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> They are the ones who provided Russia with Shahed drones. Shaheeds are aerodynamic clones of the Israeli Harpy SEAD drone, which in turn were based on the Ge
by dingaling 7mo ago
> They are the ones who provided Russia with Shahed drones.
Shaheeds are aerodynamic clones of the Israeli Harpy SEAD drone, which in turn were based on the German Dornier DAR of the 1980s.
Compared to the loitering anti-radar DAR, the Shaheed is electronically extremely simple and not much more advanced than the WW2 V-1.
The fact that Russia started producing Shaheeds reflects more on the poor state of Russian industry than any sophistication of Iranian technology.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoIt's so odd that in modern America weapons being cheap and practical is often seen as a negative. Have to make sure to fork over a couple million per shot to a defence contractor.
- DrProtic 7mo agoGuy is full of it though. Iranian drones are very effective while American Switchblade drones shit the bed completely in Ukraine. We have US cloning Iranian drones now https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/10/flm-136-americas-cheap-iran-designed-shahed-drone-clone https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/10/flm-136-americas-cheap-i...
- infamia 7mo agoYou're comparing apples, bananas, and pineapples while pretending they're all one thing. Switchblades are extremely effective (albeit expensive) anti-personnel (300 model) and anti-armor (600 model) drones. Shaheds are much larger, cheap, low on capabilities, but attritable used to attack fixed positions (e.g., buildings). These are all very different.
- Teever 7mo agoThat's the point -- maybe the US should have bought apples instead of buying bananas.
- infamia 7mo agoI don't understand your point. Switchblades are (roughly) more akin to FPV (300 model) and Vampire drones (600 model) with reapect to size and payloads. Shahed style drones are roughly like like low end cruise missles. Different form factors and different capabilities. All of them are needed, but they're all very different.
- cherry_tree 7mo agoA cruise missile is 3,000,000$ and a shahed drone is 50,000$ so if it’s even remotely the same capability it is an immense technological improvement over an expensive and slow to manufacture cruise missile.
- infamia 7mo agoYou need a high/low capability that mixes all levels. For example, the Ukrainians and the Russians are both manufacturing very expensove cruise missles (Neptune/Iskander) and long range attack drones (shahed/fp-2/lute/etc). At any rate the original post I was responding to was comparing Switchblades to Shaheds, which is non-sensical.
- urikaduri 7mo agoWhat is the use case of a dumb, slow, suicide drone for the US army?
- cherry_tree 7mo agoWhat’s the use case of a flying bomb that can be mass produced at little cost in days to weeks instead of months to years? Yeah tough to say really.
- urikaduri 7mo agoWell, what is it going to be used for?
- 7mo ago
- tim333 7mo agoUkraine have underwater drones https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukrainian-underwater-drone-toloka-is-being-updated-what-s-new-in-the-tlk-150-model/ https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukrainian-underwater-drone-to... Could be a copy of those? They don't look that complicated - tube with explosives, battery, electric motors, some sort of computer/radio control. Not so different to a Shahed in complexity.