The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Future of Drone Tech: Russian Scale || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

While Ukraine has dominated drone innovation, Russia's been able to mass-produce proven drone systems at a scale that Ukraine cannot match. The Russians have also been incrementally improving their drone tech. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Full Newsletter:

Want instant MVP status? Join the new Dick's Scorecard Plus program. For $99, scorecard plus members enjoy one year packed with perks, like $80 in annual bonus rewards, free shipping with no minimum purchase, triple points on two purchases, and more. That's over $160 in benefits. Join Dick's Scorecard Plus today and score more than ever. Tap the banner to learn more.

Exclusions and terms apply. Visit dix.com slash scorecard plus for details. Hey everybody, Peter Zine here coming from Colorado. Today we're doing another episode in our ongoing series on evolving drone technologies. And today we are specifically looking at the Russians. Most of the breakthroughs that we have seen that have reshaped the battlefield in the Ukraine war since March have been Ukrainian, longer range, better targeting, faster assembly, mass manufacturing, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But it's not like the Russians have just been sitting there.

Yes, yes, yes, most of the parts are coming from the Chinese system and they're just being assembled in Russia, but that doesn't mean that the Russians don't have a military industrial complex. In fact, still today, they easily have the third most powerful one in the world, legacy of the Soviet system with a few things that have been added here and there. But when the Russians really shine, it's when they take a proven technology and then apply it to a new platform and mass manufacture it. And we are now in the early stages of seeing that with what used to be called the Shehead. Those are the dumb drones that they originally brought in from Iran. They now call them Garen, if they're made in Russia, G-E-R-A-N,

and we're now into the third and even the fourth generation. And the single biggest difference is that the Russians are taking the propeller off as a method of propulsion and slapping on a jet engine. So the original Shaheds travel at about 100 miles an hour, maybe 120, if they're pretty zippy. the new ones coming out of Russia are traveling at pushing 400 miles an hour. So that's problem number one, because there just aren't very many interceptors that the Ukrainians have access to that can catch one of these drones.

Usually what happens is you fire a bunch of interceptors, and anything that doesn't hit on the first pass as they interpenetrate, turns around and chases it. That doesn't work when your interceptor can't catch up. And with the Garon 4 starting to come online now, we're seeing more and more of these relatively cheap drones punching through air defenses because you only get one shot. That's problem number one. Problem number two is as much advances as the Ukrainians have made in interception and long-range strike, they still just don't have control of their own airspace. Yes, they've got decent anti-aircraft capabilities. And yes, that has kept the Russian. Russians at arm's length where they launch glide bombs, then take 20 miles to glide down and hit their

target. But the Ukrainians have lacked the ability so far to impose a degree of air superiority that would allow them to actually go after where the fighter jets are. So their solution has been longer range, bigger payloads go after the bases that these things launch from. That's been working, but it's not enough. And now the Russians are about to do something else. They've started putting something called an R-60, that's an infrared-driven anti-aircraft missile, on top of of a garand and then sending that in. So it doesn't go as fast as say a migwood. A migg is going to have a thousand miles an hour roughly. So the drones are going about half that speed. But then they launch an anti-air missile. So any F-16s or Gripons or

Raphael's or any other vessels, any other aircraft that the Ukrainians actually are able to get in the sky are going to start facing wave after wave of cheap disposable drone firing a single missile about the only good news is that the missile itself weighs enough that that garrant cannot then also carry a warhead. So it's just a one shot deal, not a two shot deal. But you throw a few dozen of those on the front every day and it's almost impossible for the Ukrainians to get anything up in the air, much less provide any sort of screen, much less project power into Russian territory to prevent those glide bombs from coming. So yes, most of the breakthroughs, most of the changes, most of this really impressive stuff that we've seen in the last three months, has been

from Ukraine. It has been hurting Russia. It has been causing a lot of damage. But it doesn't mean that the Russians are just lying there. They've basically taken steps to ensure that they can still hit nearly any target they want in Ukraine. They just have to send a few more of these jet-powered drones after it. And there is no way that Ukrainians are anywhere close getting any degree of control over their airspace. And as long as that happens, then if the do, the Ukrainians do manage to launch a ground assault, they're going to be doing so under a hail of glide bombs because they can't really do much about it.