According to State Department spokesman Ned Price, the United States has “abundant information” that Russia is employing Iranian drones to attack Ukraine. On October 19, the Ukrainian military asserted that over the previous 36 days, they had shot down 223 Shahed-136 suicide drones built in Iran.
According to a statement from the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 223 Shahed-136 suicide drones built in Iran have been destroyed by the Air Force’s anti-aircraft defense units and other Ukrainian Defense Forces units.
Russia Is Using Suicide Drones
The statement further mentioned that on September 13 in Kupiansk, Ukraine, the first drone produced in Iran was shot down. Fighter planes and air defense missile systems, according to Kyiv, were responsible for the drones‘ destruction.
Despite Ukraine’s limited capacity to shoot down some of the aerial devices, US Defense Department Press Secretary Pat Ryder claimed on Thursday that Iranian drones supplied to Russian forces are spreading havoc. This raises fundamental questions about whether it would be possible to defeat such cheap drones utilizing pricey missiles launched by diverse weapon systems. According to Ukraine, its anti-aircraft defense systems have destroyed 85% of the Shahed-136 drones used by the Russian invaders.
However, experts noted that the expense of the missiles deployed by those defense systems, not the effectiveness of Ukraine’s weaponry, is the real problem. The current state of affairs demonstrates that Moscow is using kamikaze drones to target Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
To inflict the most damage, the attacker might employ a variety of tactics. One is to attack a variety of targets at once, attacking them from unexpected angles rather than from the front, which makes defending exceedingly challenging. Another is to utilize numerous drones to strike a single target from all sides, considerably increasing your likelihood of success, the expert continued.
Ukraine has suffered serious harm as a result of the cheap drones that Iran provided. According to a recent story, a Ukrainian MiG-29 was shot down during an aerial conflict between a Russian drone and a Ukrainian plane.