“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 actually a deadly weapon…or if it’s basically a foam toy,” the person 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 the person and Serhii Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronics expert whose black military van is equipped with electronic jammers to shoot down drones.

The Iranian-designed Shahed unarmed decoys and armed drones are built at a factory in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, an industrial complex established in 2006 about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow to attracting business and investment to Tatarstan. It expanded after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and some sectors shifted to military production, adding new buildings and renovating existing sites, according to satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press.

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 $1.7 billion deal for the Shaheds in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of unmanned aerial vehicles , or UAV, in combat 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 percent have reached 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.

These swarms have become a demoralizing reality for Ukrainians.

Russian drone tactics continue to evolve. Now, more powerful missiles often follow close behind as air defenses are exhausted by drones. The most destructive are ballistic and cruise missiles, which fly several times faster than drones, which buzz loudly and can be tracked with the naked eye.

Even decoys can be useful to Russia. A decoy with a live camera allows the plane to geolocate Ukraine’s air defenses and relay the information to Russia in the final moments of its mechanical life.

Night after night, Ukrainian snipers spring into action to shoot down drones using man-portable surface-to-air missiles.

One sniper, who like most Ukrainian soldiers asked to be identified by his call sign Rosmaryn, said he had shot down perhaps a dozen drones in nearly two years and that he had seen one stuffed with rags and moss. Rosmaryn sees her adversary in almost human terms, describing the plane’s quest to outwit her small unit.

“It was part of a swarm, flying as one of the last,” he said. “When it’s in the sky, we can’t tell what type it is because it’s all inside the drone. We won’t know until he’s killed. »

Many fly between 6,500 and about 10,000 feet before descending to lower altitudes on their final approach, Rosmaryn said. Leaked videos suggest Ukraine is now using helicopters to shoot down drones at high altitudes.

Three decoys of Russian origin crashed in Moldova last week, authorities said.

Thanks to optical trickery, the radar cannot distinguish a drone armed with the usual 50 kilogram payload of explosives from a Shahed or thermobaric weapon – also known as a vacuum bomb – from those without warhead or equipped with live surveillance cameras. There are also other drones of even cruder quality, armed or not, but in smaller quantities than Shahed-type unmanned aircraft.

This is why, even knowing that decoys now make up the bulk of the incoming swarm, Ukraine cannot afford to let anything slip through.

“For us, it’s just a dot on the radar… It has a speed, a direction and an altitude,” said Col. Yurii Ihnat, an Air Force spokesman. “We have no way to identify the exact target during flight, so we either have to jam it with electronic warfare or use firepower to neutralize it. The enemy uses them to distract our attention.

The engines and electronics of the Shaheds and weaponized decoys are a mix of Chinese and Western imports, according to fragments seen by The Associated Press at a Ukrainian military laboratory. Without them, drones could not fly. Despite almost three years of sanctions, Moscow can still source its spare parts – largely from China and via third countries in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Midway through the November 2 series of air alerts, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Shahed swarms, which he estimated at 2,000 in October alone, had been made possible by the Western technology that escaped sanctions.

“Among these numerous Shaheds are more than 170,000 components whose delivery to Russia should have been blocked. Microcircuits, microcontrollers, processors, many different elements without which this terror would simply be impossible,” Zelensky said.

Jointly manufacturing drones – some to carry bombs, others to divert attention – saves Russia military money. Production of the decoys began earlier this year and the factory now produces about 40 of the cheapest unarmed drones per day and about 10 armed drones, which cost about $50,000 and take longer to produce, according to the person with knowledge of Russian drone production. .

In late October, Russian newspaper Izvestia said the aim of the decoy was to “weaken” the enemy by forcing them to waste ammunition before sending in armed Shaheds.

Beskrestnov and the person familiar with Russian drone production said Alabuga engineers are also constantly experimenting, putting Moscow at the forefront of drone production. To make electronic interference more difficult, they add Ukrainian SIM cards, roaming SIMS, Starlinks, fiber optics – and can sometimes receive real-time information before the drones are jammed, shot down or run out of fuel. Sometimes they attach a foam ball painted silver to make the drone appear larger on radar.

But the latest thermobaric variant is causing new anxieties in Ukraine.

From a military point of view, thermobarics are ideal for tracking targets located either inside fortified buildings or at depth.

Alabuga’s thermobaric drones are particularly destructive when hitting buildings because they are also loaded with ball bearings to cause maximum damage, even beyond the superheated explosion, Albright explained.

Beskrestnov, better known as Flash and whose black military van is equipped with electronic jammers to neutralize drones, said the thermobarics were first used over the summer and believes they now represent between 3 and 5% of all drones.

“This type of warhead has the possibility of destroying a huge building, especially buildings. And it is very effective if the Russian Federation tries to attack our power plants,” he said.

They have a fearsome reputation because of their physical effects, even on people captured outside the initial blast site, said Arthur van Coller, an international humanitarian law expert at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. South.

“With a thermobaric explosion, because of the cloud it would create, everything within its radius would be affected,” he said. “This is creating massive fear among the civilian population. Thermobaric weapons have created the idea that they are truly horrible weapons and that creates fear.