Iran’s noisy $50,000 delta-winged Shahed 136 drones have long been an unwelcome sight over Ukraine’s skies.
Now, in the past 48 hours, hundreds of distinctive weapons have attacked Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and across the Gulf as Tehran attempts to intimidate and impose costs on America’s regional allies.
Video from Bahrain shows a delta-wing drone flying towards a block of flats at night, with the lawnmower’s engine roaring clearly audible, before crashing terrifyingly into the building, with burning 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 Shahed 136 – have targeted Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf since the United States and Israel first attacked Tehran on Saturday morning.
On Monday afternoon, the United Arab Emirates said it had been attacked by 689 drones and had shot down 645, meaning 44 drones, just over 6% of the total, managed to get through.
The Shahed 136 are 3.5 meters long and have a wingspan of 2.5 meters. Their relatively low cost and ease of manufacture, particularly compared to a ballistic missile, of which Iran could only make a few dozen a year before bombing between the United States and Israel began, means that drones are more likely to remain a feature of the conflict for some time.
Most Shahed 136s are relatively slow, although faster jet variants have been seen in Ukraine, and can only carry an explosive charge of about 50kg, enough to damage a skyscraper but not enough to bring it down.
But its noise, its large size and its final terminal dive easily provoke terror.
A second video, also from Bahrain, clearly shows a single delta-winged drone flying over the heart of the naval base housing the US Fifth Fleet, before successfully descending to crash and destroy a radar dome.
Shahed attacks have also been reported in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and probably at an RAF base at Akrotiri in Cyprus.
Their range is up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and they are typically pre-programmed on complex flight paths, traveling at low altitude to try to evade radar detection.
But in Ukraine there is growing evidence that operators can pilot them remotely, allowing them to change course at the last minute.
The Shahed 136 were designed at the end of the last decade in Iran and were first seen 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 also have been used earlier, in September 2019, against Saudi oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais.
But the drones, originally designed by the Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, an Iranian company that the United States says is subordinate to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, became widespread as a result of their use by Russia in the war in Ukraine starting in the fall of 2022.
Initially exported, Iran later shared the design to allow Russia to manufacture large quantities 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 ballistic and cruise missiles, in an effort to overwhelm kyiv’s air defenses so that the deadliest missiles can penetrate.
But most videos of Shaheds in the Gulf this weekend show isolated drones that have breached air defenses rather than an attacking swarm.
In Ukraine, the Shaheds have been most effective in attacking static targets, especially utility infrastructure, leading to a nationwide electricity and heating crisis this winter that affected hundreds of thousands of homes or more.
Iran may succeed if it copies that tactic: On Monday morning the Ras Tanura refinery, Saudi Arabia’s largest, was damaged after a drone attack caused a fire that forced it to shut down.
Although it was not confirmed that the weapon used was a Shahed, it had the same explosive effect.
