Summary
Ukraine’s military intelligence reported finding Western-made components inside Russian decoy drones, used in recent swarm attacks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
Dubbed “Parody,” these decoys are cheaper than Iran’s Shahed-136 drones but can mimic their radar signatures, creating fake targets to distract defenses.
Russia reportedly launched over 2,000 drones last month, half of which were decoys, with some crashing in Moldova, raising regional security concerns.
Despite sanctions, Western technology continues to appear in Russian weapons, complicating efforts to restrict Moscow’s drone capabilities.
“Western parts”? What do we still manufacfure in the west?
$80.9 Billion USD of weapons and vehicles for military use were sold to foreign countries in FY2023.
Domestically, the US Military spent about 820.3 Billion.
Other products in 2022, sorted by amount in Billions would be the items listed in this table:
From Table 2 of “What is made in America?” on Commerce dot gov
So it looks like Tobacco, guns, vehicles, and Petrochem is the answer.
There is a very nice open source project which made software for drone motor drivers which shut down due to the sanctions as it was open sourced and was accessed by Russians and contributing to their war effort. So there is so many little things like that. It’s the blheli project.
https://oscarliang.com/end-of-blheli_32/