Shahed-107
The Shahed-107 is Iran's mid-range strike drone reportedly built for Russia's war — announced as a 1,500 km HIMARS hunter, revealed by Ukrainian teardown as a ~300 km, 15 kg-warhead X-tail drone hitting the near rear. The gap between those two descriptions is the story.
The drone that arrived smaller than its legend — the Shahed-107 entered the public record in January 2024 as an intelligence leak: a new Iranian drone built specifically for Russia's war, able to fly 1,500 kilometers and hunt HIMARS launchers. What Ukrainian intelligence actually pulled from the wreckage in November 2025 was more modest and more instructive: a three-meter, X-tailed development of the Shahed-101 with a Chinese hobby engine, a 15-kilogram warhead, jam-resistant preset-route guidance and roughly 300 kilometers of reach — a cheap precision weapon for Ukraine's near rear, now also confirmed in Iran's own Gulf strikes.
Overview
The Shahed-107 is the middle child of Iran's drone family — an enlarged, piston-engined development of the small Shahed-101, sitting between the strategic Shahed-136 and the front line's FPVs in what analysts call the "middle strike" niche: the 100–300 km band where Ukraine's logistics hubs, rail nodes and drone crews live. Its documented biography has two authors who disagree. The claim layer: a single anonymous security source told Sky News in January 2024 that Iran developed the type expressly for Russia, with ~1,500 km range, live-video reconnaissance and the mission of finding Western rocket systems; Iran's own June 2025 unveiling repeated the 1,500 km figure. The evidence layer: wreckage documented in Ukraine from November 2025 (airframes stamped 2024, all-Iranian production) and the HUR teardown that found a carbon-fiber, high-wing, X-tail airframe of 3 m span; a commercial Chinese DLE 111 two-stroke engine with a 28-liter tank supporting ~300 km; a 15 kg shaped-charge fragmentation warhead; and inertial navigation with a four-element anti-jam antenna flying preset routes — no seeker, no video link, no HIMARS-hunting hardware in the examined aircraft. Employment matches the evidence, not the legend: limited-scale strikes on Ukraine's frontline regions from late 2025 (first shootdown by a Wild Hornets Sting interceptor on 30 December 2025), and Iranian use in the 2026 Gulf campaign confirmed when the UAE displayed recovered Shahed-107 wreckage alongside 136s and 238s in March 2026. It is a real, spreading, two-war weapon — just not the one the leak described.
Development
The type surfaced backwards — intelligence first, hardware later. On 10 January 2024 Sky News reported, from one anonymous security source, that Iran's Shahed Aviation Industries had developed the "Shahed-107" specifically for Russia — ~2.5 m long, 3 m span, vehicle-launched, up to 1,500 km, an "explosive and reconnaissance" drone possibly equipped to seek out British and American rocket systems, with "a few units" sold for over $2 million. Then, silence: no confirmed sighting in Ukraine for 22 months. Iran formally unveiled the drone on 16 June 2025, mid-war with Israel, claiming 1,500+ km through state media; a July 2025 interdiction found 101/107-type airframes in an arms shipment bound for the Houthis. The evidence phase opened in mid-November 2025, when Ukrainian EW authority Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov published wreckage photos of Iranian-built 2024-production airframes — the same images another respected channel labeled Shahed-101, a designation dispute TWZ flagged explicitly — followed on 25 November 2025 by the HUR/War & Sanctions teardown that set the evidence-based specification and read the deployment as Russia "battle-testing" Iranian hardware. The first documented shootdown came on 30 December 2025 (Sting interceptor, 47th Mechanized Brigade); Sumy-axis strikes followed into 2026. In March 2026 the UAE Ministry of Defence displayed intercepted Shahed-107 wreckage from Iran's Gulf retaliation — per CSIS, confirming the type in Iran's own order of battle. Leaked "Sahara Thunder" documents show Moscow's interest in producing the type at Alabuga; localization remains intended, not confirmed.
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