🚀 DAN-M: the decoy drone Russia’s using to overwhelm enemy air defenses

📍 Created as a training drone to simulate enemy targets like Tomahawk cruise missiles or small aircraft for Russian pilot and SAM crew training, the DAN-M has been adapted into a full-fledged, explosive payload-equipped kamikaze UAV.

📍 First adopted in 1993, DAN drones can be launched from Mi-8 choppers’ external hardpoints, or using a ground-based catapult and accelerator. An upgrade with new turbojet engine was introduced in 2020.

Characteristics

🔶 Flight speed: up to 750 km/h

🔶 Endurance: 25-70 minutes

🔶 Takeoff weight: ~350 kg

🔶 Max altitude: 5-9 km (beyond the reach of MANPADS and most cheaper air defenses)

🔶 Stealth: training variant’s bright red and black body repainted into grey-on-grey color scheme

👉 Russian media began reporting on the DAN-M’s use in strikes in May. This week, National Interest reported that the UAV has been wreaking havoc on Ukraine’s air defenses.

“With the DAN-M drone, the Russians have perfected a low-cost way to exhaust finite Ukrainian missile stocks – which, once depleted, clears pathways for more sophisticated Russian attacks,” NI said in its analysis.

👉 Russia is deploying the cheap training UAVs to soak up “premium defenses like NASAMS or IRIS-T…complex, expensive systems that should only be used for equally complex and expensive Russian threats – not cheap and expendable drones.”