Russia's Shahed Is The First Big Air-To-Air Drone
Shaheds armed with air-to-air missiles are crude, but they're sure to evolve
The world’s leading air forces are racing to develop high-performance drone fighters with air-to-air capability—and for obvious reasons. Fast, maneuverable drones could add firepower to a manned combat air patrol, at low cost and low risk to the most valuable component of any CAP: the crews.
Shockingly, the richest air forces—America’s and China’s—aren’t actually leading the race. Instead, it’s the war-battered Russian air force that’s the first to deploy significant numbers of air-to-air-capable heavy drones.
But Russia’s air-to-air drones aren’t like the high-tech, purpose-built fighter drones the Americans and Chinese are spending billions of dollars to develop. Instead, the Russians are sortieing Shahed one-way attack drones armed with air-to-air missiles or repurposed surface-to-air missiles.
The air-to-air Shaheds are crude. And they’ve yet to score an air-to-air kill in the roughly three months between the first one appeared in the air over Ukraine and the time of this writing in mid-February. But the Shaheds are evolving fast in the incubator of Russia’s 48-month wider war on Ukraine.
