Russia’s secret plan to supercharge kamikaze drone production

Por Graham Lanktree, Phelim Kine — China – POLITICO

Moscow is moving to expand its capacity to make tens of thousands of the killer drones it deploys in attacks on Ukrainian cities, according to plans from a Russian state company obtained by POLITICO.

The expansion of state firm Rosatom’s Alabuga-Volokno factory in Russia’s Tatarstan region would allow Moscow to make an additional 500 tons of military-grade aerospace carbon fiber each year by 2029. The strong lightweight material is key to building the drone’s airframe.

The production increase would translate to an additional 28,000 weaponized drones every year, according to one expert estimate — a 78% increase in production of weapons like the one that struck a passenger train on the Polish border this month and others that have left scores of Ukrainian civilians dead. Ukraine estimates Russia can currently produce more than 36,000 kamikaze drones, known as “Gerans,” annually.

The plans underscore Russia’s commitment to weaponized drone technology to power its war machine, which it is increasingly turning against the rest of Europe.

The Alabuga-Volokno factory and its parent company, Rosatom’s advanced materials division UMATEX, are sanctioned by the U.K., U.S. and multiple other Western governments.

The factory is a key node in Moscow’s military-industrial supply chain and is the same one that received a disguised shipment of 46 tons of carbon-fiber chemicals from a Chinese-state corporation earlier this year, according to internal Rosatom shipping and customs documents reported earlier this month by POLITICO. Rosatom previously said the firm and its subsidiaries “operate in full compliance” with applicable laws and regulations.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement that it was unaware of the Russian drone production expansion plans and “strictly controls exports of dual use items in accordance with law.”

Business, design and structural plans gathered from Russian sources by the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre — a Kyiv-based think tank close to the Ukrainian government — detail the factory’s expansion and schematics for its equipment and construction.

Rosatom declined to comment on the documents.

The U.S. House Select Committee on China has reviewed the documents and determined they are authentic, according to a U.S. government official familiar with their contents. The Ukrainian government has also reviewed the documents and confirmed their authenticity, a Ukrainian official said. Both officials were granted anonymity as they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Russia’s drone war expands

In May, the Russian government approved Rosatom’s plans to build the new line at its Alabuga-Volokno factory “for the production of chemical fibers and threads” to produce up to 500 tons of carbon fiber per year, according to official approval for the construction project. 

Satellite images between May and July show land earmarked for the expansion project adjacent to Alabuga-Volokno’s current carbon fiber factory in Tatarstan being cleared for construction, said the Ukrainian official. The images provided by the USCC show “proof that it is already growing,” this official said.

The foundation of the new factory “is being prepared,” said weapons expert David Albright, founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security think tank, who independently obtained satellite images of the site from August. The timeline for the factory’s completion in 2027, he said, “requires rapid construction.” 

Drones allow Moscow to “launch these massive volleys and put pressure on deep targets within Ukraine at many different locations, and ensure that they can saturate the defenses,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, a former adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who researches drone warfare at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “It’s been a very good coercive tool and critical to Russia’s deep strike campaign.”

Rosatom’s plans to grow its capacity to feed Russia’s demands to increase weaponized drone production isn’t just a concern for Ukraine as Moscow’s fifth year of all-out war drags into another winter.

“The expansion of Alabuga and its affiliated enterprises should be viewed not merely as a problem for the Ukrainian front, but as a long-term challenge to the security of the whole of Europe,” said Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre.

In-housing production

Moscow is working to increase its domestic carbon fiber production to reduce its reliance on imports from China as it aims to manufacture around 130,000 drones for its national “Unmanned Aerial Systems” project by 2030, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, this year. Russia plans to increase this to 350,000 by 2035.

Rosatom’s Alabuga-Volokno will aid this national effort. The three key reasons for expanding the factory include “import substitution of dual-use products” and “meeting the demand of Russian strategic sectors (aviation, defense industry) for carbon fiber,” according to the Rosatom documents.

The factory’s total capacity “could make 28,000 Shahed 136 drone airframes,” calculates weapons expert Albright, whose Institute for Science and International Security has conducted years of in-depth research on Russia’s drone production. Russia’s Geran-2 attack drones are based on the design of Iran’s Shahed. 

“Without the carbon fiber, they can’t make the drone,” Albright said. Russia “can’t substitute for the carbon fiber in the drone and keep its weight down,” he explained, noting the material is used to strengthen the wing and internal structures, such as those for the fuel tank and engine.

Moscow is not getting enough polyacrylonitrile tow — a so-called PAN-precursor — used to make high-spec carbon fiber “for all their defense needs,” Albright said. Through the factory, Moscow is attempting to reduce its reliance on imports of the fibrous chemical essential to reinforcing its drones’ airframe.

The internal Rosatom plans show the firm intends to build a new “a modern PAN plant” in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone factory complex. “The project’s primary product will be UMT42S-3K grade carbon fiber,” the documents detail, to be “used in the aerospace industry.”

Metadata scraped from the document shows it was created by an employee of Russian state corporation Rosatom’s advanced materials division UMATEX at the end of last year.

Drones produced in the Alabuga SEZ complex have become a key part of Moscow’s strategy of targeting both the Ukrainian military and civilians.

“Monitoring, restricting the supply of critical components, sanctions enforcement, disrupting logistics chains and reducing the production resilience of this complex must be among the priorities of the joint policy of Ukraine and its European partners,” said USCC’s Kuzan.

“At this stage, the Kremlin’s hybrid aggression is increasingly shifting towards direct escalation, particularly through the conduct of so-called sub-threshold actions, aimed at gauging the reaction of European countries,” he said, pointing to documented violations by Russian drones of Polish and Romanian airspace. Moscow has now also added jet engines to Russia’s design of its Geran drones — allowing it to strike further and faster.

Drones manufactured in the Russian Alabuga Special Economic Zone, Kuzan warned, “are likely to become the main instrument of the Russian Federation’s future campaigns in Europe.”

The Russian embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Europe at risk

With no end in sight for the Ukraine war and as Russia increases its attacks at NATO’s eastern fringe, world leaders gather this week in New York City for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Moscow is ready to restart negotiations to end its war, according to state-owned media outlet TASS.

Early this month, Russia’s permanent representative to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, reportedly led an unsuccessful effort to remove an item titled the “Situation in the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine” from the upcoming UNGA agenda.

Revelations of the carbon fiber factory’s planned expansion mean Lavrov’s overtures should be approached with skepticism, said Nicholas Fenton, associate director for the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS.

The September drone attack on the passenger train close to the Polish border and a series of examples of hybrid warfare in Europe — like sabotage and other tactics that fall below the threshold of open warfare — show Moscow has “significant appetite” to escalate the conflict both in Ukraine and Europe, Fenton said. 

“No matter the political outcome over some sort of diplomatic solution to Ukraine, we don’t see Russia de-escalating when it comes to its military posture vis-à-vis NATO or vis-à-vis Europe,” Fenton said. “We believe that the current leadership of the regime in Russia is committed to confrontation with the West,” he said — even if a peace deal is struck.

At the start of September, President Donald Trump dispatched U.S. special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Moscow and Kyiv to jumpstart a peace process. These visits reaped “substantive progress including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks,” Witkoff wrote online afterward. Yet Russia killed five people in missile and drone attacks on Kyiv just a day after Trump’s envoys left. Moscow has continued drone attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine since.

“The Russians are gaining momentum in the air war, continuing to iterate these systems, continuing to expand production,” Fenton said. “There’s significant concern over what might be coming.” 

Graham Lanktree reported from London. Phelim Kine reported from Washington.

Fonte: China – POLITICO