"Brains" of Kalibr cruise missile now contain more russian-made components — The Economist

The aggressor country russia is adapting to the conditions of numerous Western sanctions and is producing more and more components for its weapons in order to use them instead of Western-made parts. China is actively helping it in this.

It was reported by The Economist, citing experts from the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise.

The publication writes that Ukrainian engineers are constantly busy "dissecting" russian missiles, strike drones and other ammunition. They extract components and compile a catalog that is a "sobering reminder" of how russia successfully circumvents numerous Western sanctions.

According to the publication's interlocutors, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Kalibr missiles, which the russians launch from ships and submarines, contained mainly Western components.

Today, most of the electronics of the missile consist of parts manufactured in russia itself.

And this situation is observed not only with missiles. One of the engineers showed journalists a detail of the Unified gliding and correction module (UMPK). This is the equipment with which russian aircraft can drop aerial bombs several dozen kilometers from the target. Such bombs, best known by the abbreviation KAB, began to be actively used since the end of 2023.

The engineer showed a servo motor found in one of these aerial bombs. It was manufactured by a company from China, but mistakenly labeled as German.

"Almost everything you see here has a huge number of Chinese elements <...> It’s impossible to control what the Chinese have handed over to the Russians," said one of the engineers.

At the same time, he emphasized that Western sanctions are always one step behind russia.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, in early January, the russian publication The Insider wrote that the russians manufacture a key component of the Shahed strike drone from parts they buy from companies in Ireland and Taiwan.

We will remind, it was previously reported that the Kh-59 aircraft cruise missile, which is actively used by the occupiers' tactical aviation, contains 42 foreign parts.

We also wrote that U.S. companies sell more components to the russians than others, which they use in the production of weapons and military equipment.

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