Shahed-136 drones emerge as Russia’s main weapon

Political and military observer Oleksandr Kovalenko wrote about this on Telegram.

According to Kovalenko, the recent drone attacks, both overnight and during the day, included modified versions equipped with an enlarged warhead—expanded from 50 to nearly 90 kilograms.

To put that into perspective, 90 kilograms of explosive is roughly equivalent to the payload of an OFAB-250 high-explosive fragmentation bomb, which was originally used by Russian forces before they introduced the Universal Glide and Correction Module (UMPK) to convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions.

The Russian military is now regularly deploying drones with enhanced warheads, aiming to scale the level of rear-area terror in Ukraine to something resembling carpet bombing. The overnight launch of 28 Shahed-136 drones against Odesa exceeded even the payload capacity of a Su-34 bomber carrying OFAB-250 bombs. Similarly, daytime strikes on Kharkiv are comparable in destructive power to conventional air-dropped bombs.

As has been pointed out many times, despite the geographic distance between Odesa and Kharkiv, the threat they face—and the tactics to counter it—are strikingly similar. It’s no surprise that after heavy night strikes on Odesa, Ukraine’s eastern capital, Kharkiv, came under attack. This suggests that the same defense measures effective for one city can also protect the other.

At this point, the Shahed-136 is gradually becoming an even more efficient and cost-effective weapon than conventional aerial bombs like the OFAB-250. Given Russia’s constant adjustments to drone strike tactics and their ongoing modifications to the Shahed-136, it's likely their design bureaus are already tasked with further increasing the warhead's size. While it’s hard to say exactly what the goal is, it's plausible that an objective has been set to scale the payload up to 200 kilograms—comparable to the destructive capacity of an OFAB-500 bomb.

"With the entirety of Russia’s military-industrial complex now seemingly focused on expanding this campaign of terror and destruction against Ukrainians, one must ask: would a war criminal like Vladimir Putin even consider a “truce” while his regime is escalating efforts to industrialize genocide?" Kovalenko concludes.

• Russian forces may be applying chemical toxins to their Shahed 136-type UAVs, which they launch at Ukraine every night, in order to cause additional harm to people who pick up the debris of downed drones.