Iran requests advanced Geran drones from Russia for war with Israel and the US

Tehran approached Moscow this year with a request to supply advanced Geran drones for use in a war with Israel and the United States.

This was reported by the Financial Times, citing Western security officials and people close to the Kremlin.

According to the publication, the Geran is a modernized version of the Iranian-designed Shahed drone, which Russia began producing in 2023. The first generation, the Geran-1, carries a warhead weighing up to 20 kg and reaches a maximum speed of 185 km/h.

The latest modification — the jet-powered Geran-5, which Russia reportedly deployed for the first time in January of this year — is capable of reaching speeds of up to 600 km/h, carrying a 90 kg warhead, and striking targets at distances of up to 1,000 km. While the Geran-4 uses a more aerodynamic version of the original airframe, the Geran-5 features an entirely new design more closely resembling that of a cruise missile, the FT notes.

The upgrades go beyond speed and shape. Older Geran models had a primitive guidance system, whereas newer variants are equipped with thermal imaging cameras and AI-based guidance systems, Russian anti-jamming antennas, and Chinese mesh modems for radio networks.

“The Russian operator flies at an altitude of 2–5 km, detects a target, locks onto it with a camera, and then the Shahed automatically carries out the attack,” said Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of defense.

According to him, almost all jet-powered drones currently attacking Ukraine are equipped with such cameras.

Centralized production has allowed the Kremlin to modify the drones based on combat experience and rapidly introduce new models. These drones cost several times less than the missiles that formed the backbone of Moscow’s previous air campaigns.

“The reason Russia was able to build a major new production line from scratch is that technologically it is far simpler than producing, say, tanks, which require enormous, unique, and expensive machine tools,” explained Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based think tank Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

Data from the Ukrainian Air Force and British intelligence sources indicate that Russia has sharply increased the number of jet drone attacks on Ukraine. These drones are significantly faster than the types previously in common use, leaving Ukrainian air defenses far less time to detect and destroy them. According to The Sunday Times, Russia is using at least two main types of jet-powered strike drones: the Geran and the Banderol.

Anatoly Khrapchynsky, a business development director at a defense company and a reserve air force officer, explained that jet drones have been reaching Kyiv more frequently by flying through several regions, as they are considerably harder to shoot down due to their high speed. He said that to address this problem, Ukraine is working on deploying more radar and electronic warfare assets, and that the approaches to detecting aerial targets have also changed as drone speeds have increased.