Overview
- Official Russian statistics show aviation-sector output rose 117% year‑on‑year in April 2026, a jump driven largely by unmanned aerial vehicle manufacture.
- Ukrainian and Western reporting say that recent Russian attacks used large drone-and-missile barrages, including a May assault involving roughly 600 drones and about 90 missiles.
- Russian leaders have pushed institutional changes to match production, including a mid-2025 order to create dedicated unmanned-systems troops and state claims that 1.4 million drones were made in 2024.
- Ukrainian military intelligence reported plans or estimates that Moscow aims to produce millions more in 2026, citing figures such as roughly 7.3 million FPV drones and 7.8 million warheads as reported in May.
- Analysts explain the shift by noting drones are cheap to build, scale from small workshops to factories, and use different labour pools, which lets drone output rise even as heavier equipment, missile production and defence funding slow.