When Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, granted Russia’s request for drone reinforcements to fight the war in Ukraine, noise complaints can’t have been high on his list of expected Ukrainian responses. And yet.
“Do you know [what] we call these Iranian drones? ‘Motorbikes’ because they [make] the same sound,” Dr. Hanna Shelest, an Odesa-based senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis, chuckled as she told the Washington Examiner. “They’re extremely loud. So, as for now … that is our biggest problem.”
A series of Iranian drone attacks on Odesa have proven rather ineffective, according to Shelest. Russian forces have used a combination of Iranian “kamikaze” drones and larger Iran-provided vehicles that can conduct surveillance as well as airstrikes across the theater, but the defenders of Odesa have blunted several of the attacks, and Ukrainian forces now have published images that appear to show an entire Iranian drone captured intact — a potential intelligence coup for both Ukraine and the United States.
“This drone was neutralized over the Black Sea in September 2022,” a Ukrainian Military Portal publication announced. “The UAV is equipped with a multispectral sensored camera, as well as a laser rangefinder and two suspensions: one under each wing. The captured drone was carrying Ghaem-5 aerial bombs.”
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That apparent success marks the first capture of such an Iranian drone, according to Shelest, and with it an unprecedented opportunity to “look what is inside them.” It’s a valuable research opportunity, with the war in Ukraine continuing to function as a proving ground for the full-scale use of drones in war.
Recently, in response to a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the ambassador of Iran stated that his country has not supplied drones to russia.
Here is the Iranian drone Qods Mohajer-6, which was launched to coordinate an attack on Odesa a few days ago. pic.twitter.com/C5Ep0kj7GZ— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 3, 2022
“The advantage comes from intelligence gathering about how this Mohajer interface can be used in conjunction with other Russian or Iranian equipment,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies research analyst Ryan Brobst told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t think the Iranians have made scientific breakthroughs in developing these drones, but they have made organizational breakthroughs in arranging basic technologies in a functional manner. And by trying to understand that, it could give the United States intelligence advantage in the Middle East or wherever else they encounter these drones.”
A thorough analysis of the machine could allow Ukrainians to understand any communications systems that likely connect the Mohajer to the smaller kamikaze drones, known as the Shahed 136. The Mohajer’s configuration raises the possibility that Russia uses the larger drone as a sort of scout for the smaller Shahed 136, which does not appear to have a camera.
“So you have to be able feed it coordinates — either preprogram it, in which case you can really only use it against a building or something like that,” said John Hardie, deputy director of FDD’s Russia program. “Or, if it’s able to receive coordinates in real time, you can have the Mohajer-6 fly around, acquire it, and then feed it to the Shahed-136. … The question, to my mind, would be whether the passing along of the targets happens in real time.”
U.S. forces likely have the ability to take down Iranian drones with existing electronic warfare capabilities, but President Joe Biden’s team would hesitate to place such advanced technology in Ukraine, where it might be at risk of Russian capture. The recovery of the intact drone could lead to the development of lower-value electronic warfare plan, optimized to take down the drones while affording minimal advantage to the Russians, should they succeed in acquiring one.
“If you can gain additional information — this guidance system, the chip they’re using all kinds of additional details that could be helpful for various actors to contribute to other ways of helping down and additional drones — I think that that would, in my view, be a worthy effort to go through,” a former senior U.S. official said. “You also will learn a little more about the tactics and doctrines being deployed by the Iranians by getting into the system. You’ll see the flight path that was programmed, you’ll learn more about the coding — about how they are programming the drone back at headquarters.
The drones that attacked Odesa were sent on missions to target putative supply depots and the headquarters of Ukraine’s Southern Command — the military leaders responsible for the Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kherson. The attack on the headquarters occurred very early in the morning, Shelest added, when only one man was on site, and it damaged the roof and an interior floor.
Ukraine’s expected access to the data stored on the drone could allow it to test the adage that turnabout is fair play.
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“Because each time we are capturing the new type of the drones … that allows us to study their technology in terms of what are their weak places and how we can intercept this,” Shelest said. “They also have the information, for example, [about] where they started. So, [if] the electronics is in good shape, we definitely can find more about the Russian placement [of] the Russian base from where they start and what are the capabilities of these drones.”
