Russia plans to mix deadly new weapon with decoy drones – report

Russian engineers are building hundreds of decoy drones intended to overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses to cover up a gruesome new weapon, an investigation has found.

A factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone recently began producing thermobaric drones alongside decoys, Associated Press journalists revealed.

Thermobaric warheads create a vortex of high pressure and heat that can penetrate thick walls.

They suck up all the oxygen in their path and have a fearsome reputation due to the injuries they can inflict even outside of the initial blast site, such as collapsed lungs, crushed eyeballs, and brain damage.

Russia developed this decoy plan in late 2022 and called it Operation False Target, according to a source.

Ukrainian forces must make split-second decisions on how to spend their scarce resources to save lives and preserve critical infrastructure.

“The idea was to make a drone that would create a feeling of total uncertainty among the enemy. So he doesn’t know if it’s really a deadly weapon…or basically a foam toy,” the insider said.

With thermobarics, there is now a “huge risk” that an armed drone will veer off course and end up in a residential area, where the “damage will be nothing short of terrifying,” he said.

In recent weeks, decoys have filled the Ukrainian skies by the dozens, each appearing as an indistinguishable dot on military radar screens. During the first weekend of November, the kyiv region spent 20 hours on air alert, and the buzz of drones mixed with the rumble of air defenses and rifle fire.

Unarmed decoys now account for more than half of the drones targeting Ukraine, according to Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronics expert whose black military van is equipped with electronic jammers to neutralize drones.

It expanded after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and some sectors shifted to military production, adding new buildings and renovating existing sites, satellite images show.

In social media videos, the factory presents itself as a hub of innovation.

But David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Alabuga’s current focus was solely on producing and selling drones to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The videos and other promotional media were removed after an AP investigation found that many African women recruited to fill labor shortages complained of being tricked into accepting jobs at the ‘factory.

Russia and Iran signed a $1.7bn (£1.3bn) deal for the Shaheds in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in fighting later that year.

Shortly after the agreement was signed, production started in Alabuga.

In October, Moscow attacked with at least 1,889 drones, 80 percent more than in August, according to an AP analysis that has been tracking drones for months. Russia launched 145 drones across Ukraine on Saturday, just days after Donald Trump’s re-election cast doubt on US support for the country.

Since the summer, most drones have crashed, been shot down or are hijacked by electronic jamming, according to an AP analysis of Ukrainian military briefings.

Less than 6% have achieved any discernible goal, according to data analyzed by AP since late July. But the mere fact that there are many of them means that a handful of them can escape each day – and that’s enough to be deadly.