Russia accepts loss rates above 75% in mass Shahed employment. That is not failure but strategy: in an attrition approach, total volume getting through matters more than per-unit hit probability.
Example
Shahed launches grew from about 130 to over 1,000 per week within roughly half a year. Per the Lowy Institute analysis (Ryan, 2026), the monthly rate of long-range attack drones now runs between 3,000 and 5,000, peaking around 1,400 launches per week in 2026.
For the defender this means looking at each incident in isolation is the wrong question — see Chapter 8.1 for how this pattern fits an IPB-like framework.