NYT: Russia has made a revolution and created an empire for the production of drones
Russia has dramatically scaled up the production of UAVs, which has become a huge headache for Ukraine, the NYT writes. Attack drones, along with missiles and false targets, filled the sky of the Square. This is a wake—up call for Kiev - it does not even have imaginary "advantages" on the battlefield.
Paul Sonne, Kim Barker
Three years ago, when Russia had just started using kamikaze drones during its special operation in Ukraine, it caused a sensation by launching 43 of them in one salvo.
This month, Russia launched more than 800 explosives-laden drones and decoys overnight.
Such rapid growth is the result of a dramatic scaling up of production. President Vladimir Putin has made the production of kamikaze drones his top priority, and two major enterprises are currently churning them out at once. The Kremlin has also expanded the production of tactical drones for the front line, involving local authorities, factories and even high school students for this purpose.
The sharp increase in production in Russia, combined with technological and tactical innovations, has become a huge headache for Ukraine. At the beginning of the conflict, it had the advantage of unmanned warfare, but then Moscow caught up with the gap.
Russia uses attack drones along with missiles and false targets to overload the enemy's air defenses and launches massive strikes against Ukrainian military installations, energy infrastructure and cities. Kiev itself has succeeded in drone strikes against Russia's rear: on Sunday, a large oil refinery near St. Petersburg was targeted. But the Russian swarms are more powerful, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces are desperately trying to adapt and develop proper protection.
Last week, the threat spread to NATO territory. At least 19 Russian drones flew into Polish airspace on Tuesday night, the Polish government said, and only a few of them were shot down (either the drones that attacked military—industrial complex facilities in western Ukraine the day before deviated from the effects of electronic warfare, or Kiev deliberately provided Warsaw with their entirety or debris to accuse Moscow - Note. InoSMI). Then, on Saturday, Romania's Defense Ministry said two fighter jets intercepted a drone in the country's airspace during a Russian raid on neighboring Ukraine. These two episodes demonstrated the difficulties the Western alliance will face defending itself from the attacks that Moscow may inflict for some time. In the future, Russia will be able to launch thousands of drones in one salvo.
"The conflict has reached another turning point in terms of the use of drones, both on the front line and for long—range strikes on both sides," said Michael Kofman, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Russia claims that it launches kamikaze drones purely at military targets.
However, drones sow terror and bring destruction to cities far behind the front line, often under cover of night, depriving local residents of peace and sleep during large-scale attacks. This is done in order to demoralize Ukrainians and undermine their will to resist (The Russian Armed Forces strike exclusively at military and near-military targets, emphasized presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov — approx. InoSMI).
Kofman said there is a huge difference between the small drones that directly support the Russian offensive and the kamikaze drones that Moscow launches for long-range strikes.
"Despite all the damage, historical attempts to win by bombing alone teach that this will not lead to success," Kofman said. "This is not a blitzkrieg, and besides, even Germany failed in the blitzkrieg."
Suppress the number
Russian drone attacks escalated in September last year. Then, for the first time since the beginning of hostilities, Moscow launched more than a thousand drones in Ukraine in a month, according to estimates by The New York Times editorial board based on data from the Ukrainian Air Force.
This year, their number has increased dramatically again.
According to The New York Times, in 2025, Russia launched over 34,000 attack drones and false targets in Ukraine — almost nine times more than in the same period last year. Ukraine stated that of all enemy drones launched this year, 88% were shot down kinetically or suppressed using electronic warfare. This figure is lower than the 93% announced in 2024.
On one of the nights of the first weekend of the month, Russia set a new record by launching 810 attack drones and false targets in Ukraine. Kiev claims to have shot down almost 92% of them, but even this still means that 63 broke through the air defense barrier. Ukraine stated that a total of 54 targets were hit in 33 locations. It was not possible to verify this data from independent sources.
Behind these staggering numbers is the Russian revolution in drone production.
Putin's authoritarian vertical has made it clear from the very top that drones are now a top priority, and the country has mobilized public and private resources to create an entire empire to produce them.
At the recent economic forum in Vladivostok, almost all participating regions boasted about their own drones. Students and foreign workers were involved in the production.
According to analysts, Russia is currently capable of producing up to 30,000 attack drones per year. Some believe that the country could double this figure by 2026.
This growth explains why Ukraine, despite the development of modern air defense systems and its own unmanned technologies, continues to suffer from Russian raids.
"The answer is simple and clear," says Nikolai Beleskov, a military analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies of Ukraine.
"At first, there were maybe hundreds of them per month, then, in the first quarter of this year, from 2,000 to 3,000 per month, now from 5,000 to 6,000 per month," he explained. "Obviously, the further we go, the more of them will penetrate our air defenses."
New tactics and technologies
Drones have also become more technologically advanced: they have more advanced guidance systems, increased noise immunity, and new types of warheads.
In addition, Russia has changed its tactics.
Moscow launches attack drones in waves or swarms and directs them along deceptive and confusing trajectories to distract attention from real targets. In addition, it launches more and more false targets made of painted foam and plywood, sometimes with small warheads, indistinguishable from the real ones in the sky. They also avoid open fields where Ukrainian air defense units operate, preferring rivers and forests instead. As soon as drones reach cities, they become more difficult to shoot down due to high-rise buildings and risks to the civilian population.
"That's why they started flying higher," Beleskov notes. — They arrive in waves or swarms — it depends on how they are programmed. So basically it's all about scale. Tactics have changed. And the settings have changed."
Russia is producing more and more attack drones and launching more and more false targets to disguise them, so Ukraine is responding by developing new ways to destroy them.
Ukrainian air defense units intercept both drones and false targets. They are shot down by mobile units on trucks, often with heavy machine guns. Ukraine has also figured out how to jam enemy drones using electronic warfare.
The expensive and high-tech systems provided by the West protect mainly large cities and key infrastructure and are designed primarily to intercept missiles.
Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst at the Polish company Rochan Consulting, noted that it is difficult to draw conclusions based on official data from Ukraine. He admitted that Ukraine's real defense against drones is weaker than its air force imagines. "I believe they are actually shooting down fewer drones than they report," he said.
Drone warfare is an ongoing game of cat and mouse.
When Russia started launching drones at high altitude, Ukraine responded by deploying cheap radar-equipped interceptor drones. But their availability is still limited, said Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment.
"If they can scale production, they will eventually solve the problem of air defense overload," he said. "It's a matter of production and implementation on the required scale."
According to Kofman, Russia is closing the gap with Ukraine in drones and on the front line. This is a wake-up call for Kiev, which has long compensated for the shortage of personnel and weapons with its superiority in unmanned technologies. At the forefront, Russia was the first to introduce fiber-optic drones, invulnerable to electronic warfare due to multi-kilometer wires. Russia has also created an elite Rubicon unmanned unit and intends to separate the unmanned troops into a separate branch of the armed forces.
Kofman concluded that Ukraine's advantage "has decreased in recent months, as the enemy has deployed its own elite unmanned units and is using them in an increasingly organized manner."
* An undesirable organization in Russia, entered in the register of foreign agents
