Shahed Aviation Industries

Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center is an Iranian aerospace organisation that designs military helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force and to Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA), according to Wikipedia. No public website or corporate filing gives a founding date or headquarters for the organisation, so those fields are left unset here rather than estimated.

The company is best known for the Shahed series of unmanned aerial vehicles, which spans reconnaissance and combat drones such as the Shahed 129 and the Gaza (Shahed-149), jet-powered types such as the Saegheh, and the delta-wing one-way attack drone Shahed-136, which Russia has produced domestically under the designation Geran-2 since 2022. Wikipedia lists further Shahed-branded designs including the Shahed 121, 123, 125, 131, 141, 161, 171 Simorgh, 191 (Saegheh-2), 197 and 238, alongside the HESA Shahed 274, 278 and 285 helicopters.

The European Union sanctioned Shahed Aviation Industries on 20 October 2022 over its role supplying drones for Russia's war against Ukraine; the United States and Canada added their own sanctions the following month. The organisation has no known public storefront or press office; contemporaneous reporting on its products comes almost entirely through Iranian state media, recovered-hardware analysis by Ukrainian and Western researchers, and sanctions documentation rather than manufacturer-published material.