Iran’s noisy $50,000 delta-winged Shahed 136 drones have long been an unwanted sight over the skies of Ukraine.
Now, over the last 48 hours, hundreds of the distinctive weapons have struck Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and across the Gulf as Tehran tries to intimidate and impose costs on regional allies of the US.
A video from Bahrain shows a delta-wing drone flying towards a tower block at night, the lawnmower grumble from its engine clearly audible, before it slams terrifyingly into the building, with fiery debris falling beyond the balcony window. The apartment may not have survived a direct hit.
More than 1,000 drones – a high proportion of which are likely to be Shahed 136s – have targeted Iran’s Gulf neighbours since the US and Israel first attacked Tehran on Saturday morning.
On Monday afternoon, the UAE said it had been attacked by 689 drones and had downed 645 – meaning 44 drones, a little over 6% of the total, got through.
The Shahed 136s are 3.5 metres long with a wingspan of 2.5 metres. Their relatively low cost and ease of manufacture, particularly compared with a ballistic missile, of which Iran could only make a few dozen of a year before the US-Israeli bombing started, means the drones are more likely to remain a feature of the conflict for some time.
Most Shahed 136s are relatively slow, though faster jet engine variants have been seen in Ukraine, and can only carry an explosive payload of about 50kg – enough to damage a skyscraper but not enough to bring it down.
But their noise, their large size and final terminal dive readily provoke terror.
A second video, also from Bahrain, clearly shows a single delta-winged drone flying above the heart of the naval base housing the US Fifth Fleet, before swooping down successfully to smash into and destroy a radar dome.
Shahed strikes have also been reported in Kuwait and the UAE, and probably at an RAF base at Akrotiri in Cyprus.
Their range is as much as 1,250 miles (2,000km) and they are typically preprogrammed on complex flight paths, travelling low above ground to try to evade radar detection.
But there is growing evidence in Ukraine that they can be remotely piloted by operators, allowing them to change course at the last minute.
Shahed 136s were designed towards the end of the last decade in Iran and were definitively first spotted in July 2021,
in an attack on an Israeli-owned oil tanker, Mercer Street, in which a Briton and a Romanian were killed.
They may have also been used earlier, in September 2019, against Saudi oil installations at Abqaiq and Khurais.
But the drones, originally designed by Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, an
Iranian company the US says is subordinate to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, became widespread as a result of their use by Russia in the war in Ukraine from the autumn of 2022.
Initially exported, Iran later shared the design to allow Russia to manufacture large numbers at a factory
in Yelabuga, on the Volga River.
Russia typically attacks Ukraine using coordinated swarms of up to 800 Shahed 136s, similar looking Gebera decoys, and a small number of cruise and ballistic missiles, in an effort to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defences so the more deadly missiles can get through.
But most of the videos of Shaheds in the Gulf this weekend show isolated drones that have got through air defences rather than an attacking swarm.
In Ukraine, Shaheds have been most effective at hitting static targets, most notably utility infrastructure, leading to a national electricity and heating crisis this winter, affecting hundreds of thousands of homes or more.
Iran may have success if it copies that tactic: on Monday morning the Ras Tanura refinery, the largest in Saudi Arabia, was damaged after a drone attack caused a blaze, forcing it to close.
Though the weapon used was not confirmed to be a Shahed, it had the same explosive effect.
Bulky and noisy Iran-made unmanned attack drones have hit buildings in Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and elsewhere
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