Posted on 07/21/2025 6:52:49 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Vladimir Putin has pulled back the curtain on what has been described as the ‘largest and most secret’ drone factory ahead of a joint naval drill with Iran.
Footage – a blend of Cold War secrecy and TikTok-era propaganda – offers a rare glimpse of the Yelabuga production facility in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
Recorded by Zvezda, the Russian defence ministry’s TV channel, it shows the star of Putin’s war in Ukraine – the ‘Geran-2’ drones.
This is the Kremlin’s locally branded version of Iranian-designed Shahed 136.
-snip-
Above the entrance to the factory, a giant screen read, ‘Kurchatov, Korolyov and Stalin are living in your DNA,’ featuring portraits of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov and the father of the Soviet space programme Sergei Korolev.
But perhaps the most surreal detail is not the scale of the drone operation at Yelabuga and who is building them.
Teenagers – some barely old enough to drive – have bee recruited to work on the assembly lines at the factory.
They are shown working at various stages of the production process, highlighting a recruitment programme targeting students as young as 15 from local technical colleges.
(Excerpt) Read more at metro.co.uk ...
I doubt any teenagers are there by force. At that age, they’re excited to help. They’re enthusiastic, quick and have excellent motor skills. (Try playing a 15 year-old at any FPR game. By the time you reach for the trigger, he’s already got you.)
Promise them a deal on a Trabant down the road, and they’re in.
U.S.A. Drones got some Catching Up to do.
.
SWARM !
Shouldnt the quotes be around secret? Not death?
What? Russian teenagers doing useful, patriotic work at factories, rather than acting goofy like American teenagers? Oh, the horror of it all.
Trabants were East German.
You’re thinking of the Lada.
How unlike the USSA where our MIC with unlimited FedBux turns our whole economy into one big death factory. Did you really think the rush to AI is meant to help you, peasant?
Not a very good secret.
They’ll love the front lines once their factory job is replaced by the next excited teen.
And they're not being forced to serve on the front lines.
I stand corrected about the Trabant. :0) Thanks!
“Teenagers – some barely old enough to drive “
The horror. I got my first job at sixteen.
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