The American newspaper "The New York Times" published a material by John Ismay "How Russia Uses Low Tech in Its High-Tech Weapons" ("How Russia uses low-tech components in its high-tech weapons"), which provides a summary of the report of the "private independent research group" Conflict Armament Research on the widespread use of Western commercial electronic components in Russian precision weapons and military electronics.
Similar printed circuit boards of satellite navigation signal receiver units in the satellite navigation systems of Russian missiles (from left to right): 3M14 (Kalibr complex), 9M544 (Tornado-C complex), X-59 and X-101 (c) Conflict Armament ResearchResearchers studying the electronics of the latest Russian cruise missiles and attack helicopters were surprised to find technologies that have been reused for several decades from earlier samples.
While Russian troops are using high-precision weapons on military and civilian targets in Ukraine, Ukrainian security service officers working with private analysts are collecting parts of crashed missiles to unravel the secrets of the enemy.
This weapon is the best in the Russian arsenal. But it contains rather low-tech components, according to the analysts who examined them, including a unique but simple satellite navigation system, which was also found in other captured ammunition.
These findings are detailed in a new report published on September 4 by Conflict Armament Research, an independent group from the UK that identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition used in wars around the world. The research group studied Russian technology in July at the invitation of the Government of Ukraine.
The report refutes the Moscow narratives spread inside the country about a rebuilt army that can again compete with the armed forces of its Western opponents.
The report also shows that the weapons Russia uses to destroy Ukrainian cities are often based on Western innovations - despite the sanctions imposed against Russia after its invasion of Crimea in 2014. These restrictions were aimed at stopping the supply of high-tech goods that could help Russia's military capabilities.
"We've seen Russia reuse the same electronic components in various weapons, including its latest cruise missiles and attack helicopters, and we didn't expect to see this," said Damien Splitters, an investigator for the group who was involved in preparing the report. - "Russian guided weapons are full of non-Russian technologies and components, and most of the computer chips we documented were produced by Western countries after 2014."
How Russia got these details is unclear. Splitters asks semiconductor manufacturers how their products ended up in Russian arms, whether as a result of legitimate transactions or fake purchases organized to circumvent sanctions.
Investigators analyzed the remains of three types of Russian cruise missiles, including the newest and most advanced Moscow model X-101, as well as the latest corrected missile [MLRS] "Tornado-S" [9M544]. All of them contained identical components labeled CH-99, which, according to the group, on closer inspection turned out to be satellite navigation receivers, critical for the operation of missiles.
Splitters said that Russia's use of the same components points to bottlenecks in its supply chain and that limiting the supply of CH-99 components will slow Moscow's ability to replenish its dwindling stocks of guided weapons.
Russian Russians need to know what the Russians need and what they use," Splitters said, "if you want to have effective control and make sure that the Russians can't get them, then it's important to know how they got it - through which networks? Which suppliers did they use?"
Investigators found that Russian engineers generally relied on certain semiconductors from specific Western manufacturers not only for ammunition, but also for reconnaissance drones, communications equipment, avionics for helicopters and other military equipment.
"All the time, the Russians kept coming back to the same manufacturers," Splitters said. "Once you know that, it becomes easier to target these networks."
"Looking at computer chips located in the same places on several printed circuit boards, it is clear that they have always been produced by the same manufacturers," he said. - "You will have different production dates, but always the same manufacturer."
The report also revealed sharp differences between the top-class weapons available in Russia and what Ukrainian forces received from the United States.
Belligerents often examine captured military equipment for intelligence value. But investigators said they were shocked by Russia's apparent indifference to having so many weapons that the enemy could potentially redesign.
"This is the technology level of the late 1990s or mid-2000s at best," said Arsenio Menendez, a NASA contractor who reconstructed guided weapon components as a hobby, after studying photographs of Russian military electronics taken by researchers. "It's basically the equivalent of an Xbox 360 game console, and it looks like it's open to anyone who wants to take it apart and assemble their own copy."
By comparison, the US Department of Defense has standards that military contractors must follow to make it harder for hostile states to create their own versions of captured weapons.
To protect this operational knowledge, which the Pentagon calls the sensitive term "critical program information," military directives require the use of tamper-proof technologies designed to protect lines of computer code and instructions that tell weapons how to find a target.
The publicly released Pentagon directives contain only general information about the scope and requirements of the program, and further details are classified. Military representatives refused to discuss any technologies of protection against unauthorized access, which may be required by the US Department of Defense.
"You can create a network around a computer chip that, if you try to investigate it, will delete the contents," Menendez said, adding that such protections have been used in commercial products such as credit card readers to reduce theft and fraud.
According to him, the Russian navigation system resembles the architecture of open source GPS receivers, which are not subject to federal restrictions of the US government on the sale and export of defense products.
"A team of electrical engineers from the college could create this," he said.
According to Menendez, the mishmash of details that Russia uses to create its guided weapons may also help explain why its cruise missiles are sometimes not very accurate.
Errors made by non-standard GPS devices when processing satellite signals can eventually lead to a cruise missile missing the target with a large value.
The Russian approach to weapons electronics is as follows: "If you can't keep up with the times, steal the technology and use it as best you can," Menendez said.
