Inside Russia’s plan to build autonomous drone swarms

Published on January 15, 2025

In December 2024 Ukrainian military sources shared with Western media that Russia had started equipping its Shahed-136 strike drones with artificial intelligence. According to Kyiv’s EU Ambassador Vsevolod Chentsov, the upgrade made these drones “smarter” — better able to evade Ukrainian air defenses and identify high-value targets such as energy infrastructure.

This is important because Shahed-type drones, including the Russian version of Shahed (dubbed Geran) and simpler decoy models like the Gerbera, have become Russia’s most frequently used strike drones for daily attacks on Ukraine, and their usage continues to rise. As shown on the figure below, the number of these drones’ deployment has been on a steady growth since they were first used in September 2022.

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