Russia builds ten drone bases with NATO in range as Kyiv faces missile shortage

Russia has established ten new drone bases equipped with 59 launch rails along its western borders with Ukraine and Belarus, placing NATO members Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Turkey within potential striking distance of its next-generation jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles. The infrastructure, identified through satellite imagery and leaked documents analysed by the drone intelligence firm DroneSec, represents a significant escalation in Moscow's long-range strike capacity and a direct challenge to European air defences.

A network built for range and volume

The investigation, published by The Telegraph on 16 August, shows that the launch rails are distributed across sites that include repurposed Soviet-era military airfields, civilian airports and newly cleared ground in rural areas. One facility alone has storage capacity for more than 1,000 long-range drones at any given time, and construction of additional rails is continuing at several locations. The scale suggests a doctrine shift: rather than relying solely on the propeller-driven Shahed-type loitering munitions that have characterised the air war since 2022, Russia is fielding jet-powered platforms that fly faster, higher and farther.

The platforms in question are designated Geran-4 and Geran-5. According to the technical specifications cited in the investigation, each can carry a 90-kilogram warhead to a range approaching 1,000 kilometres. That radius, measured from the newly identified bases, covers Warsaw, Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Bucharest and Istanbul. The implication is not merely theoretical; DroneSec's geospatial analysis confirms that flight paths from multiple sites intersect the airspace of every one of those capitals.

Jet-powered drones replace propeller types at accelerating pace

Ukraine's Air Force told the Kyiv Independent that the use of jet-powered weapons against Ukrainian targets increased fivefold in July compared with June. The shift matters because jet-powered drones are significantly harder to intercept than the Shahed-136 variants that have dominated Russian long-range strikes until now. Their higher speed reduces the engagement window for ground-based air defence systems, and their altitude performance complicates targeting by man-portable air defence systems and short-range missile batteries.

Open-source tracking data indicates that seven of the ten new bases have already been used in the recent campaign against Kyiv. The capital's air defences have been strained by a critical shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles, a shortfall that has had deadly consequences. On 2 July a massed Russian attack employing ballistic and hypersonic missiles alongside drones killed at least 31 people and injured more than 100 in Kyiv. Four days later a second large-scale strike killed at least 26 and injured dozens, including seven children. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned that Western stockpiles of Patriot missiles are insufficient to sustain the current tempo of defence.

NATO territory already violated

The risk of spillover is not hypothetical. In May a Russian Shahed-type drone struck a residential building in Romania, injuring two civilians. In July another Russian drone crossed into Moldovan airspace during an attack on Ukraine. In addition, Russian electronic warfare units have jammed and redirected Ukrainian drones toward NATO countries, creating an additional layer of unpredictability for air policing missions along the eastern flank. These incidents have forced NATO to increase the tempo of air policing sorties and to accelerate the deployment of additional ground-based air defence batteries to Poland and the Baltic states.

Alliance intelligence points to 2029 as a planning horizon

The strategic context has hardened. Christian Freuding, chief of the German Army, stated in a recent briefing that it is "NATO-agreed intelligence" that Moscow will be ready to invade a member state as early as 2029. That assessment reflects not only the reconstitution of Russian ground forces but also the expansion of stand-off strike capabilities such as the new drone infrastructure. The alliance has responded by revising its regional defence plans, increasing the readiness of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force and conducting a series of large-scale exercises, Steadfast Defender 2024 and Nordic Response 2024 among them, that rehearsed reinforcement of the eastern flank under Article 5 conditions.

Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of the NATO Military Committee, told the Kyiv Independent that the alliance is prepared to answer any hostile moves by Russia. "(Russia) would lose a lot, much more than what they could gain just by touching Poland or the Baltic states," he said. The remark underscores the alliance's deterrence posture: a conventional attack on a NATO member would trigger a collective response that Russian planners must calculate would outweigh any territorial or political objective.

Why this matters

How we got here

What happens next

The drone bases are not a standalone programme. They sit alongside Russia's expanding production of Iskander-M and Kinzhal missiles, the refurbishment of long-range bomber regiments, and the forward deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. Together they form a layered strike complex that NATO planners must now assume is fully integrated. The question for European capitals is not whether the infrastructure exists, the satellite evidence is unambiguous, but whether the alliance's industrial base can produce interceptors fast enough to deny Russia the confidence that a massed drone salvo will penetrate.

For Ukraine, the immediate problem remains the Patriot shortage. The US, Germany and the Netherlands have pledged additional batteries, but delivery schedules stretch into 2027. In the interim, Ukrainian air defence commanders are forced to ration interceptors, engaging only the highest-value targets and accepting leakage on lower-priority axes. That calculus will only become more brutal as jet-powered drones, which require more expensive interceptors to defeat reliably, become the dominant threat.

The Romanian and Moldovan incidents have already triggered diplomatic protests and a quiet reinforcement of NATO's integrated air and missile defence picture in the Black Sea region. Romania has accelerated its purchase of additional Patriot batteries from the United States, and Bulgaria has reopened talks on acquiring a medium-range air defence system after years of delay. These decisions, taken in national capitals rather than Brussels, reflect a growing conviction that the eastern flank must be capable of independent action during the opening hours of any escalation.

The 2029 horizon cited by General Freuding is not a prediction of war but a planning assumption. NATO's defence planning process works on ten-year cycles; the current cycle, approved at the 2023 Vilnius summit, assumes a Russian conventional threat re-emerges by the early 2030s. The drone bases accelerate that timeline. If the Geran-4 and Geran-5 fleets reach the numbers implied by the storage capacity at the largest base, more than 1,000 airframes, then a saturation attack on a NATO airbase or logistics hub becomes a credible option for Russian planners, not a theoretical one.

Admiral Dragone's warning is calibrated for that reality. The alliance's deterrence rests on the certainty of a collective response, but credibility requires capability. The next two years will test whether European defence industries can convert political commitments into metal on the ramp. The drone bases are already pouring concrete.