Russia to ramp up drone production, whilst Ukraine embraces Kamikaze-style warfare

As Reuters reported on Saturday, January 6, this news was delivered by TASS news agency, citing words from the First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov. Without a doubt, drones have proven to be pivotal in military operations. The efficiency of drones, as employed by the Ukrainian forces, has received much attention. Thus, it's unsurprising that Russia is also strategizing to boost its troops.

"The planned annual production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), educational UAVs excluded, is 32,500 units," said Belousov to TASS. "This figure is nearly triple the current output. Simultaneously, Russian UAVs are projected to constitute 70% of this particular UAV market segment."

Moscow has been increasingly leveraging the use of Iranian Shahed drones, notorious in Ukraine for their noisy gasoline engines, in aerial assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure well beyond the war frontlines in the eastern and southern regions of the country. Previously, they bragged about optimizing the "Lancets", but it seems such solutions do not fully meet their requirements. Thus, the decision was made to invest $7.66 billion in newer drones by 2030.

In the meantime, Ukraine has been making intense use of FPV drones - smaller UAVs initially designed for personal civilian use but adapted for battlefield application - as an affordable yet effective landscape surveying solution for executing attacks and preserving lives. Kamikaze drones effectively eliminate targets from a distance without compromising soldier safety.

This final category includes drones specifically engineered to drop grenades (sometimes self-made) or mortar shells onto opposition forces or equipment, which occasionally carries bomblets from cluster ammunition or minimized anti-tank grenades from RPG-7 launchers attached with tetryl. This further supplements the fewer yet more sophisticated Switchblade or Warmate drones.

Not long ago, an agreement was signed with the French company Turgis & Gaillard to produce state-of-the-art Aarok drones in Ukraine, which will constitute another line of defense against Russian opposition. In addition, Ukraine has declared its intention to manufacture more than 11,000 medium to long-range attack drones and a million FPV drones intended for use on the battlefield.