Russia is increasing its domestic drone production with the goal of being able to launch as many as 2,000 in a single night, according to a senior German military official.

German Major General Christian Freuding, who heads the Ukraine task force for the country, warned in an interview with Bundeswehr over the weekend that Russia is “striving to further increase production capacity” of its drones and said, “the ambition is to be able to deploy 2,000 drones simultaneously.”

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The Russians may be able to conduct a 2,000-drone attack by November of this year, given the current pattern of increased production, an analysis said from the Institute for the Study of War, also published this weekend. The ISW assessment noted that Russia likely wouldn’t be able to maintain that number of drones per night, but would likely launch a large-scale attack followed by days of smaller ones.

Russia has primarily one-way attack Shahed drones, which they originally got hundreds of from Iran, and have, over the course of the war, begun producing these exploding kamikaze unmanned vehicles domestically.

Russian state media recently released a video touting the factory, which is located in the Tatarstan region. The plant was launched in 2023 with the help of the Iranians.

“At one time, the plan was to produce several thousand (Geran drones),” Timur Shagivaliev, the CEO of the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, where the facility is located, said on state television recently, using the Russian name for the Iranian drone. “Now we are producing nine times more than planned.”

Producing drones domestically cuts out the time needed to transport drones from Iran, as it had done in the beginning of the conflict.

Between January and May 2025, Russia rarely launched more than 200 drones at Ukrainian cities per night, with a peak tally of 250 launched one night in late May, according to the ISW assessment. Russia’s use of the one-way attack drones rose by an average monthly rate of 31% in both June and July, and the new highest number of drones Russia launched in a single night exceeds 700.

Russia launched only 423 drones at Ukraine during all of July 2024, compared to more than 5,300 last month, according to the Kyiv Independent, a stark demonstration of their increased production capabilities.

As Russia ramps up its drone usage, so has Ukraine, to the point that the U.S. and Ukraine are discussing a possible deal that would include Ukraine sharing drone technology with the United States, presumably in exchange for continued military support.

These drones cost tens of thousands of dollars to make and are often made with western components, making it very financially inefficient to shoot them down with missile interceptors that cost several times that amount. The reality of this financial equation has become one of the most significant takeaways of what warfare in the future could entail.

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Freuding, the German general, said the west needs to come up with “countermeasures that cost two, three, four thousand euros” a piece, instead of relying on more expensive equipment.

Russia also launches missiles in tandem with the drones, which require more advanced air defense systems to thwart.

The U.S. is currently in discussions with its NATO allies about figuring out creative ways to get weapons from those countries to Ukraine while purchasing replacement equipment from the United States.

In the first known example, the U.S. informed Switzerland last week that its order of Patriot systems, which the country ordered back in 2022, would be diverted to Germany to backfill their air defenses that will go to Ukraine, per the Wall Street Journal.