It really frustrates me that this article doesn't emphasize how much more expensive jet powered aircraft like this are than propeller driven shahed aircraft.
Beskrestnov sees no technical or economic pressure driving the volume drop, with only a deliberate Russian reorientation of production capacity toward the more expensive, more foreign-dependent jet models.
The cost of sophisticated jet engine powered flying bombs is far faster approaching the cost of traditional MANPADS shoulder fired anti-air missiles than I think people really realize, there is still a big cost gap but in terms of these jet powered shaheds posing a danger to air air defense systems, traditional AA guided missiles (or new ones that are perhaps sized down to account for smaller targets*) already decisively shut down this option over the longer term.
The more and more expensive russia has to make each flying bomb, the less and less effective this strategy is for russia.
The opposite can be seen with Ukraine's drone campaign in russia, air defenses have been supressed adequately to the point that slow moving, genuinely cheap propeller powered flying bombs can be used by Ukraine in a dominating fashion.
Jet powered shaheds are not cheap, they are not cost effective, they are a solution that involves building a tiny custom fighter jet for every target, which is a maximally wasteful strategy and is not sustainable for russia.
See these prices for small turbo jet engines, they are seriously expensive and require much more expensive associated equipment as well as a much more robust and expensive air frames.
https://electronics.alibaba.com/product/jet-engine-uav-drones
I refuse to let russia back itself into building expensive cruise missiles while the media reflexively categorizes them as cheap.