Photo: Сергей Иванович via Adobe Stock
According to reports from Ukraine’s air force, Russia launched more than 19,000 missiles, including over 14,700 one-way attack drones, at targets in Ukraine from September 28, 2022, through December 28, 2024. Most of these one-way attack drones were Shaheds—a system imported from Iran and adapted by Russia to include new guidance systems and electronic countermeasures. These drones have a 2,000 kilometer (km) range and carry a 40 kilogram high explosive payload. And they are relatively cheap. Though estimates vary, each Shahed is estimated to cost $35,000 per drone.
While Ukraine has continued to adapt ingenious ways for countering swarms of loitering one-way attack drones over the course of the war, the Shahed retains a cruel attritional logic. It is the most cost-effective munition in Russia’s firepower strike arsenal. Even though Shahed’s only hit their target less than 10 percent of the time, their low cost means Russia can fire mass salvos almost daily, wearing down Ukrainian air defenses and terrorizing the population.
This installment of the Russian Firepower Striker Tracker explores the cost-effectiveness of long-range attack drones used in the Russia-Ukraine war. CSIS Futures Lab worked with a research team at the University of Texas to analyze data compiled from Ukrainian air force social media by Petro Ivaniuk. The project is part of the lab’s commitment to embracing data science to analyze national security issues. It complements other efforts at CSIS that empirically analyze the changing character of combined arms and operational art in the new missile age.
The data compiled by the research team demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of long-range, one-way attack drones. Despite seeing large numbers of these systems shot down by Ukrainian air defenders, they remain the cheapest way to generate effects in Moscow’s firepower strike arsenal. This cruel logic explains why from September through December 2024, Russia launched more one-way attack drones against targets in Ukraine than in the preceding 23 months combined. If Russia can sustain this launch rate for its precision bombardment campaign, Ukraine will need a steady supply of low-cost countermeasures and more help impeding Russian access to drone components. And these systems are increasingly common. And the United States will need to learn from Ukraine how to counter one-way attack drones while investing in its own family of low-cost, long-distance attack systems like the proposed Enterprise Test Vehicle—Pentagonese for a low-cost cruise missile under development—and Anduril’s new class of autonomous air vehicles. Based on data from Ukraine, low-cost swarms will likely prove cost-effective and create new options in offensive and defensive campaigns.
As seen in the chart below, Russia increasingly relies on one-way attack drones to sustain its attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and political centers consistent with their concept of noncontact war and using long-range precision strike assets. Every night, these systems cause millions of Ukrainians to head to bomb shelters and mobile air defense crews and electronic warfare teams to move into position. The Shaheds are used as much to saturate air defenses as they are to attack targets, cluttering radar screens and forcing command centers to make decisions about where to fire their more capable surface-to-air missiles like the Patriot.
The data classified nearly all the one-way attack drones Russia launched against Ukraine as “Shahed-136/131.” Russia has ramped up domestic production of Shahed-type drones, which are cheaper and easier to produce than conventional missiles. But Shaheds could be cheap without being cost-effective. The data we analyzed showed around 90 percent of Shaheds were intercepted or otherwise failed to reach their targets. For comparison, the data showed Russian missiles like the ground-launched Iskander-M and air-launched Kh-22 reach their targets 89.9 percent and 94.6 percent of the time, respectively.
If Ukraine were using expensive missiles to shoot down inexpensive drones, there would be no question that Russia is on the favorable side of a cost-exchange ratio. But Ukraine has many ways to defend itself against Shaheds. Some, like shooting them down with heavy machine guns or steering them off-course by spoofing their satellite navigation, are relatively low cost. Because the data was not specific enough for cost-exchange calculations, we calculated Russia’s cost per target struck. The hard part was estimating the per-unit costs of Shaheds and other Russian munitions.
It is difficult to precisely know the per-unit cost of Russia’s Shahed-type drones, which Russia manufactures domestically as the “Geran-2.” One Israeli missile expert, writing in January 2023, estimated as little as $20,000–$30,000 per drone. Later, a British analyst put the figure closer to $80,000, based on his personal inspection, in October 2022, of the components of a captured Shahed-136. Forbes Ukraine has used $50,000 per Shahed to calculate the cost of Russian attacks. But all these estimates stem from observations made early in the war.
By early 2024, Russia had scaled domestic production of Shaheds, using laborers from Africa and components from China. Russia appeared to be prioritizing quantity over quality. For example, in a Shahed that Ukrainians downed in October, they found the engine simplified to just the essentials, without even a starter or a flywheel.
Given how Russia is producing these drones, the lowest cost estimates are realistic. Nevertheless, for our calculations, we used a conservatively high unit cost of $35,000—the midpoint between the lowest cost estimate and the more often cited $50,000.
Whereas reliable cost estimates for U.S. missiles are publicly available, reliable cost estimates for Russian missiles are not. For the Kh-22, Kh-47, and Kh-59, we used estimates published by Forbes Ukraine, which have been cited by Newsweek and Kyiv Post. For the Iskander and Kaliber, we used estimates published by another Ukrainian outlet, Defense Express, which is often cited by BBC Ukraine. (Defense Express had convincingly argued that the Forbes Ukraine cost estimates for those two missiles were too high.) For S-300/S-400 surface-to-air missiles, repurposed for ground attack, we used the midpoint of cost estimates published by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance and Ukraine’s Ekonomichna Pravda.
As seen in the table below, precision bombardment with Shahed-type drones costs Russia roughly $350,000 per target struck. That is compared to around $1 million per target struck for their most cost-effective missile, which the data suggest could be the Kh-22 air-to-ground cruise missile. The next candidate, at first glance, is the S-300/400 missile. But the data showed these missiles being used mostly in shorter-range attacks of less than 150 km. Furthermore, according to the CSIS Missile Defense Program, they are inaccurate for ground attack.
To put these numbers in perspective, a Patriot interceptor (PAC-3) is over 3 million dollars while a NASAM (AIM 9-X variant) is slightly over 1 million dollars. This means firing a NASAM to intercept a cruise missile (Kh-22 or Kh-59) is cost-effective. Using it against a one-way attack drone carries a significant loss of value (over $600,000 per interceptor). These numbers are compounded when one factors the time it takes to produce modern Western interceptors and the limited number of production lines compared to the relative ease Moscow has found in adapting plants to mass produce one-way attack drones. Even though the United States has increased production of AIM-9X by 18 percent (137 produced per month) and PAC-3 by 116 percent (48 per month), it is still on the wrong side of the cost curve based on insights from Ukraine.
In terms of dollars per pound of munition delivered, our analysis showed missiles are much more efficient than Shahed drones. The Kh-22, for example, carries a payload of around 2,200 lbs. However, a Shahed’s 110-pound payload can do significant damage that is sufficient for many targets. There are also secondary benefits. Shahed salvos place a tax on air defense teams that can create attack windows for other missiles to get through. They also terrorize the population, sending Ukrainians every night to bomb shelters in major urban centers.
Finally, the data do not differentiate among genuine Shahed-136/Geran-2 drones, cheaper drones of a similar type, and decoys, which Russia frequently launches alongside Shahed drones to distract Ukraine’s air defenses. If a significant proportion of the “Shahed drones” intercepted are cheaper drones and decoys, Russia could be employing their Shahed drones more cost-effectively than our analysis suggests.
The cost-effective logic of Shaheds is likely part of the explanation of why Russia fired more long-range precision weapons at Ukraine in the last four months than in any other period of the war. If Russia can sustain that rate of fire and nightly salvos, Ukraine may need more Western support in the form of systems appropriate for defense against Shaheds. In addition, the United States should learn from the operational lessons emerging from the skies over Ukraine to adapt its own formations for future war.
First, the United States will need to determine the best support options for changing the cost-effectiveness of Shaheds in collaboration with European partners, including new forums given the uncertainty surrounding the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group. These efforts could include intelligence share as well as helping Ukraine expand domestic production and helping coordinate the delivery of low-cost but highly effective systems like Skynex modular SHORAD and 35 milometer ammunition for Gepard antiaircraft guns. It can also include using the defense of Ukraine as a battle lab, continuing initiatives like FrankenSAM—combining old Western missiles with Soviet radars—and testing direct energy prototypes, an approach the United Kingdom recently pursued by fielding its DragonFire system.
Second, any effort to change the cost curve must also address the ease with which Moscow continues to import components required to build its one-way attack drones. The sad reality is that Western electronics continue to appear in Shaheds. One study found that over 80 percent of the critical circuit boards and guidance systems were linked to Western suppliers, often through third-party firms bypassing sanctions. Many of these firms are linked to China. Sanctions like those recently imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on Chinese companies are one example of the kinds of actions that might increase headwinds against Russian drones and change the cost-effectiveness of key systems. Additional efforts could include intelligence sharing and law enforcement coordinated by an interagency task force led by the Department of State or Ukraine envoy. Any U.S. approach, in collaboration with Kyiv and European partners, must have multiple lines of effort—from defense policy to diplomacy—and use cost-effectiveness as its primary measure of performance.
Third, cost-effectiveness—as a way of thinking about firepower strikes and the new missile age—provides a new defense paradigm. The United States should learn from the lessons emerging in the skies over Ukraine to prioritize its force design and development initiatives. For example, one of the reasons Ukraine has maintained a high intercept rate for one-way attack drones is its use of acoustic detection, mobile air defense teams, and electronic warfare all coordinated through a digital common operating picture that can work on a tablet. The United States struggles to field a comparable, cost-effective mix of capabilities for ground-based air defense capable of covering a 1,000 km front. Second, Moscow’s use of one-way attack drones illustrates the logic of investing in low-cost, precision mass. The Department of Defense should expand efforts seeking to produce low-cost cruise missiles and autonomous air attack vehicles. These initiatives should increasingly embrace concepts like hyper-scale manufacturing and using AI to find efficiencies and reduce the cost per unit.
Neil Hollenbeck is a U.S. Army War College fellow with the Clements Center for National Security. Muhammed Hamza Altaf, Faith Avila, Javier Ramirez, and Anurag Sharma are graduate students in the Masters of Science in Information Technology & Management program at the University of Texas at Austin. Benjamin Jensen is a senior fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. The authors’ views do not the official policy or position of the Army, U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any other organization.
