Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country’s drone production is estimated to hit 1.4 million units this year, a ten-fold increase from their 2023 levels.
Speaking at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on Special Purpose UAVs in St. Petersburg on Thursday, Putin told attendees that "140,000 unmanned aerial vehicles of various types were delivered to the armed forces in 2023," before proclaiming this year “the production of UAVs is to be increased many-fold, specifically, almost tenfold."
The remarks come as Western intelligence services accused the Islamic Republic last year of assisting Moscow in efforts to establish drone fabrication facilities inside Russia to domestically manufacture a variant of the regime’s Shahed-136, a platform the Kremlin has used extensively in their invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, Tehran confirmed the delivery to the Russian military of finished versions of the loitering munitions for direct use on the battlefield.
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