On the night of September 6–7, the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled the largest drone attack to date: the russian army used a total of 810 Shahed killer drones and decoys, launched from eight directions. Also used in this barrage were nine Iskander-K cruise missiles and four Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles.
According to preliminary data, out of 810 drones and dummies, Ukraine shot down or suppressed 747, and shot down four cruise missiles. However, at 33 locations, hits by 9 missiles and 54 attack drones were reported by the Ukrainian Air Force Command, and falling debris was recorded in eight more places. The effectiveness of those hits is not specified.
Read more: How Many Airburst Bullets It Takes to Down a Shahed-136 (Video)
In summary, despite the decrease in drone attacks in August, usually explained by a series of Ukraine's successful strikes on russian Shahed production sites, the russian forces persist with the tactic of accumulating weapons for massive strikes and unleashing them all at once, with figures reaching 500 or more threats in a single raid.
The previous such attack was four days ago, on the night of September 2–3, involving 502 drones. Per official reports, 430 of them were shot down or suppressed by electronic warfare.
Moving backwards in time, other such instances — all in the early hours — occurred on August 30 (510/537 drones neutralized), August 28 (563/598 drones neutralized), and August 21 (500+ drones). It was after a significant break in their attempts to send in massive waves — although they kept shelling Ukraine almost daily, russians launched no more than a hundred drones at a time.
What's crucial in this context is whether the recent massive shellings, happening on average once in several days or weeks, are the result of russia's achieving a significant increase in production rates, or whether they deliberately make these pauses in between big waves to stockpile drones in high hundreds to eventually overload Ukraine's air defense with 500+ weapons deployed simultaneously.
To try and draw the line, we can recall the reported production rates of Shahed-type loitering munitions and other drones. In May 2025, it stood at 2,700 units per month for Geran-2 and Garpiya-1 subvariants, with projected figures reaching about 4,000 units in September–October, and nearly 5,000 in December, according to estimates by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. Both Ukrainian intelligence and CNN believe russia aims to surpass 6,000 drones a month.
Another important element that remains unclear is how many of the drones launched in these attacks are actual weaponized threats and how many of them are (relatively) harmless decoys without a warhead. It is quite likely that russia's ramp-up of dummy drones is faster than the production of Shaheds.
Read more: Ukraine's FP-1 OWA Drone is Cheaper Than Shahed, and is Now Produced Just as Fast: Here's Why
