[dingaling]

> They are the ones who provided Russia with Shahed drones.

Shaheeds are aerodynamic clones of the Israeli Harpy SEAD drone, which in turn were based on the German Dornier DAR of the 1980s.

Compared to the loitering anti-radar DAR, the Shaheed is electronically extremely simple and not much more advanced than the WW2 V-1.

The fact that Russia started producing Shaheeds reflects more on the poor state of Russian industry than any sophistication of Iranian technology.

[fc417fc802]

It's so odd that in modern America weapons being cheap and practical is often seen as a negative. Have to make sure to fork over a couple million per shot to a defence contractor.

[DrProtic]

Guy is full of it though. Iranian drones are very effective while American Switchblade drones shit the bed completely in Ukraine.

We have US cloning Iranian drones now https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/10/flm-136-americas-cheap-i...

[infamia]

You're comparing apples, bananas, and pineapples while pretending they're all one thing. Switchblades are extremely effective (albeit expensive) anti-personnel (300 model) and anti-armor (600 model) drones. Shaheds are much larger, cheap, low on capabilities, but attritable used to attack fixed positions (e.g., buildings). These are all very different.

[Teever]

That's the point -- maybe the US should have bought apples instead of buying bananas.

[infamia]

I don't understand your point. Switchblades are (roughly) more akin to FPV (300 model) and Vampire drones (600 model) with reapect to size and payloads. Shahed style drones are roughly like like low end cruise missles. Different form factors and different capabilities. All of them are needed, but they're all very different.

[cherry_tree]

A cruise missile is 3,000,000$ and a shahed drone is 50,000$ so if it’s even remotely the same capability it is an immense technological improvement over an expensive and slow to manufacture cruise missile.

[DrProtic]

Let’s compare it to Lancet then.

Lancets were miles better than Switchblades.

AFAIK Switchblades were used only in first months of the war then completely abandoned.

[black_knight]

If only they had bought banana bombs!

[tim333]

Ukraine have underwater drones https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukrainian-underwater-drone-to...

Could be a copy of those? They don't look that complicated - tube with explosives, battery, electric motors, some sort of computer/radio control. Not so different to a Shahed in complexity.