AbstractIt is found that the collective effects operating at large distances from the grain surface can produce substantial scattering of the ion flux and create an additional collective drag force dominant for large grain densities. The consideration is restricted to large grain charges β = Zde 2a /TiλDi ≫ 1 and Ti /Te ≪ 1 (–eZd being the grain charge in units of electron charge, a being the grain size, λDi being the ion Debye radius and Te,i being electron and ion temperatures, respectively). For present dusty plasma experiments β ≈ 10–50, the large charges of grains are screened non‐linearly and the ion scattering creates non‐linear drag force. The present investigation considers effects of scattering by collective grain fields at large distances from the grains. It is found that the physical reason of the importance of collective drag force, calculated in this paper, is related to presence of weakly screened collective field of grains outside the non‐linear screening distance depending on grain densities. The amplitude of this collective fields of the grains is determined by non‐linear screening at non‐linear screening radius. It is shown that for dust densities of present experiments the collective drag force related to this scattering can be of the order of the non‐linear drag force caused by scattering inside the non‐linear screening radius or even larger. (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)