Hitting Russia’s two drone plants would end the Shahed threat - expert

Aviation expert and senior researcher at the State Aviation Museum Valerii Romanenko said on Espreso.

“It is well known that Shaheds are produced at only two plants — the facility in Yelabuga in the Alabuga zone and the Kupol plant in Izhevsk. That’s it, just two enterprises. The Yelabuga plant is the more powerful one, producing far more drones than Izhevsk.

 It took more than a year to build, and they had practically all the necessary documentation from Iran. To construct a new plant near Bryansk or beyond the Urals, Russia would again need at least a year, possibly longer, especially now that they face restrictions on access to machinery and equipment. Only the defense sector is functioning; civil aviation is dead, and even machine-building is struggling,” he noted.

According to Romanenko, restarting Shahed production at another facility would require re-profiling the plant, which would also take no less than a year.

“So if strikes are carried out against these two plants — Yelabuga and Izhevsk — the Shahed problem and the issue of air defense against them would be solved at once, because there would simply be nothing to shoot down. Even though production is primitive, reducing Shahed output through strikes on the workshops could allow us to redeploy mobile air defense groups closer to frontline cities, which are hit not only by Shaheds but by many types of drones, even the cheapest ones,” the aviation expert added.