During the recent strike on Ukraine, russians used a new type of long-range drone — an ersatz cruise missile, in fact, — made by converting the Dan-M jet-powered target drone, originally developed by OKB Simonova, aka the Sokol Design Bureau.
Several such makeshift weapons were deployed by russian forces in the attack on the May 29 morning, from a launch site in the occupied Crimea, according to Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov.
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Noteworthy here is not just the fact that another long-range weapon has appeared in the russian arsenal but the background of the drone that became its basis. The disclosed characteristics of the Dan UAV are:
- take-off weight: 345 kg,
- wingspan: 2.7 meters,
- top speed: 710 km/h,
- flight altitude: 50 to 9,000 meters,
- endurance: 25–40 minutes,
- fuel tank capacity: 77.5 liters,
- guidance: programmed route / radio control.
The improved Dan-M, presented in 2020, received a partial update of the onboard electronics and a new small-sized MGTD-125E turbojet engine with a 125 kgf output to replace the MD-120 with its 120 kgf. The russians claimed the new engine's production process involved additive manufacturing (3D printing) to make parts of the combustion chamber and nozzle.
However, in the grand scheme of things, the entire development of Dan-M was just a smoke screen to cover up an embezzlement plot by OKB Simonova. This, among other transgressions, resulted in imprisonment of the company's CEO, Alexander Gomzin, for fraud in the execution of a number of defense orders.
The most resonance is associated with the episode when instead of developing Altius, the first russian attack UAV, the enterprise was appropriating the funds from 2015 to 2018 simply under a contract for 1 billion rubles (about $15 million at the exchange rate then), and taking half of the budget offshore.
Another 800 million rubles ($13.3 million) were allocated for the Zenitsa unmanned system, which turned out to be a repackaged Dan target drone, developed in the 1990s. But this did not prevent the company from "successfully" performing the work that had already been completed long ago for the second time.
In the end, the head of the enterprise was released on bail, the case was delayed and only resumed in 2022. A year before, OKB Simonova was declared bankrupt with a debt of 1.2 billion rubles ($16.3 million at the 2021 exchange rate). The property of the enterprise, including the machine tool park and two autoclaves, was divided in 2024.
That is, everything indicates that OKB Simonova, as the developer and manufacturer of Dan and Dan-M, has long ceased to exist. But for some reason, its target drone appears these days, and converted into an improvised cruise missile to boot. Provided the warhead was installed where the parachute used to be, it should weigh several dozen kilograms. All in all, it gives russian forces a weapon to strike targets based on known coordinates at ranges 300 to 400 km.
Surely, they could have somehow redesign the Dan-M, in particular, increase the warhead weight at the cost of reduced range, refine the navigation system, etc. Yet, it is still nothing more but an ersatz cruise missile and a far cry from full-fledged Kh-59 and Kh-69 missiles, used against Ukraine on a regular basis.
That said, the very fact that russians went out of their way to modify the Dan-M for this role is strange, especially considering that nothing is about this drone being mass-produced. The stocks of these UAVs should be too low to make the investment worth it.
However, there is one theory that could explain this situation: an error in identifying what the russians actually used on the morning of May 29. If the conclusion was reached based on an analysis of fragments, especially damaged ones, such an error is always a possibility.
Moreover, in terms of its size and geometric outlines, the russian Dan is very similar to the Karrar, a mass-produced weapon from iran. Further analysis of this incident and the detailed information about the fragments found may clarify the situation. Until then, only very cautious assumptions can be made.
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