Why the Shahed 136 Might Be the Perfect Drone — And Why the World Is Racing to Copy It

The global drone revolution is reshaping modern warfare, and while nations like the United States, China, and Turkey pour resources into sophisticated unmanned systems, one country has arguably cracked the code on what actually works on today’s battlefields. Iran’s Shahed 136 — a cheap, slow, unglamorous kamikaze drone — has emerged as one of the most consequential weapons of the 2020s. It is not the fastest, the stealthiest, or the most technologically advanced unmanned aerial vehicle in existence.

But its combination of rock-bottom cost, long range, ease of production, and swarm-attack potential has turned conventional defense economics on its head, forcing even the world’s most powerful militaries to rethink decades of procurement doctrine. From the trenches of eastern Ukraine to the skies over the Middle East, the Shahed 136 is proving that effectiveness, not excellence, is what wins wars — and now virtually every major military power on Earth is scrambling to build its own version.

The Tool for the Mission: Why Effectiveness Beats Excellence

Understanding the Shahed 136 requires abandoning the assumption that the most technologically impressive weapon is necessarily the most useful one. Consider the F-22 Raptor — widely regarded as the best air superiority fighter ever built, combining stealth, dynamic flight characteristics, and cutting-edge technology. Yet for all its brilliance, the F-22 would be absurdly out of place if driven up to the front lines of a trench engagement on a truck bed. The principle is straightforward: impressiveness and usefulness are not the same thing, and an unimpressive weapon can still be the most valuable tool on the battlefield.

A decade ago, advanced military powers were investing heavily in sophisticated, reusable UAVs — America’s Predator and Reaper drones, Turkey’s TB2, China’s Wing Loong (known abroad as the Pterodactyl) — and dreaming of artificially intelligent combat aircraft that could out-fly and out-think human pilots. But the most consequential branch of modern drone warfare turned out to be almost precisely the opposite of what those military minds envisioned. In Ukraine, where 21st-century drone warfare is being developed to its fullest potential, the reality is gritty, unsophisticated, and reliant on the cheapest possible technologies that can be effective.

Platforms are designed to be destroyed. Innovation is bootstrapped, jerry-rigged, and at times almost comedic in its simplicity. Ukraine is not a place where the smartest or most autonomous drone wins — it is a place where a drone wins a fight because somebody strapped a knife onto it and flew it hard at the other guy’s drone, pointy end first.

It is in this gritty arena, where excellence almost always loses out to effectiveness, that the Shahed 136 thrives.

Anatomy of the Shahed 136: Unimpressive Specs, Extraordinary Utility

First designed by Iran sometime in the late 2010s or early 2020s, the Shahed 136 is properly classified as a loitering munition — though it is better understood by a less flattering name: a kamikaze drone. Unlike the reusable reconnaissance and strike drones that advanced militaries were focused on at the time, the Shahed 136 was designed so that, in an ideal scenario, it would never come home. Its sole objective is to carry as heavy a warhead as possible and smash into a target, with onboard explosives set to detonate on impact.

On paper, the specifications seem resoundingly unimpressive. The Shahed 136 is shaped like a delta wing with a blended, tubular fuselage running down the middle. It is dull, grey, and mostly smooth, with a couple of stabilizers on the wingtips. A single pusher propeller at the rear provides propulsion, achieving a top speed of only around 185 kilometers per hour (115 miles per hour) — significantly slower than the cruising speed of even a basic single-engine personal aircraft.

It measures roughly 3.5 meters in length by 2.5 meters wide (about 11 by 8 feet). Its onboard warhead weighs 50 kilograms (110 pounds), constituting a quarter of its total mass of just 200 kilograms (440 pounds). By every conventional metric, it appears to be a small, slow, bumbling aircraft that should be easy to shoot out of the sky.

But dig deeper, and the list of strengths grows surprisingly long. Although not technically stealthy, the Shahed 136 is hard to detect. Its construction makes it difficult to spot on radar, and its small size compounds the problem.

In flight, it hugs terrain — flying low and slow above forests, rooftops, deserts, plains, or ocean surfaces — to avoid radar detection. Even when spotted, it is easily mistaken for a bird or, worse, a civilian aircraft that a counter-drone operator would hesitate to engage. Its range is remarkable for its size: up to 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles), with a flight endurance believed to approach a full day under favorable conditions.

It does not require manual operation, instead relying on a basic artificial-intelligence autopilot and a small sensor suite that includes consumer-grade satellite GPS and an inertial navigation system capable of maintaining course without external references. The platform is highly modular, able to carry explosive warheads of varying types or onboard cameras for reconnaissance missions. And it can be launched with rocket assistance from the back of a truck, making it exceptionally easy to conceal and deploy with virtually zero advance notice.

The Economics of Asymmetric Warfare: Why Cost Is the Shahed’s Greatest Weapon

Perhaps the most consequential attribute of the Shahed 136 is its price. On the export market — where it is not publicly offered — the drone appears to sell for roughly $193,000, about half the price of the most basic American Sidewinder air-to-air missile, or less than one-twentieth the cost of a single Patriot air-defense interceptor. But the vast majority of that price tag is believed to represent Iran’s profit margin.

According to most estimates, the actual production cost of a Shahed 136 falls somewhere between $50,000 at the high end and as low as $10,000 at the bottom end. This is achieved through heavy use of consumer-grade components — from fuselage parts to internal wiring to the 4G SIM cards used in flight operations. Prices that low on a long-range explosive munition of any kind were practically unheard-of in the modern world until the global drone revolution got underway.

The implications of this rock-bottom cost are staggering. First, it makes the Shahed 136 practically disposable. Second, it means that for the price of even relatively basic pieces of modern military hardware, an operator can acquire ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred copies.

At $4 million per Patriot interceptor missile, and assuming the lowest production-cost estimates for the Shahed are accurate, a rival nation could produce 400 Shaheds for the price of a single interceptor. The Shahed 136 is therefore the ideal swarm weapon — built to be produced in such high numbers that it hardly matters if the overwhelming majority are shot down. A 50-kilogram warhead may not be an extraordinary payload, but it is far from negligible, and even if most drones in a swarm attack fail to reach their targets, the ones that survive will deal considerable damage.

More fundamentally, the Shahed 136 attacks not just adversary soldiers and equipment but adversary defense budgets. A single Patriot interceptor can shoot down one Shahed, not four hundred. If Iran were to fire 400 Shaheds at known Patriot batteries and watch every single drone get intercepted, Iran would still win the larger economic game: it would have spent approximately $4 million, while the United States would have spent $1.6 billion.

This cost-exchange ratio makes the Shahed 136 an extraordinary equalizer between underfunded, underpowered militaries or asymmetric actors and the major powers they have historically been unable to challenge. A nation deploying the Shahed 136 in high volumes does not have to defeat a more powerful adversary outright — it just has to convince that adversary that the war comes at an unbearable cost.

From Disdain to Respect: The Shahed’s Journey on the Global Stage

When the Shahed 136 first appeared on the global stage in the months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a fair portion of Western leaders and analysts treated it as something of an annoyance — even an insult. The United States and its allies were investing in cutting-edge drone technology, and here was Iran, apparently trying to spam its way through combat with a cheap, unimaginative design. When Russia began using and then mass-producing its own Shahed imitations under the designation Geran-2, Western disdain only intensified. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the Iran-Russia drone partnership as a ‘collaboration with evil,’ and many assumed that Russia and Iran would quickly discover their shoddy technology paled in comparison to NATO-standard hardware.

A few short years later, the tone has changed dramatically. The Shahed 136 remains a technologically modest platform and an affront to Western sensibilities about what military equipment should look like — but it is now recognized as a major and entirely credible threat. It has enabled a crawling Russian advance in eastern Ukraine, laid waste to cities far from the front lines, and at times swarmed across the Middle East from Iran toward Israel. The Shahed 136 is still not loved, but its capabilities are finally being respected.

And as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Every Nation Wants to Copy It: The Global Race for Shahed-Style Drones

In late September 2025, defense reporter Alistair MacDonald wrote a report for the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘Every Nation Wants to Copy Iran’s Deadly Shahed Drone.’ While the title is admittedly hyperbolic — not every nation on Earth is pursuing asymmetric drone capabilities — MacDonald’s larger point was rock-solid. Nations from the United States to France to Britain to China are all actively working to build their own long-range, low-cost kamikaze drones in the Shahed style.

According to some observers, it is no longer even worth maintaining the appearances of originality and innovation that Western industry prizes. Global militaries need the Shahed 136, or something better, and if they could copy it directly, they would.

In the United States, a growing number of military leaders are echoing concerns that outside analysts have expressed for years: that by focusing so intensely on sophisticated but costly UAV technology, the US has stumbled into a significant capability gap in the type of drone warfare the Shahed 136 was made for. Even before the war in Ukraine, engagements like the 2020 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan demonstrated the depth of knowledge the United States was lacking.

Speaking to The War Zone, Lieutenant General Charles Costanza, commander of the US Army’s V Corps, acknowledged that the US needed a drone of very similar make to the Shahed 136 — something the country really should have been working on half a decade earlier. Days later, Major General Jay Bartholemees, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, made a similar admission, noting that lessons learned in Ukraine have cast an unflattering light on America’s slowness to adapt. Bartholemees described the Shahed 136 as ‘exactly the type of capability that we would love to have for our allies and partners in the region’ — referring specifically to the Indo-Pacific — and added: ‘We are behind in that sense, we need to push faster, all the services, frankly, are on this chase to move faster… we aren’t moving fast enough.’

As experts outside the US military frequently point out, America’s sluggishness has been stunning, even concerning, when compared against its obvious willingness and ability to produce and adopt other new kinds of warfighting equipment. A truly responsive outcome would see the US already possessing the production capacity to build multiple tens of thousands of these drones each year, even in peacetime. Instead, the Pentagon has been slow to break free of Cold War-era thinking — specifically, the conviction that quality of military equipment was simply more important than quantity.

The Shahed 136 has turned that equation on its head, and Washington has been slow to respond. Although programs like the Replicator initiative were well-intentioned, they still fell far short of what was actually required.

American Programs: Playing Catch-Up in Kamikaze Drone Development

Despite the delayed start, the Pentagon now appears to be changing its thinking. Across America’s military-industrial complex, initiatives to build Shahed-style drones are gathering increasing attention.

The start-up SpektreWorks is developing its FLM 136, better known as the LUCAS. Outwardly very similar in design to its Iranian counterpart, the LUCAS features lower range, endurance, and payload capacity than the Shahed, but it represents a valuable first step toward building a larger successor. Griffon Aerospace is already offering the Arrowhead UAS — again, a smaller version of the Shahed 136, but one that can already be launched from truck-mounted systems or using rockets, mirroring the Shahed’s operational flexibility.

Then there is the Artemis, built in collaboration between drone software company Auterion and hardware manufacturers in Ukraine. The Artemis has been operationally tested on Ukrainian soil and can engage in AI-enabled operations even in environments where GPS signals are being jammed — addressing one of the Shahed 136’s known vulnerabilities. Finally, the US Air Force has recently requested that private industry produce at least sixteen attempts to reverse-engineer a Shahed 136, suggesting that these drones will serve as a basis for future development of both offensive drone and counter-drone systems.

China, Taiwan, and the East Asian Shahed Race

Halfway across the world, China is hard at work putting its own Shahed copy into action. Designated by Beijing as the ASN-301, the drone bears a very close resemblance to Iran’s Shahed 136 and may have been designed using specifications and principles provided by Iran directly, given the relatively close relationship between the two nations. The ASN-301 is purportedly designed to target and neutralize enemy radar systems, first identifying radar origin points and then honing in to destroy the source.

Notably, China appears to have also drawn on the technology behind the Israeli Harpy drone — the very platform that Iran’s Shahed 136 was initially based on. In an ironic twist, the Harpy is thought to have served as the basis for the Shahed 136 despite the 136 having been initially intended to target Israel, and even the Harpy itself was based on an earlier German design.

China also flies another Shahed copy, this time appearing to be based fully on the Iranian design and designated the Sunflower 200. The Sunflower is believed to be a very close imitation of Iran’s work, and copies have already seen combat use — Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces have employed the Sunflower 200 to strike an airbase during the country’s civil war.

China is not the only military in East Asia pursuing a Shahed-style design. In 2023, Taiwan revealed that it had built its own platform using essentially the same principles, underscoring the degree to which Iran’s design philosophy has become a global template for low-cost, long-range loitering munitions.

The Shahed 136 as a Force Equalizer: Rewriting the Rules of Modern Conflict

The Shahed 136’s significance extends far beyond its technical specifications. It represents a fundamental shift in the economics and strategy of modern warfare. For decades, military power was largely defined by the quality and sophistication of a nation’s hardware — a paradigm that overwhelmingly favored wealthy, technologically advanced states.

The Shahed 136 challenges that paradigm directly. By making long-range precision strike capability available at a fraction of the cost of conventional munitions, it serves smaller or less powerful militaries, and even non-state actors, as a force equalizer capable of hitting more powerful adversaries where it hurts most: their defense budgets.

Iran may not be the true military powerhouse it claims to be, but with the Shahed 136, it struck gold. The drone’s combination of low cost, long range, ease of production, ease of smuggling in large numbers, and adaptability to fit the needs of diverse operators has made it the defining weapon of the current drone revolution. It is not the best at anything — but that is precisely the point. And now, from Washington to Beijing to Taipei, the world has no choice but to try and keep up.

European Contenders: Britain’s SkyShark and France’s One-Way Effector

While the United States and China have attracted the most attention in the race to replicate the Shahed 136’s success, European NATO allies are pursuing their own programs — with mixed results that reveal just how difficult it is to internalize the Shahed’s core lessons.

In Britain, MGI Engineering has developed the SkyShark, a platform that boasts one impressive advantage over its Iranian inspiration: speed. According to its makers, the SkyShark can fly at around 450 kilometers per hour (280 miles per hour), well over twice the Shahed 136’s top speed of roughly 185 km/h. On paper, that velocity could make the SkyShark significantly harder to intercept.

However, the trade-offs are severe. The SkyShark features a severely diminished range and payload capacity compared to the Shahed 136, uses a very different and lower-endurance design, and is estimated to cost approximately $67,000 per unit. While that price tag is still cheap by Western defense standards, it is nowhere near as cost-effective as the Shahed, whose production cost may dip as low as $10,000.

The SkyShark is an interesting piece of technology, but it is not clear that London has fully absorbed the lessons of the drone revolution — lessons that prioritize mass, expendability, and economic asymmetry over raw performance.

France, by contrast, appears to be doing substantially better. The missile manufacturer MBDA has developed a new platform called the One-Way Effector, designed to cruise at a remarkably low speed of just 40 kilometers per hour (25 miles per hour) while carrying a warhead of up to 40 kilograms (90 pounds) at a range of up to 500 kilometers (310 miles). A heavier variant, designated the Crossbow, carries a warhead of up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) at ranges exceeding 800 kilometers (500 miles).

Crucially, MBDA hopes to be able to build up to one thousand copies of its base model per month — a production tempo that, while still not matching the Shahed’s apparent manufacturing scale, clearly lays the foundation for scaled-up designs later. The One-Way Effector still does not match the Shahed 136 in overall capabilities, but its design philosophy — emphasizing volume, low cost, and expendability — suggests that Paris has grasped the fundamental economics at play.

Elsewhere in the NATO alliance, Turkey is known to have at least experimented with its own Shahed imitation, designated the Azab, which was photographed above Turkey in 2023. While details on the Azab remain scarce, its very existence underscores the breadth of the global effort to replicate what Iran has achieved.

Beyond the Clone: Why Modularity and Iteration Matter More Than Imitation

Regardless of which country ultimately produces the most successful Shahed-style drone, experts and military planners are increasingly recognizing that simply copying the Shahed 136’s design is not enough. To truly replicate its battlefield impact, nations must also imitate its modularity — and, critically, the relentless pace of iteration that has kept the platform relevant.

In service with Iran, and especially with Russia, the Shahed 136 has gone through rapid evolutions in multiple directions over the past several years. Variants have been converted to new roles, given updated software and hardware, fitted with better engines or even jet engines, and retrofitted inventively to adapt them to entirely new tasks. Some versions are even reusable, depending on the mission — specifically, as long as they are not employed in a kamikaze strike. All the while, the platform has been made progressively cheaper, incorporating more and more consumer-grade equipment as it becomes available, further enhancing its ability to bleed Western defense budgets dry.

This constant evolution is not incidental to the Shahed 136’s success — it is central to it. It is not enough for America, China, or Europe to simply produce a clone model of the Shahed 136 and begin mass-producing it without further thought. If these programs are going to be successful, they must build their drones in a way that allows for constant updates and innovation.

And they would be wise to grow accustomed to that innovation process in peacetime, because they are going to need it in war. The Shahed 136’s story is not the story of a single brilliant design frozen in time; it is the story of a platform built to evolve, cheaply and rapidly, in response to whatever the battlefield demands.

Lessons From the Shahed: Why Underdogs Drive Innovation

Despite the world’s early disdain for the Shahed 136, it has become abundantly clear to global militaries that Iran figured something out about drone warfare long before the rest of the world caught on. The Shahed 136 is not a superweapon, and it is far from invincible. But while the rest of the world was focused on building weapons that were as advanced and as promising as possible, Iran was working an entirely different angle — and the results have reshaped the global defense landscape.

There are much broader lessons the world can learn from the Shahed 136, starting with the reason Iran chose to develop it in the first place. Yes, it is effective, and yes, it is innovative in its own way, but it is no coincidence that Iran — an ambitious but militarily underpowered nation dealing with a crush of international sanctions — was the nation to build it. Iran has never had much of a chance at military parity with its arch-enemy, Israel, let alone with its other adversaries across the world.

Instead, Iran has had to focus on lower-cost alternatives: supporting and supplying asymmetric proxy forces across the Middle East, building missile technology instead of investing in long-range aircraft, and pursuing a nuclear deterrent instead of a conventional one. Iran innovated in the direction that led to the Shahed 136 because Iran’s solutions needed to work within Iran’s operational constraints.

This is particularly important to understand because, as the broader history of the drone revolution demonstrates, innovations in drone warfare typically are not coming from the world’s major powers. They are coming from places like Iran and Ukraine — nations trying to work against larger adversaries with more powerful militaries and far deeper pockets. They are coming from insurgencies, cartels, and syndicates that have zero chance of acquiring conventional air power but can easily purchase a quadcopter from a local electronics store and strap a grenade onto it.

If the United States, China, Europe, or other geopolitical power players are going to succeed in the global drone race, they are going to have to find a way to break through their baked-in sensibilities and innovate like the little guys do. Iran and Ukraine decided to attack their adversaries’ pocketbooks, because that is where they knew they could not otherwise compete. The most powerful nations on Earth would be wise to acknowledge that reality and put themselves in the position of an adversary who needs to struggle a bit in order to keep up.

The Shahed 136 is not the perfect drone because it is an amazing piece of hardware. It is the perfect drone because it used newly available drone technology to wiggle into the cracks of the global military-industrial ecosystem and break the entire thing apart.

Counter-Drone Technologies: The Clock Is Ticking on the Shahed’s Dominance

As potent as the Shahed 136 and similar models might be today, they may not be so formidable tomorrow. Drones are evolving fast, but counter-drone technologies are evolving to keep up — and the battlefield is already beginning to shift.

Earlier discussions of the Shahed 136’s cost advantage focused on the staggering disparity between a $10,000–$50,000 drone and a $4 million Patriot interceptor. But Ukraine does not use Patriot interceptors to deal with Shaheds anymore. Instead, the nation has pioneered a range of far cheaper countermeasures. Ukraine employs first-person-view (FPV) interceptor drones designed to fly directly at the Shahed 136 and either detonate or otherwise take it out of the sky.

It uses jamming technology to inhibit the drones’ ability to fly or navigate. It flies cheap, refitted propeller planes to either gun them down or, at times, simply smack them with their wingtips. And it trusts its soldiers with simple, decently high-caliber guns to shoot the Shahed out of the sky at a time when it is flying no higher than a flock of birds.

Ukraine is, of course, an innovator in this space, and if Iran or another nation were to use the Shahed 136 against a country like the United States or the NATO nations of Europe, those defenders would likely be far less prepared to intercept at low cost. They would still have to rely on Patriot interceptors, other air-defense interceptor systems, or air-to-air munitions launched from fighter jets. But that equation is changing too, even if not quite as fast.

Western companies are working hard on new types of interceptor drones. American offerings include the Switchblade and the Anvil. Britain is developing the Skyhammer. Switzerland has the Hornet. There are also Ukrainian models, like the Sting, that NATO might buy in large quantities or license for domestic production once the war ends — similar to what Britain is already doing with another Ukrainian design known as the Octopus.

Beyond interceptor drones, advanced nations are investing in directed-energy weapons: microwave devices capable of frying a drone’s internal systems, and lasers that can blind sensors or, at higher intensity, melt the aircraft out of the sky. Conventional manned aircraft — including France’s Mirage 2000D, America’s F-15E Strike Eagle, and the A-10 Warthog — are being modified to serve as specialized carriers for counter-drone precision-kill systems.

Right now, it is a very good time to be a drone like the Shahed 136. But its time of unchallenged dominance will come to an end — just not today.

Innovation and Iteration: The Only Constants in the Drone Revolution

What happens next in the global drone race will almost certainly be driven by the same core principles that have fueled the modern drone revolution from the start: innovation and iteration. When it comes to modern drones, innovation is not some grand experiment conducted in pristine laboratories — it is a rat race, where the scrappy and the unconventional can thrive, while the orthodox, the rich, and the bloated tend to fall behind.

In the world of drone warfare, iteration is not optional — it is mandatory. Any drone that has even the slightest chance of being successful will be designed on the expectation that it will soon become irrelevant. The Shahed 136 itself has survived precisely because it has never stood still, constantly absorbing new components, new software, new engines, and new mission profiles. Ukraine, Iran, and a range of drone-powered fighting factions are rising to the challenge of perpetual adaptation.

Now, the most advanced military powers on Earth will have to decide whether they can swallow their pride, roll up their sleeves, and find their own place in the drone revolution. The nations that succeed will not be those that build the most impressive single platform, but those that build systems designed to evolve — cheaply, rapidly, and continuously. The Shahed 136 did not change the world because it was the best drone ever made. It changed the world because it was good enough, cheap enough, and adaptable enough to force everyone else to rethink everything they thought they knew about modern warfare.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is the Shahed 136, and what are its basic specifications?

The Shahed 136 is a low-cost, long-range loitering munition — commonly called a kamikaze drone — designed by Iran in the late 2010s or early 2020s. It carries a 50 kg warhead, measures roughly 3.5 meters long by 2.5 meters wide, flies up to 2,500 km at about 185 km/h, and is designed to crash into its target and detonate on impact rather than return home.

Why is the Shahed 136 so economically devastating to defend against?

A single Patriot interceptor missile costs approximately $4 million and can shoot down only one drone. At the lowest production cost estimates of $10,000 per unit, a rival could build 400 Shaheds for the same price. Even if every drone is intercepted, the attacker spends roughly $4 million while the defender spends $1.6 billion — making sustained defense economically unsustainable over time.

How does the Shahed 136 avoid detection?

It uses a basic AI autopilot with consumer-grade satellite GPS and an inertial navigation system that can maintain course without external references. It avoids detection by flying low and slow, hugging terrain such as forests, rooftops, and ocean surfaces, and its small size and radar-minimizing shape make it difficult to distinguish from birds or civilian aircraft on radar.

Which countries have built their own copies of the Shahed 136?

Russia mass-produces the Geran-2 for use in Ukraine. China has developed the ASN-301 and the Sunflower 200 — the latter already used in combat by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Taiwan has revealed its own Shahed-style platform. The United States is developing the LUCAS (FLM 136), Arrowhead UAS, and Artemis. Britain has the SkyShark, France the One-Way Effector and Crossbow, and Turkey has experimented with the Azab.

What are the known vulnerabilities of the Shahed 136 and how is Ukraine countering it?

Its reliance on consumer-grade GPS makes it susceptible to jamming, and its slow speed of around 185 km/h makes it vulnerable once detected. Ukraine has pioneered low-cost countermeasures: FPV interceptor drones that fly directly at the Shahed, electronic jamming, refitted propeller planes that gun them down or smash them with wingtips, and soldiers using high-caliber guns to shoot them at low altitude.

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• https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/mbda-unveils-one-way-drone-eyeing-1000-unit-a-month-production-rate/
• https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/06/17/mbda-offers-cheap-drone-swarm-as-door-opener-for-its-pricey-missiles/
• https://united24media.com/latest-news/france-turns-mirage-2000d-fighters-into-shahed-hunters-after-lessons-from-ukraine-12445
• https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/us-shahed-drone-copies/#:~:text=SpektreWorks%20copied%20and%20reverse%2Dengineered%20the%20drone%20for%20target%20practice%20and%20training
• https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force/2025-08-20/iran-drone-replicas-18823276.html#:~:text=The%20Air%20Force%20intends%20to%20buy%20at,drone%2C%20likely%20for%20testing%20and%20training%20purposes
• https://theaviationist.com/2025/08/24/us-seeks-shahed-copies/
• https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/08/usaf-seeks-exact-replica-shahed-drone-help-develop-defenses/407581/
• https://united24media.com/latest-news/secretive-us-drone-modeled-after-shahed-136-revealed-heres-what-we-know-10574
• https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/pentagon-seeks-small-uas-to-replicate-irans-shahed-kamikaze-drone/164257.article
• https://thedefensepost.com/2025/08/22/us-shahed-drone-replica/
• https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-iran-shahed-136-kamikaze-drone
• https://thedefensepost.com/2023/03/27/turkish-drone-replica-iran/