Russia Deploys New Geran-5 Jet-Powered Drone — 90 kg Warhead, 1,000 km Range — Significant Upgrade — Day 1,562

On June 5, 2026 — Day 1,562 of Russia's full-scale invasion — Russia deployed a significant new weapon system: the Geran-5, a jet-powered attack drone carrying a 90 kg warhead with a strike range of 1,000 km. The Geran-5 represents a major upgrade over earlier Geran variants (Geran-1 and Geran-2, which are Russia's licensed or reverse-engineered variants of the Iranian Shahed-136/131): the jet propulsion provides substantially higher speed than the propeller-driven predecessors, the 90 kg warhead is nearly double the Geran-2's payload, and the 1,000 km range allows strikes across almost all of Ukraine from Russian-controlled launch positions without the need to position launchers in occupied Ukrainian territory. The deployment of the Geran-5 continues Russia's pattern of iterative drone weapons escalation throughout 2025–2026: from early Shahed/Geran-136 use in 2022–2023 to the Geran-2 mass campaigns of 2024–2025 to the introduction of the Geran-5 in June 2026. Ukraine's air defense community had been tracking reports of the Geran-5's development; its deployment in combat represents a new challenge for Ukrainian interceptor systems calibrated for the slower propeller-driven predecessors.