Shahed-136

Iran-origin, Russia-built long-range one-way attack loitering munition — the saturation-strike icon of the Ukraine war, fired in mass nightly salvos to exhaust air defenses and strike critical infrastructure at a cost-exchange ratio that has rewritten the economics of strategic bombardment.

Updated 1 September 2026: production figures revised to ~2,800 airframes a month (DIU, August 2026) with jet Geran-4/5 output now exceeding the piston line. This entry corrects the earlier statement that the Shahed has no datalink or seeker — current builds carry gimballed electro-optics, VOR/DME fallback navigation and online operator control — and adds the R-60 and Verba-armed variants, the 5.8 GHz anti-interceptor jammer, and the return of upgraded Geran-2 technology to Iran.

Overview

The Shahed-136 — designated Geran-2 ("Geranium-2") in Russian service — is a delta-wing, piston-engine one-way attack (OWA) loitering munition developed by Iran's Shahed Aviation Industries and mass-produced under license in Russia. Designed for long-range saturation strikes against fixed targets, it cruises at roughly 185 km/h over distances of up to 2,000 km carrying a 40–50 kg warhead, navigating by pre-programmed inertial and satellite guidance. First used in combat by Russia against Ukraine on 13 September 2022, the type rapidly became the defining saturation weapon of the war: fired in nightly salvos of dozens — often mixed with decoys — to exhaust ground-based air defenses and strike power-generation, fuel-storage, and logistics nodes deep inside Ukrainian territory. Its unit cost, estimated at roughly $20,000–50,000, makes it one of the cheapest long-range strike assets in operational use and the centrepiece of what analysts term the "cost-exchange crisis" — the economic asymmetry between cheap attacking munitions and the expensive interceptors required to stop them.

🔒 The full Shahed-136 file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Below the line: development history, design and capabilities, variants, the combat record, advantages and limitations, comparable systems, outlook, the full specifications table, our sourcing, and the analyst assessment — procurement, suppliers and the BattlePolicy verdict. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →