the Shahed.
And recently Ukraine has been able to effectively kill Shahed UAVs with interceptor drones – over the past six months they have already destroyed a thousand Shahed drones, achieving a new milestone in the fight against this type of weapon. Like in this video made by one of the volunteer fonds.
https://www.facebook.com/sternenkofund?ref=embed_video
However, producing an interceptor is only half the task.
It is highly important to organize the entire system – from identification and electronic intercept to the work of mobile machine-gun groups, fighter aircraft, and interceptor drone operators. And only Ukraine has experience in the comprehensive use of all elements of this system, and doing so quickly and efficiently.
A member of the 3rd Army Corps Interception Squadron holds an interceptor drone used to protect against Russian drone attacks, at an undisclosed location near the front lines of eastern Uraine, on October 9, 2025. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP)
It’s not surprising that the United States and the countries of the Persian Gulf turned to Ukraine for help. Ukrainian specialists have already headed to the Middle East.
Katkov says: “Developing the technology is not difficult. What matters is having a ready solution – that is, a way to effectively apply technology and combat experience. Ukraine is the only country in the civilized world that has such comprehensive solutions. Imagine that you have two candidates for a position – a graduate from an Ivy League university with every possible diploma but no experience, and a person who has worked in this field for 10 years and knows everything. Ukraine has the experience and systems that destroy up to 90% of Shahed drones. That is why it is unique.”
And this is not accidental. It was Ukraine that managed to stop the spread of a new version of the Shahed – the jet-powered one. The jet Shahed was seen as a real nightmare, a missile-drone against which there would be no defense. In reality it turned out differently, Bielik says, explaining:
“First, the jet engine produces a stronger thermal signature, which makes such a UAV more vulnerable to missiles, and second, our guys even managed to catch up with it using an interceptor drone.”
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/71888