Drones Like Bicycles | Esfandyar Batmanghelidj
An Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone is a simple weapon. The delta wings, which span 2.5 metres, are made of fibreglass and end in two fixed vertical stabilisers. The rear control fins are operated by simple servos. The drone carries an autopilot system, a GPS receiver and a data module. Propulsion comes from a basic air-cooled four-piston motor of cast aluminium producing 50 horsepower to drive a pusher propeller. Built to aviation specifications, the motor is nonetheless not unlike one found on a small motorcycle. The drone flies at 185 kilometres per hour carrying a 40-kilogram warhead over a distance of 2,000 kilometres.
A simple weapon with systemic effects
This simple weapon has thrown the global economy into disarray. Since the US and Israel began what the author characterises as an illegal war against Iran on 28 February, Iranian forces have responded by launching thousands of Shahed-136 drones at targets across the region. These have struck not just military sites but civilian infrastructure — refineries, power plants, airports, hotels and ships — and have been central to Iran's retaliatory strategy, bringing maritime and air traffic to a halt.
Gulf kingdoms, Israel and the US have expended scarce and expensive interceptor missiles repelling the attacks. Most interceptions have succeeded, but the sheer volume of launches means Iran has hit many of its targets.
The number everyone quotes
To make sense of the long-range air weaponry driving this devastation, reporters have fixated on the cost of the Shahed-136 platform. Dozens of articles cite a figure somewhere in the $20,000 to $50,000 range — a fraction of the cost of interceptor missiles, whose price can reach $3 million. The juxtaposition gets a lot of attention as an illustration of how contemporary warfare is changing.
But is the comparison accurate” An analysis by the think tank CSIS of the price of Russia's Shahed-136 variant explains the unscientific way these estimates are usually devised:
It is difficult to precisely know the per-unit cost of Russia's Shahed-type drones, which Russia manufactures domestically as the "Geran-2." One Israeli missile expert, writing in January 2023, estimated as little as $20,000-$30,000 per drone. Later, a British analyst put the figure closer to $80,000, based on his personal inspection, in October 2022, of the components of a captured Shahed-136. Forbes Ukraine has used $50,000 per Shahed to calculate the cost of Russian attacks. Nevertheless, for our calculations, we used a conservatively high unit cost of $35,000 — the midpoint between the lowest cost estimate and the more often cited $50,000.
Nobody has taken an Iranian one apart
Most estimates of the cost of the Shahed-136 are based on analysis of the Russian variants, and none of the public figures appear to derive from an actual breakdown of the components of an Iranian-made drone. The real costs of Iranian drones could be dramatically cheaper than assumed, making the cost asymmetry more extreme still.
The US and Israel have installed an ever-escalating sanctions regime and a still-escalating military assault with the ostensible aim of making the conduct of war too expensive for Iran. As that war engulfs the region and sows chaos in the global economy, it is worth understanding how cheap a war can now be.