Who Is Imitating and Copying the 'Aerial Moped'? Lessons from Russia and America Drawing on Iran's Low-Cost Loitering Munitions

Who Is Imitating and Copying the 'Aerial Moped'?

— Lessons from Russia and America Drawing on Iran's Low-Cost Loitering Munitions

■ Zhao Wei, Hu Yongjiang, Zhu Ning

Shahed-136 Loitering Munition

Geranium-2 Loitering Munition

'Lucas' Loitering Munition

In recent years, a delta-wing, rear-engine-propelled loitering munition has appeared with increasing frequency across multiple active military conflict zones around the world. Much of the technology behind this weapon traces back to an Iranian-developed 'aerial moped' — the Shahed-136 loitering munition.

Who is imitating and copying this 'aerial moped'? Astonishingly, the ones leading the charge are Russia — a traditional missile power — and the United States — the world's largest arms exporter. So why have these two countries independently drawn lessons from what appears to be a crude piece of equipment? What different development paths have they taken in the process of leveraging it, and what new variants have emerged? What deeper lessons does this phenomenon hold? Read on for this issue's analysis.

Iran Has Built a Complete Low-Cost Loitering Munition System

A key reason Russia and the United States have drawn on Iranian loitering munitions is that Iran has carved out an economical and practical path for loitering munition development, thereby establishing a relatively complete low-cost loitering munition system.

Iran's development of loitering munitions was, to some extent, inspired by high-end anti-radiation unmanned aerial vehicles such as Israel's Harpy and Harop. Operating under prolonged technology blockades and with limited defense budgets, Iran did not replicate the high-end UAV development path; instead, it did the opposite, adopting a more pragmatic 'subtraction' strategy. In developing loitering munitions, the country discarded complex and expensive components such as radar seekers and precision gyroscopes, replacing them with commercial GPS chips and simple inertial guidance units, retaining the delta-wing configuration and small piston engine design, and using fiberglass and laminated plywood for the airframe — compressing manufacturing costs to the maximum extent.

The Shahed-136 loitering munition is precisely the product of this strategy in practice. This loitering munition is 3.5 meters long with a 2.5-meter wingspan, carries a 40-to-50-kilogram warhead, and has a range of 2,000 to 2,500 kilometers, yet costs only $20,000 to $50,000 per unit — less than one-fortieth the cost of the Harpy UAV and less than one-thirtieth the cost of the Tomahawk cruise missile — and can be mass-produced at ordinary machine shops. This characteristic aligns with the demands of modern warfare for 'low-cost, expendable' asymmetric operations, and has made it Iran's most representative loitering munition.

Moreover, Iran has continued to expand capabilities on the basis of the Shahed-136, developing additional types of loitering munitions. The Shahed-131 loitering munition is compact, with low radar and acoustic signatures, and is primarily used for saturation attacks at short-to-medium range. The Arash-2 heavy loitering munition has multiplied destructive capability and can efficiently strike hardened targets. The Shahed-136MS loitering munition adds an anti-jamming antenna and AI-assisted recognition capability, significantly reducing dependence on satellite signals. The Shahed-238 loitering munition, after being fitted with a turbojet engine, has seen a sharp increase in flight speed and enhanced penetration capability. The Shahed-136B loitering munition has a further extended range of 4,000 kilometers.

In this way, Iran has gradually built a 'family' of low-cost loitering munitions covering multiple functional roles — heavy assault, stealth penetration, high-speed jet-powered, and long-range coverage — with family members arranged in tiers across dimensions such as warhead weight, range, speed, and stealth capability, demonstrating strong complementarity in actual combat.

Russia and America Each Have Their Own Distinctive Approach to 'Making It Their Own'

Combat-proven cost-effectiveness is the best advertisement. For this reason, the Shahed-136 and other loitering munitions quickly attracted the attention of both Russia and the United States, which subsequently undertook deep reverse-engineering and innovation. However, the two countries have made different choices in their development paths.

Russia's approach to reverse-engineering was directly shaped by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Affected by Western sanctions, the Russian military's production capacity for high-end weapons was constrained; sustained combat operations pushed its precision-guided munitions stockpiles to a critical shortage, creating an urgent need for low-cost, mass-producible, long-range strike weapons to relieve the pressure.

The Shahed-136 loitering munition met the Russian military's needs in this regard. Shortly after the loitering munition was first deployed on the battlefield, Russia imported the production line for domestic mass production, designating it the Geranium-2 loitering munition. The latter retains the original piston engine and delta-wing configuration, upgrades the navigation module, and replaces it with an anti-jamming satellite navigation system; unit cost is approximately $30,000, with monthly production reaching several thousand units. Russia also reverse-engineered the Geranium-1 loitering munition based on the Shahed-131, to be used in combination with the Geranium-2 for saturation attacks.

Subsequently, Russia developed the high-speed penetration variant Geranium-3 loitering munition on the basis of the Geranium-2; by replacing the engine with a turbojet, its flight speed was increased to 500–600 kilometers per hour. Through further technical upgrades, the country also developed the Geranium-4, which adopts a flying-wing layout and can carry R-60 infrared-guided air-to-air missiles for striking aerial targets. However, for various reasons, the production volumes of these upgraded variants are far lower than that of the Geranium-2, and they primarily serve supplementary combat roles.

This model of comprehensive adoption and rapid localization reflects the Russian military's operational thinking of 'winning through quantity': it both meets battlefield attrition demands and, by virtue of cost advantages, creates suppression of the adversary's air defense system.

Unlike Russia, the United States' reverse-engineering of Iranian loitering munitions is more a proactive strategic positioning with an eye toward the long term. The U.S. military believes that in future high-intensity confrontations, relying solely on high-end precision-guided munitions will be insufficient to sustain prolonged attritional warfare, and that 'low-cost, expendable, and system-integrated' equipment will become a critical enabler on the future battlefield.

The United States' reverse-engineering approach leans more heavily toward 'strategic enablement.' In May 2024, the Pentagon began paying attention to this class of weapons. After obtaining an Iranian Shahed-136 loitering munition from the Ukrainian battlefield, the United States rapidly produced the 'Lucas' loitering munition through reverse engineering. This loitering munition is approximately 3 meters long with a wingspan of 2.4 to 2.5 meters and a cruising speed of 137 kilometers per hour, and comes in two variants — a low-end and a high-end model. The low-end variant has a range of 800 kilometers and is primarily used for reconnaissance or suicide attack missions; the high-end variant carries a 50-kilogram warhead, has a range exceeding 1,500 kilometers, and integrates an electro-optical turret and satellite communications antenna, giving it an intelligence-strike fusion (察打一体) capability.

The 'Lucas' loitering munition retains the piston-powered design, optimizes fuel efficiency, reduces acoustic signature, and further enhances resistance to electromagnetic interference. In terms of cost, the 'Lucas' loitering munition is priced at approximately $35,000 per unit, still in the low-cost category — with a particularly clear cost advantage compared to traditional strike weapons such as the Tomahawk cruise missile. In February of this year, the 'Lucas' loitering munition was committed to actual combat in Operation Epic Fury.

From the United States' related practices, it is integrating the 'Lucas' loitering munition into a system-of-systems operational network (体系化作战网络): not only has it integrated the Starlink satellite system to ensure effective use in high electromagnetic jamming environments, but it has also conducted cooperative combat trials with manned aircraft such as the F-35 to enhance strike flexibility. In addition, the U.S. military is actively developing swarm autonomous coordination algorithms to further release the system-of-systems operational effectiveness (体系作战效能) of the 'Lucas' loitering munition.

The differences in how Russia and the United States have leveraged this technology reflect the divergences in their respective defense industrial bases, technological accumulations, and operational concepts, and also provide a case study for observing the transformation of this class of loitering munitions from 'expendable items' to 'intelligent operational nodes' (智能作战节点).

The Key to Drawing Lessons Is Targeted Improvement Based on Actual Conditions

The different development paths Russia and the United States have taken in drawing on Iranian loitering munitions, on one hand, confirm a fact: low-cost long-range precision strike weapons are attracting increasing attention; on the other hand, they offer lessons for countries drawing on other nations' equipment development experience.

Only by proactively drawing on the advanced experience of other countries can one rapidly elevate one's own level of development. Progress in military technology cannot be achieved in isolation; rationally absorbing external achievements is an important means of shortening research and development cycles and reducing the cost of trial and error. Through technology absorption or reverse research, Russia and the United States drew on the relevant technologies of Iranian loitering munitions. This pragmatic attitude of 'taking others' strengths and making them one's own (取人之长、为我所用)' both avoids the waste of resources from redundant development and allows the successful experience of other countries to be rapidly integrated into one's own equipment system and converted into solid and effective combat power.

Only by keeping a close eye on battlefield requirements and evolving in a timely manner can one continuously amplify the core advantages of equipment. The reason Iranian loitering munitions became the 'model' for Russia and the United States to draw on is that they precisely captured the real-world demand for 'low-cost, expendable' weapons in modern attritional warfare, and pushed the cost-effectiveness advantage to its extreme through simplified design and cost control. In the process of reverse-engineering and improvement, both Russia and the United States optimized tightly around this point, thereby making the advantages even more pronounced.

Only by optimizing and improving in combination with one's own actual conditions can one fully realize the operational effectiveness of equipment. Drawing lessons is not the same as wholesale copying; absorption is not the same as replication. Although both Russia and the United States took Iranian loitering munitions as their 'model' for reverse-engineering and improvement, they have taken different development paths due to differences in strategic positioning, defense industrial base, and operational concepts. From this it can be seen that drawing on external achievements or experience requires not only recognizing their advantages and potential, but — more importantly — grounding the effort in one's own actual conditions and organically combining technological borrowing with independent innovation, so as to achieve the organic unity of strategic fit within the equipment system (装备体系战略适配), competitive advantage, and operational effectiveness.

Images for this edition provided by: Yang Zhou