Shahed system -- Iran's one-way attack (kamikaze) drones

The Shahed system refers to a family of low-cost, long-range autonomous uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) designed by ⁠Shahed Aviation Industries in Iran. Operating primarily as one-way attack (kamikaze) drones or loitering munitions, these systems have fundamentally changed modern attrition warfare by allowing military forces to execute precision saturation strikes at a fraction of the cost of traditional cruise missiles. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Primary System Variants

• Shahed-131 (Geran-1): A smaller variant featuring a 2.2-meter wingspan, a 10-to-20 kg explosive warhead, and a Wankel engine. It utilizes commercial-grade GNSS paired with a backup MEMS gyroscope inertial navigation system. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Shahed-136 (Geran-2): The most widely deployed baseline variant. It features a 2.5-meter delta-wing frame, weighs roughly 200 kg, and carries a 40-to-90 kg warhead over operational ranges of up to 2,500 kilometers. It is powered by an MD-550 two-stroke piston engine, which generates a highly distinct, loud buzzing sound often compared to a "flying moped". [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Shahed-238 (Geran-3): A newer, high-speed evolution utilizing a turbojet engine and modified dorsal air intake. It provides transonic approach speeds to better bypass anti-aircraft radars and engage moving or fixed targets. [1]

Core Technical & Operational Features

• Launch Mechanism: Drones are typically packed sequentially into mobile racks or truck-mounted launchers disguised as civilian vehicles. They rely on a solid-fuel rocket booster for initial takeoff before transitioning to engine power mid-flight.
• Navigation & Guidance: Coordinates are pre-programmed before launch. The system follows specific waypoints via civilian-grade GNSS (GPS and GLONASS) and internal Inertial Navigation Systems (INS). Standard variants operate autonomously without active remote pilot links, making them completely immune to traditional radio-frequency jamming.
• Saturation Doctrine: Because each drone only costs between $20,000 and $50,000 to produce, they are deployed in massive, simultaneous "swarms". This forces air defense networks to consume limited, multi-million dollar interceptor missiles, economically exhausting the defender.
• Recent Battlefield Evolutions: Russia has heavily retrofitted its licensed variants, sometimes adding anti-deception GPS algorithms, specialized carbon fiber coatings to reduce radar signatures, and even defensive man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) or rear-facing heat-seeking missiles to shoot back at intercepting aircraft. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]

Evolving Global Countermeasures

The proliferation of the Shahed platform has forced modern militaries to rapidly adapt their defense strategies: [1]

• Ukraine's AI Interceptors: Ukraine utilizes layered networks featuring electronic warfare, acoustic tracking sensors, and mobile truck-mounted machine gun units. They have also deployed high-speed, autonomous FPV interceptor drones—such as the Ukrainian-codified JEDI Shahed Hunter and P1-Sun Long—which utilize AI machine vision to track and ram Shahed drones mid-air. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• The U.S. Response: The United States military reverse-engineered the Shahed 136's delta-wing frame to build its own low-cost clone, the FLM-136 LUCAS drone. Costing around $35,000, LUCAS features military-grade M-code GPS and advanced 3D optical terrain-matching backup systems to combat electronic warfare. [1, 2, 3]