WASHINGTON — The White House revelation last week that Russia is seeking hundreds of armed and unarmed surveillance drones from Iran to use in the war in Ukraine reflects Moscow’s need to fill a critical battlefield gap as well as a long-term supplier. of critical combat technology, US intelligence, military and independent analysts say.
Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, gave few details about the intelligence assessment he revealed to reporters last Monday, including whether the shipments had begun. But other US officials said Iran was preparing to deliver as many as 300 remotely piloted aircraft and would begin training Russian troops on their use as early as this month.
Russia has exhausted most of its precision-guided weapons, as well as many of the drones it has used to help strike long-range artillery targets during its months-long bombardment of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the first batches of US truck-mounted, multiple-rocket launchers have destroyed more than two dozen Russian ammunition depots, air defense sites and command posts, according to two US officials, further increasing Moscow’s need to counter the new, advanced Western weapons. urgently.
Enter Iran, a leading drone developer for decades.
Iran has supplied drone technology to Hezbollah in Lebanon; to Houthi rebels in Yemen attacking Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and to Shia militias in Iraq, which have carried out attacks on Iraqi and US forces.
“Russia is turning to an ally who has flown drones in large numbers in complex environments,” said Samuel Bendett, a Russian drone and other weapons specialist at CNA, a research and analysis organization in Arlington, Virginia. drones, they don’t have all the species they need.”
Russia’s deal with Iran underscores the ever-growing importance of drones for modern warfare, not only in insurgency or counter-terrorism operations, but also in classic conventional-style conflicts. In a contentious battlefield like Ukraine, where dueling artillery barrages are the deciding factors if an offensive fails or succeeds, drones play a vital role.
A Russian delegation has visited an airport in central Iran at least twice in the past five weeks — June 8 and July 5 — to examine drones that could be armed, Sullivan said in a statement from the White House and previously reported by CNN. The Russians assessed Shahed-191 and Shahed-129 drones, according to satellite images the White House provided to The New York Times in the statement.
Ukraine had its own drone fleet before the war and has also used hundreds of them supplied by the United States and other NATO countries, like Turkeyto destroy hundreds of Russian tanks and armored cars, military officials said.
But analysts said Russian contradrones and electronic warfare equipment, including jamming devices, have dampened the early success of the US and Turkish drones.
A recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, a research organization in London, concluded that Ukraine needed more proprietary electronic warfare equipment to combat advanced Russian systems. Ukrainian surveillance drones, which help attack Russian troops, only survive about a week before Russian defenses force them to crash or shoot down, the report said.
Ukraine and its supporters in Congress have called for the United States and its allies to provide more and bigger drones that can carry more weapons and stay airborne for longer, such as the Gray Eagle Aircraft. US officials have put those proposals on hold for the time being, fearing that the Gray Eagles would be an easy target for Russian air defenses and could also be viewed as escalating by President Vladimir V. Putin.
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
Russia had its own formidable arsenal of drones going into war, but the possible delivery of hundreds of armed and unarmed Iranian drones would help the Kremlin replenish a fleet that has suffered massive losses during the nearly five-month campaign.
Russia lost dozens of reconnaissance drones to Ukrainian air defenses and to erroneous attacks and malfunctions in the early phase of the conflict. Surveillance drones are essential to the lingering battle in which the war has settled. But Russia’s defense industry has struggled to build capable, large-scale weaponized drones and other remotely piloted aircraft that can fly high over targets for hours on end, analysts said.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian military has tightened the use of drones in what has become primarily an artillery war. The small unmanned aerial vehicles were a boon for quickly attacking Ukrainian forces and returning coordinates to Russia’s longer-range weapons, including howitzers and mortars.
“They’re definitely improving their skills,” Kostyantyn, a major in the Ukrainian army, who refused to give his last name for security reasons, said this spring about the Russian military’s use of drones.
Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbas, the area in the east of the country that has become the focus of the Russian military campaign, have said their artillery is almost immediately attacked by Russian counterfire, which they attribute in part to the use of drones.
Russian drones — primarily the Orlan-10, a small fixed-wing aircraft, along with small commercially available quadcopters — have dramatically changed the way Ukrainian troops move across the battlefield. They park their vehicles under trees or other cover and must hide artillery pieces to avoid being discovered by overhead guards.
But even with the right camouflage, pro-Russian media outlets regularly post videos of Ukrainian equipment being attacked and destroyed while a drone hovers overhead.
In recent weeks, however, Mr Bendett and military analysts said Russia’s lead in the drone wars has dwindled. About 50 Orlan-10s were downed by Ukrainian or accidental Russian fire or interference, analysts said.
As a result, the demand for off-the-shelf consumer models and custom amateur drones that can withstand failure remains high. Both sides are using crowdfunding campaigns to replace lost equipment, analysts said.
Russia and Iran have been muted since Mr Sullivan’s revelation.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov declined to say on Wednesday whether Moscow had plans to buy Iranian drones. He said Mr Putin had no plans to discuss the matter during his planned trip to Tehran this week.
Western and even some Russian analysts say the Kremlin has seen the value of drones in various conflicts around the world for years, including in Syria. And yet Russia was not ready for the intense need in Ukraine.
Yuri Borisov, who was the deputy prime minister of Russia until last week, said in an interview with a Russian news organization last month that the Russian military should have used drones more aggressively in combat zones.
“I think we are too late to seriously introduce unmanned vehicles – this is the goal,” Mr Borisov told the organization, RBC.
The United States has seen no evidence that Iran has transferred drones to Russia, a senior military official said in a Pentagon briefing Friday. But US officials and analysts said Moscow’s apparent deal with Iran was a major role reversal for one of the world’s largest arms suppliers.
“Russia is used to selling military equipment to countries like Iran, not the other way around,” said PW Singer, a strategist at New America in Washington who has written extensively about drones.
Iran has made carefully worded comments about its military cooperation with Russia that some Iranian media have interpreted as confirmation of a drone deal.
On Tuesday, Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, told reporters that “Iran-Russian Federation military cooperation on new technology predates the war in Ukraine and has not undergone significant change in recent times. “
Exactly what types of drones Russia may be seeking out of Iran remains unclear, although the satellite images released by the White House offer strong clues.
In recent years, Iran and its proxies have carried out a number of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria using armed drones that US officials say are designed and manufactured domestically. On October 20, Iran launched five so-called suicide drones at the US base at Al Tanf in southern Syria, although only two exploded as intended.
The Pentagon hasn’t invested heavily in suicide drones, which can be small enough to fit in a backpack, but it has bought a short-range version called a Switchblade.
Mr Biden authorized the transfer of 100 Switchblade drones of Pentagon supplies to Ukraine in March, and 120 drones called Phoenix Ghost which officials said were comparable to the Switchblade in April. In May, the Pentagon announced that it had sent 700 Switchblade drones to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York, and Natalia Yermak from Lviv, Ukraine.