With the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, drones have quickly become the focus of the military. From reconnaissance drones in the hands of front-line infantry, to cruise missiles specially used to hunt and kill self-propelled artillery truck guns, to unmanned support platforms used by artillery units, and even drones used to carry out reconnaissance and combat missions and strategic reconnaissance drones used by the US military to reconnoiter Black Sea intelligence, UAVs can be seen everywhere on the battlefield.
For Russia and Ukraine, whose production was extremely low before, this surge in equipment demand cannot be met in a short period of time, and can only be built slowly. However, after almost two years of hard work, Russia has achieved amazing results - the annual production of drones reaches hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Compared with AVIC's previous exports of dozens or even hundreds of UAVs at most, the number of "millions" is really unbelievable. However, this is actually because the types of drones involved vary too much. Russia can produce "millions of drones" every year, mainly referring to FPV ultra-light UAVs, while compared with China's "Rainbow", "Pterodactyl" and other heavy military UAVs, the output is still only "dozens".
And a little-known fact is that in 2021, global civilian drone shipments have exceeded 10 million, of which DJI has shipped 5.3 million units without deliberately increasing production capacity in 2022. This shows the status and technical level of DJI and even China in the field of UAVs. Interestingly, the reason why Russia has been able to reach its current high production capacity is directly related to its large import of production equipment.
After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, both sides quickly realized the importance of drones, but both countries have quite limited inventory of drones. Ukraine at that time had only a batch of TB-2s purchased from Turkey, as well as old equipment left over from Soviet times. The situation in Russia is slightly better, in the early years through the purchase of Israeli military drones, several domestic models were launched, and after 2014, the domestic elements were further strengthened, and the UAV equipment system represented by "Lancet", "Sea Hawk" and "Orion" was initially established.
However, these Russian-made drones were not really fully localized, and the actual number of equipment was not large, and they were quickly depleted (the same is true of the Ukrainian TB-2). In order to fill this gap, Ukraine actively appealed to the United States for help, and eventually received cruise missiles and a small number of small drones. Russia, on the other hand, unexpectedly chose Iran, acquiring at least thousands of drones from Iran at the cost of several American-made equipment captured on the battlefield and tens of millions of euros in cash, and quickly became a nightmare for Ukraine.
However, at that time, the drones obtained by Russia and Ukraine from other countries were basically support or long-range strike reconnaissance types, and did not solve the urgent need of front-line infantry for ultra-light reconnaissance drones. In fact, both warring sides have found that the civilian drones sold by DJI are well suited to the needs of the infantry and have procured them. When many civil society organizations tried to provide supplies to the front line, DJI drones also became the first choice, and even formed a trend.
However, this simultaneous supply of drones to both warring sides put DJI under a lot of political pressure and eventually opted out of both overseas markets. Although Russia and Ukraine can still transfer DJI drones from other countries, they are very inefficient, so they have begun to vigorously develop their own drone production systems. According to Ukrainian officials, its drone production in 2023 has increased by 100-110 times compared to 2022.
At the same time, the Ukrainian military claims to have formed at least 17 drone strike companies and opened up a series of new ways to strike. These drone strike units have attacked the Russian military's naval air base on the Crimean peninsula and even attacked bomber airfields in the Kremlin and the Russian hinterland.
However, at the moment there is a big problem that Ukrainian UAV production enterprises are very fragmented, of different sizes and technical levels, and are quite complex to use. For example, a Ukrainian enterprise called "Autonomous Terminal" has created a UAV called AQ-400, similar to the Iranian "small motorcycle", with a theoretical maximum range of 750 kilometers and the ability to carry a 72-kilogram warhead, which is quite good. However, the current monthly production of this model is only 100 units, and although it has already begun to be used in the Ukrainian army, it has not yet developed a scale advantage, which also reflects the overall situation in the production of UAVs in Ukraine.
In comparison, Russia has created a number of production units by mass-importing production equipment. These units have a unified production standard and can mass-produce several basic individual UAVs in general. Judging from the disclosed site**, these Russian enterprises use 3D printers to produce fuselage components, although other processing equipment is somewhat rudimentary, but basically complete.
At a glance, it gives the impression of "small workshop screwing". A total of nearly 20 such "small workshops", generally with dozens or even hundreds of workers, a daily production of hundreds of drones is not a problem, according to rough estimates, "one million drones annual production capacity" is not an exaggeration. In an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel in January this year, it was also mentioned that Russia is far ahead of Ukraine in the field of drones, and the height that the former has reached is exactly what the latter is trying to catch up with.
In fact, it is at this point that the essential difference between industrial and non-industrial countries really emerges. Ukraine's technological base, inherited from the Soviet Union, has been almost exhausted over the years (the last essence was destroyed in the war), and although increasing the production of drones has received much attention, it is still fighting on its own, with a wide range of models and low resource utilization. Russia's production model of unified procurement of equipment and unified technical standards is a typical feature of the modern industrial system, showing that Russia has not lost the most basic means of industrial coordination.
Of course, how Russian UAV manufacturers can solve the problem of million-level motors, ESCs, navigation and other parts, and how to buy batches of UAV production equipment in a short period of time and land the technical system is a more interesting topic.