After the attack on Poland with cheap “foam” UAVs and the appearance of unidentified drones in the skies over the airports of Oslo and Copenhagen, a critical question arises: how far can Russian strike drones actually reach? This was reported by Defense Express.
Source: Pryamyi
According to assessments by the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, combat drones of the “Geran-2” type (the Iranian version of the Shahed-136) have a range of 1,800 to 2,500 km. This is enough to reach key European capitals, depending on the launch site.
Today, Russia has already equipped launch infrastructure in occupied Crimea (Cape Chauda) and near Bryansk. These same platforms could be used for attacks on NATO countries.
With a range of 1,800 km, Scandinavia, part of Germany, the Netherlands, and northern Italy are at risk.
At the maximum range of 2,500 km, the strike zone includes the United Kingdom, France, all of Italy, and most of Central Europe.
If launch sites are deployed in Kaliningrad or at the Belarusian airbase “Osovtsy,” the radius increases by another 700 km. In this case, almost all of Europe, including Madrid, would be at risk — with the exception of Lisbon.
The attack on Poland has already revealed vulnerabilities: even NATO’s first line of air defense on the eastern flank proved unprepared. If drones cross the border, deep inside Europe they face virtually no obstacles, since interception systems are concentrated mostly at the frontier.
For Russia, drones cost only thousands of dollars, while missiles to destroy them are hundreds of times more expensive. This asymmetry makes attacks cheap and Europe’s defense extremely costly.
Moscow is betting on mass deployment, while EU and NATO countries still lack an effective response to a prolonged scenario in which cheap drones can fly far, and the West’s reaction proves slow and excessively costly.