Iranian attack drone found to contain parts from more than a dozen US companies
cnn.com
cnn.com
> Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment.
> The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment.
> According to the Ukrainian assessment, among the US-made components found in the drone were nearly two dozen parts built by Texas Instruments, including microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers; a GPS module by Hemisphere GNSS; a microprocessor by NXP USA Inc.; and circuit board components by Analog Devices and Onsemi. Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox.
So less than 12 of the components were manufactured in Asia, while 40 have been manufactured by US companies.
The article also finishes by linking together components with US companies who seem (at a glance / without digging deeper) to manufacture said components within US borders.
A few months ago all the Nordic medias seemed convinced that this guy with his "4 terabytes of encrypted data" must have been a Russian spy, of course that turned out to not be true. (Russia has satellites, the idea that they'd need people to go scout out Nordic infrastructure with consumer drones was and is preposterous)
https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xgJ238/dronedoemt-russer-til-vg-...
> An unredacted five-page document tells a fuller story than anything Zinchenko offered in our four hours together. Vasily was one of three different handlers over the space of his eight years as a GRU agent. (Zinchenko would tell me only that Vasily introduced him to another man with whom he’d sometimes communicate.) He’d meet with each one face-to-face at liaisons in St. Petersburg, only a five-hour car or bus ride from Tallinn. Each handler tasked him with surveilling Estonia’s “objects of national defense” and its “vital services,” defined under Estonian law as critical infrastructure, power and electricity, telecommunications and banking services.
> Zinchenko spied on Paldiski, a garrison town where Estonia’s elite Scouts Battalion, a veteran unit of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, was stationed. He also spied on Vasalemma, where NATO’s Ämari Air Base is located.
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-ex-russian-spy-flees-to-the...
Also there's a huge difference between tracking military equipment movements and power infrastructure. Power infrastructure doesn't move and can't really be hidden.
I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
You don't do prisoner exchanges because of the valuable contributions of that agent, you do prisoner exchanges to ensure future contributions by other agents.
>I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
They're just fine. What kind of quality do you think they need to hit a power plant with a missile? Most of their missiles aren't that precise anyway.
There's only an extremely limited set of circumstances where drone footage of power infrastructure could be useful.
Doesn't Leica have a reputation for world-beating optics?
Uh, why? I can understand doubting the electronics in their satellites, but the mirrors? Why do you think Russia can't polish mirrors?
Yeah, but physics isn't. Good resolution requires large mirrors. Large mirrors require large satellites. These aren't cubesats we're talking about; optical American spy satellites have 2.4 meter wide mirrors and are more than 10 meters long. The only non-US/Chinese/Russian rocket that can launch such a satellite in principle is the Ariane 5, but AFAIK they don't fly that to polar orbits.
In any case, not many people have the equipment laying around to make such large mirrors, or the expertise, or a stockpile of such mirrors. Russia likely has all three, or certainly once did.
Yet you provide no data to convince anyone otherwise. Outside of scrap, also electronics stores over here have signs now which denote the amount of electronics you can carry over the border into the Russia (not exceeding the value of 300€) which suggests there is a reason to do so.
Related to your article, if something sounds ridiculous it's the explanation given in your article of the unemployed man travelling from Russia to take drone pictures of a cottage for a friend. Very reminiscient of the two "tourists" "just visiting" Salisbury.
Yeah, sanctions. Luxury goods are limited to 300 euros. https://tulli.fi/en/-/import-and-export-sanctions-on-goods-a...
The purpose is not to disrupt Russian military supply chains, but to make Muscovites pay higher prices for their grey market iPhones.
>Related to your article, if something sounds ridiculous it's the explanation given in your article of the unemployed man travelling from Russia to take drone pictures of a cottage for a friend. Very reminiscient of the two "tourists" "just visiting" Salisbury.
The Norwegian government agreed that his story checked out. Also, I'd suppose that wealthy unemployed men make up a decent chunk of tourism in general.
You generally can't buy the mentioned dual-use goods in your local electronics store. Look up the "EU dual use control list", it mostly covers exotic stuff like electronics adapted to operate in extreme (temperature, radiation) environments.
Could be due to culture, skill or poverty/economics. Or all three.
At least on aliexpress, reviews for random spare parts/components are often from Russians.
https://pandaily.com/american-semiconductor-maker-texas-inst...
> Texas Instruments entered China in 1986 and set up R&D centers and product line teams in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing. The company also established a manufacturing base in Chengdu and two product distribution centers in the country.
Chips are cheap, lightweight, and often made outside the US. They're pretty trivial to divert.
That, of course, won't stop someone in China from ordering a million chips from TI and shipping them to Iran (or Russia).
They’re so far from what happens on the ground though, who actually ends up with one of the chips in their hand has pretty much nothing to do with them.
First, we don't know that. It's not uncommon for Chinese manufacturers to make extra parts and sell them themselves. It's also not impossible that Iran or Russia obtained these from taking apart other devices, theft, or other means.
Even if these chips generated revenue for TI, TI almost certainly didn't sell them to Iranian or Russian companies or representatives. They'll have been sold to an intermediary in a legal fashion, as far as TI was aware (or at the very least, with plausible deniability) at the time.
You're saying these parts could be designer imposters, like a Gucci purse. Chinese manufactures might copy the part. They wouldn't copy the logos because there is no reason to copy the logos.
> It's also not impossible that Iran or Russia obtained these from taking apart other devices, theft, or other means.
I need you to prepare yourself to be wrong, because this is just as unlikely. Russia doesn't think they're bad, so they're not going to try to make America look bad by associating with them. From Russia's point of view, that would be trying to make America look good, which they would never do.
> Even if these chips generated revenue for TI, TI almost certainly didn't sell them to Iranian or Russian companies or representatives. They'll have been sold to an intermediary in a legal fashion, as far as TI was aware (or at the very least, with plausible deniability) at the time.
If you sold ovens to an intermediary in 1941, and they sold them to a contractor who installed your ovens at Auschwitz, you'd really feel good about the money you made? Trust me, you wouldn't. It would make you sick, as it should if you are a member of our species.
I'm sorry, but that's simply ignorant. They literally do this all the time. Counterfeit chips are everywhere.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-...
> Russia doesn't think they're bad, so they're not going to try to make America look bad by associating with them.
That wouldn't be the motivation. Russia is desperate for chips. They'll use any they can get their hands on.
> If you sold ovens to an intermediary in 1941, and they sold them to a contractor who installed your ovens at Auschwitz, you'd really feel good about the money you made?
If I had zero reason to believe they'd make their way to Germany when I sold them to someone in town, I'd be sad, but I certainly wouldn't feel culpable.
In the case of Ukraine, pretty hefty sums of my taxes paid are being used to support them. I feel pretty OK with the balance of things there. Some thousands of dollars of microchips to Iran (unwillingly) versus tens of billions in weaponry and supplies to Ukraine (happily) maths out just fine.
And even if they somehow exclude those, who stops someone in any other country from just setting up shell company and reexporting the chips ?
It might not even mean they bought these parts from a legitimate source. They might have been reclaimed or salvaged from legitimate electronics, or they might even be counterfeit chips (which often come from Asia) that were labelled to look like the genuine part.
Ok. You can get some REALLY FANCY ultra low noise insanely efficient radiation hardened space qualified bleeding edge switch mode power supplies.
I don't expect they're using those.
The same happens with microcontrollers. Take the STM32F103 from ST Micro, before the chip shortages this was a chip you could find in in heaps of random low cost electronics that required a bit of smarts. Same thing happens there, there are some chinese clones that are cheaper and almost perfect copies. The "legit" sellers will sell these as GD32F103 or CH32F103 for instance, but if you try to buy a genuine part from a less trusty source there's a decent chance you're paying the higher prices for the same chip, just someone laser marked it as a genuine one instead to make some profit.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Original-In-Stock...
This can probably run all the software needed for a simple drone, control, navigation, etc.
Here is an EU supplier:
https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Lumissil/IS31CS8977-QFLS...
They cost less than nails, how are you gonna track this shit?
I wonder how close we are to a world where global conflict becomes impractical simply due to a lack of parts.
http://www.righto.com/2020/03/looking-inside-vintage-soviet-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_integrated_circuit_desi...
some 5/3.3V linear one? Sure.
Few generic switch mode power supply low current ones ? Eh, sure, there are few chips that are very popular but they're generally old and not super efficient.
Anything else ? Sure you can replace existing one but that requires redesigning the device so if you used part A but now can get only part B sure, you might get your 3.3V 5A out of it but you might need different sized capacitors/inductors, and you will certainly need a different board layout.
Even something simple as transistor used in power regulator (if it is big enough to have separate controller and transistors) might have same/higher amps but different other characteristics so you have to tweak the design a bit to get to the performance.
Simple microcontroller ? Even if any similar one on market fits the requirements, unless you get part from same family (just having more memory) you ain't fitting same code on it even if it is same architecture, the register map and their function can be different even within same family of chips, let alone different lines so you're up for the recompile at the very least, rewrite of parts at worst. And again board needs to be changed
Ref: https://theknowledgeaccelerator.com/2016/04/16/jellybean-com...
Even when the silicon chips are really made in USA, in most cases the packaging and testing are done in SE Asia, from where they go to the customers.
Don't be so naive. It means everything, because when American company logos are found on parts in drone wreckage surrounded by dead and mutilated Ukrainians, it makes those companies accessories to this illegal Russian war, and by extension and association, the United States, and me and you!
Texas Instruments isn't at fault if someone buys their chips legally, but turns around and resells them to the Russians. That'd be an insane standard to set, both ethically and legally.
If an American company is deliberately selling components to Russia, by all means, nail them to the wall for violating sanctions. That's not what has happened here, though.
You are employing the fallacy of poor analogy. These parts weren't stolen. And if you sold a weapon to a murderer, or even if you failed to reasonably secure your weapon and it was stolen, then by common morality and even case law, you bear some responsibility.[1]
We actually don't know that, yet.
> And if you sold a weapon to a murderer, or even if you failed to reasonably secure your weapon and it was stolen
There's no indication either of these things happened, either.
As the article says:
"There is no evidence suggesting that any of those companies are running afoul of US sanctions laws and knowingly exporting their technology to be used in the drones. Even with many companies promising increased monitoring, controlling where these highly ubiquitous parts end up in the global market is often very difficult for manufacturers, experts told CNN."
The part pictured is a TMS320F28335PGFA. You can get 'em in trays of 240 for $10/chip on Alibaba and any number of other places that a) aren't TI and b) don't care about US law.
OK, but you said this:
> it makes those companies accessories to this illegal Russian war
Is being an accessory to the Russian aggression not wrong?
> American parts in wreckage of Russian drone strikes is undeniable.
I mean, sure, but the Russians are using Ukranian-made arms and aircraft, too; that doesn't make the Ukranians complicit in the Russian aggression. Ukraine used to be a major arms supplier to the entire Soviet and post-Soviet sphere of influence.
Your standard for "responsibility" is bizarre. The balance of US involvement in Ukraine is extremely heavily on the side of good, and it'd stay that way even if TI had knowingly had anything to do with these drones.
Until you are regulated by ITAR.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/23/2020-00...
https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct
Well someone f'd up but it probably was a resale later down the chain.
"Microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers" are very much commodity parts that companies buy in huge bulk and are available pretty much everywhere. I'm not surprised to see them in a drone (Iranian or otherwise) because I'd expect to see them in ANY sort of complex electronics device - drone, car, washing machine, computer, child's interactive toy, you name it. Ditto for most of the other stuff.
Obviously just finding these parts doesn't mean necessarily they were sold directly by TI to Iran, for example, but it does raise questions that are not answered by "they were physically manufactured in China."
Sure, but they're most certainly permitted to sell to several billion other people on the planet, most of whom aren't under American jurisdiction. Some of those will be willing to shove the chips in a shipping container and send that on a boat to Iran for a reasonable fee.
It'd be pretty insane for TI to be selling to Iran directly, and finding TI chips in Iran isn't evidence of it.
On the flip side, "it'd be pretty insane" is not evidence at all. Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!
TI chips in Iran doesn't support the proposition that TI is directly violating sanctions by deliberately selling to Iran in violation of sanctions. There is no evidence of that.
What? My DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily eliminate alternative possibilities, but it's still evidence.
Hate to admit it, but that's some damning evidence. Very, very weak fortunately.
This evidence eliminates the possibility that Bob doesn't go to restaurants. Ladies and gentlemen, clearly Bob is the killer!
The costs of violating OFAC far exceed ANY gain TI would see from selling to Iran. You're wrong. Stop posting and go read about the semiconductor supply chain.
And in any case, I agree with you. I am extremely doubtful that this is what's happening, I just think "the penalties are substantial" and "they were likely manufactured in China" are not evidence it's not happening. TI components in Iran are evidence (weak, weak, completely non-actionable!) evidence that it is happening.
They sell 100’s of millions of these parts to pretty much everyone, and they’re dirt cheap.
That TI ‘made them’ (not really, outsourced usually) then ‘sold them’ (not really, almost certainly. TI doesn’t do direct deals like that for pretty much anyone!) is a narrative that is pretty implausible considering how the supply chains actually work for these components.
How hard would it be for Iran to open a shell company in third-party country like, say, Iraq to mask the transaction?
Even more fun when the US gets another country to do the arresting dirty work.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/meng-wanzhou-us-court-1.618...
Edit: Not Xiaomi, it was ZTE. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...
But iran.. I don't know what their customs rules are but if you pay import fees, probably unlimited amounts.
How much you can buy? A lot.. eg. 10k voltage regulators is such a common order size, that they have a predefined lowered price even in online stores (without having to contact sales):
eg: https://si.farnell.com/stmicroelectronics/l78l05acutr/v-reg-...
This is some kind of fantasy? I can go to a million websites or into a store with cash and I can buy microchips for $0.08 without signing any contract. What's next, you are going to keep track of nuts and bolts?
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Original-In-Stock...
https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Lumissil/IS31CS8977-QFLS...
Major brands already make a huge fuss what content their adds are displayed next to.
So repeatedly having chips with your logo being pulled from the wreckage of a drone that just demolished an apartment building can't be good for PR either.
For example, from TI's website (https://careers.ti.com/locations/): "TI’s only comprehensive manufacturing site (is) located in Chengdu"
Statistically, the most widely made bricks would be ‘at fault’. But how does that matter, exactly?
You can try to ban bricks from your country, which hey, maybe it could happen. But if they were having a brick shortage, couldn’t they just buy the same bricks from a neighboring country, since these items are so cheap and common, it’s not like it’s possible to serialize and track each one.
These are the electronic equivalents of bricks.
TI not manufacturing those chips won’t stop Iran using identical chips though. It’s one of many ‘try all the things’ tactics from a belligerent at war. And I can’t blame them for trying. I’m sure it will cause some minor issues here and there for Iran and Russia, and every little bit helps.
It’s still transparent bullshit and manipulation of the public.
The part I have to laugh at is arguments like this that take the manipulation at face value, and go after folks pointing out it’s bullshit on a technical site.
It would be like going on a Gun forum and going after folks pointing out the Remington smear campaigns (or any number of other manufacturers) was transparent bullshit to try to get cash or force them out of business by those ideologically opposed to them.
Like what do you expect but a bunch of folks going ‘that’s bullshit’?
They chose to settle after sufficient pressure and wild accusations were brought to bear publicly no?
If the lawsuit was kept confidential and not turned into a high profile socio-political football being used to target them, then I think you might have a point, as the case could be about matters of law and fact.
But it wasn’t, was it?
One would call that ‘forced’ in most contexts. If it wasn’t in the context of an active lawsuit, perhaps even extortion. But lawyers get a pass for this, of course.
CPUs are a type of IC, commonly known as a ‘chip’ in this context. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit]
That’s called ‘not knowing what the definition of something is’.
Also, there are many voltage regulator ICs (and hence chips), and a great many other ICs (and hence chips) used in pretty much every piece of electronic equipment now a days.
Motor controllers, microprocessors, etc.
Literally even children’s stuffed toys have them.
"Chip" is the layman term for an integrated circuit, or IC.
Socrates was a man. I am a man. I am Socrates.
Pretty sure no one would think they did.
But it does have their logo on it!
Unless of course Apple sent a container of free iPhone’s after they’d laid out their genocidal plan. So far zero indication that’s happened though, right?
Or is that too much to ask now a days?
This entire thread is the height of ridiculous absurdity.
But while yes these companies should bear responsibility if they are selling their parts to sanctioned countries, this is unlikely. There is just no way to track the real-time user of every commodity product - even if there were would you really want to live in that world?
*edit grammar
This is somewhat of a tu quoque argument much like the many others here claiming these products are commonly supplied by many companies worldwide, and it will have absolutely no bearing on the reputations of the companies involved, nor can it remove their involvement in the violent deaths of innocent lives.
> The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment.
Not a single component produced in Russia? Somehow strange that a country that can send people to space and back is not capable of producing a single component for a military drone.
> According to the Ukrainian assessment
Ah, ok. So the source is trustworthy and objective, not a war party telling whatever they have to tell to support their cause.
Modern optics are absolutely out of the question, which is why their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics.
As well as more advanced Thales thermal imaging systems that were installed in combat vehicles (tanks, IFV). AFAIK they were produced in Russia under a license from Thales (a French company) till at least 2016. Thales was likely evading sanctions
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite)
The most advanced microchip produced in East Germany was the '1-MBit chip' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U61000), but AFAIK this suffered from terrible yields and didn't really go into mass production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(Czechoslovak_company)
Here in Brno they also made world class electron microscopes & some of the leading electron microscopy companies still come from Brno or at least operate there (Delong Instruments, FEI, Thermo Fisher, etc.).
Soyuz (as in both rocket and capsule) has had multiple failures over the last decade. The most recent was the coolant leak a few weeks ago that made the capsule unusable for a safe return to Earth. Under Rogozin their space industry degraded very quickly (probably one of the reasons why Rogozin was fired last year).
It's been known for some time that Russia gets components for its hi-tech weapons via a network of proxy companies in EU.
> So the source is trustworthy and objective, not a war party telling whatever they have to tell to support their cause.
US and Israel officials are clearly taking these reports seriously
When I was there, the US fabs were selling parts used in iPhones, Zunes, and XBoxen.
Also nothing here really looks like something irreplaceable. A bunch of compute[1], the standard supporting chips (power, sensor interfaces etc.), I think only thing that might be problematic to replace are some high end analog stuff. The microcontroller on the photo
Point being they could probably get by just with chinese chips, just picked the "vanilla option" because it's easier to read datasheet in english than in chinese.
About only thing that would be hard to get off top of my head would be fast thermal cameras, as US for the long time limits anything consumer/export to low framerate and I'm not sure whether china does any of their own that are available.
> Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox.
I'm guessing first one is some diodes/power transistors and such (easily replaceable) and U-blox I think just provides ready-to-go modules so less of a "part" more of a "module" made of stuff also from asia.
Point being blocking exports wouldn't exactly do much unless China also closed borders; it would be far too easy for 3rd party company to just... buy what is needed and get it in via china with other chips.
* [1] https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28232/part-details/TMS320F...
Again, do you have an actual source for this?
Onsemi have a bunch of locations everywhere https://www.onsemi.com/company/about-onsemi/locations
Hemisphere and ublox aren't even making chips in first place, they are making modules out of other people's chips
Now of course company having factory in china (or just buying capacity there) doesn't mean that particular chip was made in china but article doesn't really give much details about the chips aside from shitty picture of one (that is just generic MCU with some DSP IIRC)
And Digikey, for example. Can ship to a lot of countries.
Dig deeper!
>Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment.
It's tricky. It would require a huge amount of surveillance to prevent it from happening, or an even more aggressive physical blockade of Iran. And of course there's always the possibility of China->Russia->Iran shipment by air.
The article below estimates the Shahed-136 at $20,000. The Mohajer-6 probably isn't that much more.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-iranian-made-killer-drones...
But that's the economic-warfare genius of cheap drones: it [might] cost as much $500,000 to shoot down a $20,000 drone.
https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-...
Here's an example of “air defense doing it's job” that somehow ends with an explosion on the ground and lights going out: https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1610326116757114880
It also shows how shitty Russia is, continuing to bomb Kyiv when it's far from any military objective. And shows why we need to expedite Ukraine's victory.
Claiming what specifically?
"Here's an example of ..."
From how many examples? And what exactly do you see it's happening on the only video?
Asking just to understand what's the point you're trying to make.
Certainly for the FPGA side you can make the case that these things are actually very, very rare in true consumer products (anything that sells in numbers they are the first thing to go off the BOM, at all costs). But they power an overwhelming number of military gadgets that don't have the unit numbers to be sensitive to their cost.
So yeah, today FPGA are an utter commodity item that are impossible to trace. But if you want sanctions like these to work, they probably shouldn't be.
The SDR for reference: https://i.imgur.com/oyexLez.jpg
And a discrete component version might not be realistically doable or too heavy/expensive.
contains many references to pictures and such. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/iranian-drones-i...
Most remarkably https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1577619774292606976
I think to understand the problem you need to see a list of components that are being used but also to understand that substitution is relatively easy in today's world of cross platform embedded systems. I have ordered many of these boards from places like DigiKey and Mouser. Here is on example:
https://os.mbed.com/platforms/
Many of these boards are capable of providing the flight control systems for these drones.
What is the likelihood that these parts are mostly recycled?
They are generally unrestricted and there is no tracking done of who buys them or what they are going to use them for. The only limit on buying them is when the buyer and seller happen to be in different countries that have some sort of general trade restriction between them such as sanctions.
These are the countries that Iran has over $1B/year in imports from: China, UAE, India, Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, Russia, Italy, UK, Netherlands, and France.
As far as I know there are no restrictions on US companies selling these components to buyers or distributors in at least 2/3 of those countries. Iran can probably just order from distributors in many of them, or have someone in one of those countries buy the components and ship them to Iran.
Keeping these components out of Iran is about as difficult as keeping something like nails from a US company or USB cables from a US company out of Iran.
This still has serious consequences, especially long term and extends well beyond the miltary... Even if the miscellaneous run of the mill electronics aren't controllable.
A lot of commenters are mentioning that Iran is simply using very common parts. I think that's missing the wider context that Iran was only recently eclipsed by Russia as the most sanctioned country on Earth. Going a step deeper, it's not that the parts are common in our globalized world, it's how Iran managed to get them, who supplied them, why Iran is choosing to use sell these limited and expensive parts (relative to global norm), and how that can be mitigated. I tried to find a list of specific parts that would fall under the sanctions, but, ho-boy, that is a deep dive into procurement and sourcing.
I think the reason why this obvious truism keeps surprising people is that deep down, they are really convinced that the West is the whole world, and so western sanctions are assumed to always be global sanctions, and then people ask questions like "How can Iran have a domestic airline industry if no one is selling them parts? How can Iran possibly make drones? Satellites? Missiles? Gas Turbines?" Etc.
It's a big multipolar world, and very little stuff is actually made in the West. Most stuff is made in Asia and sold globally, and the vast majority of the world and the world's markets are doing business with Iran.
But when the US outsources production to Chinese factories - or when other nations can produce replacement goods on their own - the US can no longer do that, because by definition China can now produce the good as well, and if the US company were to threaten to stop selling the good to, say, Brazil, unless Brazil also promised to not export to Iran, then the Chinese factory would directly sell their version to Brazil instead, and the net result is that the US loses the Brazilian market, but Iran still buys the good. In the new world, there are many suppliers of replacement goods, and so we are not in a position to impose bans on re-export of US made goods to third parties. We can only do that for those goods for which are truly the global sole supplier -- e.g. F-35s and the like. But not for microcontrollers.
In other words, the de-industrialization of the West and spread of manufacturing to asia has, as a consequence, severely limited our ability to unilaterally sanction sales of even the goods we produce to Iran - at least for goods that can be resold. We can no longer credibly threaten to sanction any country that resells our stuff to Iran, and thus force them to comply with our sanctions. As a result, even US made products which can be resold are going to end up in Iran if Iran wants to buy them. And this extends even to things like jet engines, so it's certainly going to apply to memory chips, microcontrollers, RAM, and the inconsequential parts "discovered" to be in the cheap Iranian drones.
In the new multipolar world, if you want Iran to not be able to buy US goods that can be resold, then you have to actually get the whole world to agree to the sanctions, you can no longer impose the sanctions unilaterally. It is only because people do not recognize this new reality that they are surprised that US made components appear in Iranian drones.
Sounds like a lot of work to me, probably not viable for any but the biggest companies, and even they would struggle.
War is hell. Sanctions/blockades are evil and ineffective outside of destroying entire countries.
The alternative is one more war. Which would you prefer?
The historical details emerging around the Minsk agreements (e.g. Merkel's comments) indicate you are completely wrong here. Not to mention Trump's unilateral pullout of the JCPOA!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts
"War with the Newts (Válka s Mloky in the original Czech), also translated as Salamander Wars, is a 1936 satirical science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Čapek. It concerns the discovery in the Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, an intelligent breed of newts, who are initially enslaved and exploited. They acquire human knowledge and rebel, leading to a global war for supremacy."
The Newts use explosives to demolish land, creating more of the shallow sea they prefer to live in & they also use poisonous gases and other weapons against the humans. And all the time, there are at least some humans who sell them explosives, chemicals or arms to make a quick buck.
The only thing that saves the remainders of humanity in the end is that the Newts eventually start fighting each other and wipe themselves out...
Sounds like just standard parts rather than sensitive equipment.
If you're a lawful citizen and by mistake take one to the airport and get caught with it, would be a lot of trouble, but criminals will just ignore than warning, buy a few hundreds and smuggle them through land or sea no problem.
If these components were allowed to be purchased by civilians without a specialized license, then the companies can't really be blamed for it. There's no way to prevent things like that from being smuggled abroad.
Russia has had issues with not having enough optics, so there's speculation that the Russian NODs for sale to American LARPers for years as milsurp might not have actually been surplus...
So, literally nothing. That's small guys getting slapped for breaking rules. Wake me when France imprisons some Thales executives for selling thermal scopes to Russia (post-invasion!)
By the way, the French government is the largest Thales shareholder.
These aren't cheap devices. Somebody with a Russian name dropping $100k on a some 20 NODs is going to raise eyebrows.
Right, one such operation failed, but there's many more which succeeded, not to mention all the Western stuff they confiscated from the Ukrainians (verified through videos they posted).
And you're right, it's not realistic for them to outfit thousands of soldiers with that gear, but certainly enough for small groups of special forces, but their real problem isn't bypassing sanctions, but their own corruption which made them not have such gear long before the war started in the first place.
I'll bite, how do you think the justice system should work?
Laws and their corresponding punishments are deterrents. And judges have flexibility in applying them to handle issues of accidental vs. intentional rule violation.
I don't know, and I am not saying we should turn the country into North Korea or China with full government control, that's far worse.
> And judges have flexibility in applying them
They can only apply them to those caught, and that's the problem here. Only a very small percentage of those violating the sanctions are actually caught at all in the first place.
Doesn't seem all that surprising that single use drones are being built from readily available parts.
The Shahed-136 uses an MD-550 piston engine, according to Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
It was apparently developed by Limbach, Germany. Now the MD550 engines are made in China.
https://www.militarydrones.org.cn/md-550-engine-price-p00583...
So the drones' engines don't appear to have anything to do with any US manufacturer, and even if they did, Iran could buy them from China. Good luck with sanctioning those.
https://lynred.com/sites/default/files/2021-07/PICO640GEN2%2...
https://www.barrons.com/news/france-s-thales-accused-of-sell...
Article about corrupted ru initiative to build homegrown microbolometers that somehow despite stealing hundreds of millions still managed to secure supply of French sensors. https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/8252-secret-deals-un...
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkey-calls-canad...
https://defbrief.com/2020/11/06/garmin-condemns-use-of-its-p...
My guess is these are comercial grade components (as opposed to industrial or military grade). This might mean they are susceptible to forms of attacks higher grade components will survive. In other words, they are not "hardened" (a term that has a range of meanings). Another way to put it might be that they are relatively easy to disrupt and shoot down through means other than kinetic countermeasures.
GPS modules and microcontrollers are about as fancy as it gets. They listed (gasp) power supply regulators, and chips from Analog Devices that I presume to be OpAmps or similar.
Ukraine has been achieving very high shoot-down rates on Shahed-136 drones. The Russians have to launch them in big swarms to have a hope of getting any of them through.
The drones use a piston engine designed for model airoplanes, driving a pusher propellor. Apparently its top speed is about 135mph. It looks like a jet, with its delta wings; but I'd guess you could shoot one down with a rifle.
5 SANCT Pull this pin high if you're using this product in a sanctioned country or product The bit field is laid out as follows:
0
+-+
|E|
+-+
And they probably don't get as many of them as they like, and they have to design around their lack of access. All of that already imposes costs on them, which is felt in the drones being more expensive and less capable than otherwise possible.
I think the fact they can bypass sanctions to get these sorts of parts is expected- after all, they are the ones securing their borders. The OP is right, it would be more worrisome from a military perspective if they further had the capabilities to produce all this themselves.
Solving (or mitigating) the "they're bypassing sanctions" problem is easier than the "they can manufacture everything then need" problem.
Not necessarily - could just be cheaper to buy them from a middleman in China.
Spending time trying to fund and manage black market networks, raiding recycling centers, buying and dismantling washing machines for chips etc. is all time that the Russians aren't putting towards streamlining cruise missile production.
At the same time sanctions and export restrictions impose costs on the US and its allies. Those costs aren't worth it if the restrictions aren't themselves effective, which they almost certainly won't be for common off the shelf components.
You have to remember that both investigation and prosecution involve a large amount of discretion, so the cost of the sanctions regime is dynamic and variable. Enforcement can put a small effort against low-value components and put a large effort into violations of high-value components. If the small effort put against low-value components deters some activity, then the goals of the sanctions regime are furthered.
Good grief. It's like they know they don't have a strategy, and they're doubling down on it.
If the supplier for iran is centralized then having a catalogue of these specific components and monitoring for purchases of them could tip who the supplier is. If the source of the components are separated into different entities and components are only brought together in Iran, then yea I think it would be super hard to find them.
I thought the quality of an optical system came down to it's resolution and its freedom from aberration. If I'm not mistaken, it's not hard to achieve "perfect" optical resolution (1/2 a wavelength of light?). Mitigating aberration is done with stacks of lenses with different refractive indices, which requires a specialist glassmaker. But Russia has specialist glassmakers. I don't think it's possible to achieve complete freedom from aberration, but I don't know.
https://www.ophiropt.com/infrared/
Ranges of identification, recognition and detection.
To me, this is just slow day at CNN.
In a US with sane foreign policy this would be fairly easy. The US, with backing from Europe, would tell Iran "stop supplying Russia with drones or we are going to put major sanctions on you".
Iran would look back to the sanctions there were placed on them over their nuclear weapons program, which were pretty severe, and remember how when they agreed to stop the weapons program and agreed to international inspections for verification the sanctions were lifted.
They would not want to go back to that, and would know that the US will be reasonable if Iran complies and quickly lift sanctions, decide helping Russia isn't worth going back to those US/EU sanctions, and stop supplying drones.
But we have a US where after the US lifted the nuclear sanctions it changed its mind and reimposed them. So now (A) the US no longer has imposing sanctions on Iran as a tool to persuade them on new issues, and (B) Iran (and everyone else) has no reason to believe the US when it says sanctions over any particular thing will actually be lifted if the sanctioned country makes the changes the US wants.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
The Iran Sanctions FAQ is also quite helpful.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...