Russia switches to launching missiles "from the assembly line" due to depletion of reserves - media

Troops of russian armed criminals have begun shelling Ukraine with newly manufactured missiles against the backdrop of the depletion of modern weapons stocks, writes Bloomberg. According to the agency, an unexploded rocket with an unusually recent production date was recently discovered in the Sumy Region of Ukraine. According to the stamp on the case, the projectile fired by the Tornado-S multiple rocket launcher was manufactured on May 19.

At the same time, according to the Ukrainian non-governmental organization StateWatch, batches of such missiles usually undergo several months of testing before they appear on the front line and are used.

Also, the ammunition expiration date was indicated on the case - September 12. The extremely short expiration date may indicate that Russian manufacturers are "cutting corners" in order to deliver missiles to the front lines as soon as possible, StateWatch notes.

Since the rocket did not explode, researchers were able to look inside to examine the motherboard and other components. All of them do not correspond to ready-made certificates, StateWatch experts concluded. At the same time, some parts were hand-soldered, and the components turned out to be russian and American-made, including companies such as Altera, owned by Intel Corporation, and Analog Devices.

"Russian defense companies are forced to adapt to a new reality in which they often have to lower their technical standards and use tactics to evade sanctions," says Maria Shagina, an expert on economic sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

According to her, the lowering of standards "perhaps does not ensure the best quality of russian weapons," but it helps the russian army to "sow maximum chaos on the battlefield."

At the same time, the representative of Western intelligence noted that russia's approach to compliance with technical standards was not very strict even before the war against Ukraine, and also reminded that there are other signs of exhaustion of resources in moscow, in particular, the visit of the head of the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation, Sergei Shoigu, to the North Korea, where, according to U.S. intelligence, he asked to increase the supply of ammunition.

Moreover, as the BBC reported with reference to Western officials, due to the sanctions that closed the bypasses for the purchase of microchips, russia has to rely on "low-quality substitutes, such as microcircuits with 40% defects", and in some cases to switch on Soviet rocket production technologies.

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