Ukraine reveals scale of Behemoth kamikaze drone production line
Rows of black, Shahed-shaped airframes stretch across a production floor in newly released footage marking Ukraine’s Independence Day, offering the clearest public look yet at how many Behemoth “mid-range” one-way attack drones the country is now building at once. The video shows dozens of the drones mounted on wooden and metal stands, wingtip to wingtip, inside what appears to be a converted industrial hall.
The Behemoth is a middle-strike kamikaze drone developed by the Ukrainian companies GLEFA and Culver Aerospace. It was first shown publicly in May 2026 at the Wild Drones event, where company representatives described it to the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi as a system built for hitting targets at close and medium range.
The drone has a wingspan of 2.28 meters (7.5 feet), a length of 2.2 meters (7.2 feet) and a height of 0.5 meters (1.6 feet). Its stated range is up to 300 km (186 miles). The airframe carries two warheads in sequence: a 40 kg (88-pound) high-explosive fragmentation charge in the nose, followed by a 35 kg (77-pound) thermobaric charge, for a combined payload of roughly 75 kg (165 pounds).
Militarnyi and Ukrainska Pravda both reported in May that the drone had entered serial production and was already in use by Ukraine’s Defense Forces. The newly circulated Independence Day footage is consistent with those earlier reports of mass output, though it does not by itself establish a production rate or total unit count.
Behemoth supports fully autonomous, semi-automatic and first-person-view control modes. Developers say it is designed to fly at low altitude, which complicates detection and interception by air defense systems. Communications run through Starlink, according to reporting from suasnews.com and other outlets that covered the May unveiling.
The drone has since been used in combat. Ukrainian units struck the Chonhar Bridge, which links occupied Kherson Oblast to Crimea, on the nights of June 7 and June 9, using Behemoth drones alongside other systems, according to reporting by NV.ua. Ukrainian accounts also describe Behemoth strikes on the Henichesk road bridge connecting mainland Ukraine to the Arabat Spit, and on targets in Donetsk Oblast, including an ammunition depot in Staromykhailivka and a command post in Selydove.
Cost estimates for the system, drawn from open-source reporting, put each unit at roughly $35,000 to $50,000. That places Behemoth well below the price of guided missiles used for comparable strike missions, though the outlet did not attribute the figure to an official government source.
Culver Aerospace’s broader portfolio includes the Skif reconnaissance drone and other undisclosed projects. In April 2026 the company signed a cooperation agreement with the German defense technology firm Helsing to jointly develop and produce drones at a facility in Germany, with production financed by the German government, according to reporting from suasnews.com. Culver Aerospace separately reached a five-year agreement with Denmark’s Copenhagen Global A/S in February.
The Behemoth’s resemblance to Iran’s Shahed-136, and to the Russian Geran variant built from that design, has drawn frequent comparison in Ukrainian and Russian coverage of the program. Ukrainian developers have described the drone as a domestic answer to the Shahed and Geran drones Russia has used against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure since 2022.
Source: Defence Blog
