Report: Russia Is Using Teens to Build Iranian-Style Kamikaze Drones

For a while now, arms control experts have been picking through the shattered remains of the Iranian-built Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 kamikaze drones that Russia is using for daily attacks on Ukrainian cities. But autopsies of delta-wing drones downed in July are showing something new: Shahed drones are being assembled in Russia, not Iran.

The Shaheds—designated Geran-2s in Russian service—are slow, with a cruising speed of 75 miles per hour. Ukrainian defenses now regularly shoot down the vast majority of each daily drone attack—sometimes all of them.

But Russia is playing a numbers game. Shaheds are very cheap by the standards of long-range weapons—perhaps $20,000 a piece, compared to million-dollar cruise missiles—and help divert fire away from fancier missiles when used in concert. Shaheds can also still cause considerable damage when they get through, forcing Ukraine to commit substantial resources to home air defense that could otherwise be protecting troops on the frontline.

Russia’s ability to sustain the drone terror campaign was seemingly tied to ensuring a steady supply from Iran, which falsely claims that the Shaheds were delivered pre-war. In fact, Iran’s traditional foreign policy establishment prefers a neutral stance in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps supports arming Russia to test weapons and receive Russian arms in return, including promised—but still undelivered—Su-35S fighters.

Russia’s initial Shahed order was for 2,400 drones, and Ukrainian sources already count over 2,000 drones used on attacks in Ukraine. However, early on, Russian sources made clear that by November 2022, there were plans to cooperate with Iran on starting Russian factory production of Shahed drones. And that factory—located in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarsan in central Russia—reportedly began assembling drones earlier this year.

Leaked documents indicate that Russia is spending $2 billion on the program—including $1 billion paid to Iran for a tech transfer, rather than relying on reverse-engineering. The goal: deliver 6,000 more kamikaze drones—two-thirds of them produced entirely locally—to Russia's military by September of 2025.

Dissecting Russia's new Geran-2

On August 11, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a company that dispatches teams to investigate weaponry in conflict zones, published a report on two crashed kamikaze drones recovered in July. According to their report, while previously recovered ‘Geran-2s’ were confirmed to be of Iranian origin, those crashed in July were different.

For clarity, this article henceforth refers to the original Iranian drones as Shaheds and those assembled in Russia as Gerans, even though Russia’s military may refer to both as Gerans, which stands for ‘Geranium.’

CAR first establishes that, similar to their Iranian predecessors, the Russian-built Geran rely primarily on components sourced from China, Switzerland, and the United States.

However, four components are uniquely made in Russia that weren’t on the original Iranian-built drones.

The skin of the new Geran-2 itself is different: while the Iranian drones incorporate a honey-comb pattern material between skin surfaces, the new Russian ones use fiber-glass over carbon fiber.

The changes are more than skin-deep, though. The Geran-2’s satellite navigation, flight control and starter systems belong to the same, novel production set, with parts coded respectively B-105, B-101, and B-103. These streamline the original model’s more complicated Iranian architecture.

For example, investigators recognized the B-105 satellite navigation unit as using a Kometa GNSS -system already identified in Russian-built Orlan-10 and Forpost surveillance drones and satellite-guided bombs, replacing the original’s multi-component system.

Kometa relies on Russia’s GLONASS satellite network, is purported to be highly jam-resistant, and comes in a drone-optimal miniaturized variant weighing only 60 grams. While the Iranian Shahed incorporated four small, circular antennas on the baseplate of their satellite communication system, the Russia system has the antennas built into a bump in the baseplate.

Meanwhile, the flight control unit featured new 3D-printed plastic frames with diagonal striations onto which four circuit boards were attached, as well as a metal-encased inertial measurement unit (IMU), which helps the drone’s computer estimate its position when GPS access is disrupted. The B-101 flight control unit again uses a different setup on the Iranian Shahed, with physically separated flight control circuitry and IMU.

Lastly, the Geran-2’s B-103 starter unit is configured differently than that of the Shahed, and appears to have been built after March of 2023.

CAR’s report concludes: “The internal units documented by CAR in the Geran-2 UAVs indicate that the Russian Federation has distilled the principles of the Shahed series UAV, while simplifying its functioning by combining new solutions with existing ones like the Kometa, which have been battle tested in other weapon systems. As a result, the Russian Federation will likely be able to produce more Geran-2 UAVs quickly to sustain its campaign in Ukraine.”

Small-minded schemes undermine Russia’s big drone dreams

The dire implications of Russia’s kamikaze drone production, however, are offset by reports within Russia suggesting that the Geran-2 factory is not as impressive as claimed. As reported in an investigation by Russian human rights group Protokol, teamed up with independent journalism outlet RZVRT,iIt relies on teenagers paid poverty wages in a forced labor scheme.

As laid out in an article in Forbes, low taxes in poor Alabuga have attracted numerous foreign investors. They left behind vacant factories after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. One factory complex, sprawling over an area equivalent to six football fields, was refurbished for 80 billion rubles (equivalent to $806 million USD) supposedly to build “boats”—specifically, 2,000 boats per year, with plans to ramp up to 20,000 in 15 years.

This new “boat” factory was started up by Alexey Florov, director of the Albatross LLC drone company, drawing on 50 billion rubles in startup money from state-owned VTB bank.

Apparently, “boat productions” goals are not yet being fulfilled, though, as the plant is currently turning out 70 Geran-2 drones monthly, with no more than 300 delivered by August. And those drones aren’t so much produced as assembled—by teenagers ages 15 to 17 from the Alabuga Polytechnic College, working 12-hour shifts for around $350 monthly—from Iranian-supplied kits.

This is supposedly a sort of volunteer work-study program—except, maybe it shouldn’t be, considering that students who refuse to ‘volunteer’ are expelled with a fine equivalent to $1,700 to $4,200, depending on course of study. Students claim they’re sometimes made to work seven-day weeks, and have virtually no access to food during work hours.

This same institution also expels students based on their performance and participation in annual patriotic-themed paintball games.

The reports notes that teenage girls from Africa and Central Asia are also employed in low-skill service jobs in the factory after being recruited through dating apps.

Girls, as well as male guest workers from Central Asia—often recruited based on familiarity with Farsi spoken in Iran—also may have their passports confiscated on arrival to discourage quitting.

Leaked documents attest that these workers lacked experience on everything ranging from how to operate forklifts to assembling drone components. Furthermore, a report by the Washington Post states that a quarter of the assembly kits supplied by Iran arrive in damaged condition, and that Russia is forced to purchase smaller, less effective Shahed-131 kits too (dubbed Geran-1s or “little boats”).

Supposedly, a moderate amount of actual local production will begin in 2024, followed by some automated assembly lines, while the factory will expand 2.5 times in space to 100,000 square meters.

The Forbes article notes that this has the making of a “perfect scam,” given that the reliability of one-way drones is not subject to great scrutiny, especially when most are getting destroyed before reaching their targets anyway. That reduces the risks of cutting costs using forced, unskilled labor. Meanwhile, the factory owner can request huge sums for long-term investments in the factory, which may not end up going to their supposed purpose.

Documentation shows that more experienced Russian drone-builders had turned down the Shahed-building project, hinting at the limited potential profits building such cut-price drones.

What do Russian-assembled Geran-2s mean for Ukraine?

Presently, one can only guess to what extent the Russian-assembled Geran-2s differ in performance from the Iranian originals. Some of the new Russian components seem potentially more efficient, and in the case of Kometa, may make the drone more accurate and resilient. However, the manufacturing conditions don’t inspire confidence in the quality.

To be sure, if the Alabuga factory eventually manages to deliver 200 drones per month, that will suffice to sustainably attack Ukrainian cities with 7 drones per day, indefinitely. However, Russia still depends on Iranian-supplied kits, until machinery for at least partial Russian production is in place. Supposedly, it should be ready in 2024.

Despite Geran-2’s new Russian components, it still relies primarily on foreign components sourced from abroad, including the U.S. and China. According to the Post’s investigation, those include Texas Instruments flight control elements, accelerometers and other parts manufactured by Analog Devices (based inMassachusetts), Kintex-7 processors used for navigation and communications manufactured by AMD (based in California), and wing materials sourced from Metastar (based in China).

Many are common civilian parts, albeit under U.S. sanction, which Russia and Iran launder through a shifting network of third-party buyers (though, CAR notes the presence of at least one seemingly military-grade component—a satellite GNSS unit specifically advertised as resistant to GPS spoofing.) Thus, the vending companies are not themselves violating sanctions by selling these to Russia or Iran.

There’s also Iran’s Mado MD550 engine, cloned from a design by German company Limbach, which Russia hopes to eventually clone in turn.

Russia’s parts-trafficking operation may be impossible to completely contain, and some (perhaps most) Western manufacturers implicated in it likely don’t know where their parts are being redirected. However, more concerted efforts to identify and block the proxies redirecting sanctioned microelectronics to Russia may be the most efficient way to throttle Shahed production, along with production of other Russian drones.

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