gEnalal Chris Kabor, NATO’s commander-in-chief, recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia has replaced military, tanks and ammunition “at an unprecedented pace.” The factory will deploy 1,500 tanks this year, compared to 135 in the US. It produces 3,000 armored vehicles. America is not producing new infantry combat vehicles. Russia produces 250,000 shells per month, saying it is “on track to build three times more stockpiles than the US and Europe combined.”
To understand the scale of Russia’s expansion of defence industry, economists consulted Western companies using artificial intelligence to sift data from many commercially available sources. This shows how the number of electronic devices, such as mobile phones, has changed over time in the way industrial sites exist. The data captures only a small fraction of the total devices present (probably 2% to 10% of the number), but acts as an activity-level proxy. The company asked them to remain anonymous due to topic sensitivity.
The largest tank facility in Russia, Uralvagonzabod, saw significantly higher activity than 2023 and 2024. The Alzama plants that produce armor personnel, as well as Kurugamma Shizavods and Motobilika plants that make infantry combat vehicles are also booming.
Yekaterinburg Factory No. 9 produces Howitzers and Tanks barrels. Cannon fragments and cannons can be seen parked open on the satellite image. A few kilometers away is the NPO Noverter, which develops Iskander ballistic missiles. There are also signs of strong growth in Volgograd’s Titan Balikadi, where the Iskander launch system is being built, and Tula’s NPO Splav, which makes rockets for alumni, Uragan and Smarch.
Amazing amounts of explosives are needed to fill a 3m shell per year. Dzerzhinsk’s Sverdlov plant is Russia’s largest explosive plant, producing chemicals for shells and gliding bombs. The number of devices has been rising rapidly over the last few months. According to Julian Cooper of the University of Birmingham, activities are also increasing at Kirov’s Selmash factory, which casings for ammunition.
The Iranian-designed Shahed-136 Suicide Drone is an increasingly familiar sight in the Ukrainian skies. In February there were 140 attacks, far above the levels seen in 2024. This coincides with an increase in activity at the Arabga factory in Tatarstan where drones are being made, and at nearby Begischzebo Airport.
The scale of recent construction work in Arabga is evident in the photos.
Arab Gadrone Plant
March 2024
Buildings under construction
September 2024
Buildings added
The building work has begun
Satellite Image ©2025 Maxar Technologies
These are not the only indications of Russia’s overactive defense industry. Economists have also seen a variety of other metrics. Biysk, for example, is home to important plants that produce oleum, which is used in explosives and is the heart of military research, and in 2023, average daily traffic between dormitory areas and chemical plants increased by 19%.
Strava, an app that records exercises, has shown new clusters of running and cycling in areas near these plants. This is an indication that new workers have arrived in the area.
A similar pattern can be seen in places related to the planned expansion of Russian planned military forces at the NATO border. For example, in Ruga, where Russia began to form a new division last year, mobile phone location data pointed to an increase in population density around the industrial zone, increased residence time between 10pm and 6am, and a new commuting corridor between dormitories and military plants.
The Russian industry still has restrictions. Last year, the country relied on North Korea to provide a significant proportion of artillery ammunition used in Ukraine. These stocks are not endless. According to a study by the London Open Source Centre and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the main input into the artillery supply chain – chromite of cotton cellulose for propellants – must be imported. However, Russia is now able to produce several important elements at home.
“In principle, there seems to be no reason why this mobilized defence effort cannot be maintained for quite some time,” Cooper wrote in a recent study in the RUSI Journal examining many of the facilities mentioned above. “It’s not without irony,” concludes Cooper. ■
This article appeared in the briefing section of the print edition under the heading “Putin’s Secret Arms Empire.”
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