Experts have examined the wreckage of the best Russian missiles that were launched over Ukraine and explained why they are not as “high-precision” as they say in the Kremlin.
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Russia continues to fire high-precision guided missiles at civilian and military targets in Ukraine. So the officers of the Ukrainian special services, together with private analysts, collected the details that remained from the Russian weapons in order to learn the enemy's secrets.
We are talking about samples of weapons that are considered the best in the Russian arsenal. And, as it turned out, they contain very technically backward components, – say the analysts who studied them. In particular, this concerns the basic satellite navigation system, which was also found in other Russian munitions, the New York Times writes.
The conclusions of analysts who studied Russian weapons are described in the report of the independent British group Conflict Armament Research. The document was published on Saturday. The group's experts try to identify and trace weapons and ammunition used in wars around the world. They studied Russian samples in July at the invitation of the Ukrainian government.
The report refutes Moscow's narrative that it has been able to rebuild the army and make it capable again of confronting the armies of its enemies in the West. The document also found that the weapons used by Russia to destroy Ukrainian cities and towns are often based on Western innovations. Although sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014 should have prevented this by halting the supply of high-tech developments needed to expand Russia's military capabilities.
“We found that Russia is reusing the same electronic components in various weapons, including the latest cruise missiles and attack helicopters. And we did not expect to see something like that. Russian guided missiles are filled with non-Russian technologies and components. And most of the computer chips we recorded were made in Western countries after 2014,” said Conflict Armament Research expert Damien Splitters.
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It is not clear how exactly Russia got all these details. Splitters asks semiconductor manufacturers whether their products ended up inside Russian weapons: through legal purchases or through intermediaries who helped Moscow bypass sanctions. Experts at Conflict Armament Research have analyzed what remains of three types of Russian cruise missiles, including the Kh-101 and Tornado-S, which are considered to be Russia's newest and most advanced designs. All of them contained identical parts marked as SN-99. Research has shown that it is a satellite navigation system receiver. It plays a critical role in the operation of rockets.
Splitters explains that the very fact of reusing the same component in different types of weapons speaks of Russia's very limited supply chains. Therefore, simply blocking the flow of SN-99s would significantly slow down Moscow's ability to replenish its stockpile of guided missiles. need and how she uses these details. Then it is important to find out how she receives them, through which networks? Who are its suppliers?” – explained the expert.
Experts also found a serious dependence of Russian engineers on semiconductors, which are produced by specific companies in the West. And these components are used not only in ammunition, but also in reconnaissance drones, communication systems, helicopter avionics and other military equipment.
“Russia continues to return to the same manufacturers. Once you figure that out, it becomes easier to suppress these networks. Looking at the computer chips that occupy the same position on different printed circuit boards, you can see that they are made by the same companies. The production dates may be different, but the manufacturer is always the same,” Splitters said.
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The Conflict Armament Research report also pointed to sharp differences between the advanced types of Russian weapons and those that Ukraine receives from the United States. Warring parties often study each other's captured military equipment for intelligence purposes. But analysts say they were shocked by Russia's apparent indifference to the fact that its weapons could be researched and copied.
“The level of Russian technology is the end of the 1990s or the mid-2000s at best. In fact, this is the equivalent of an Xbox 360 game console. Everything seems completely open to anyone who would like to disassemble and build their own copies of these technologies,” said NASA contractor Arsenio Menendez after evaluating photos of Russian weapon wreckage. He is engaged in copying guided weapon elements as a hobby.
In turn, the US Department of Defense has set standards that defense contractors must meet to make it harder for enemy countries to build their own versions of captured weapons. To protect what the Pentagon calls “critical software information,” military directives require the use of tamper-proof technologies designed to protect the lines of computer code and instructions that tell weapons where to find a target. Most of the data on the standards of the US Ministry of Defense are classified.
“You can build a trap around a computer chip that, in the event of a tampering attempt, deletes all the content,” Menendez explained, adding that such protections are used in consumer technology, such as bank card readers, to protect transactions from fraud and theft of funds. The Russian navigation system resembles the open architecture of GPS receivers. Menendez said that such components are not subject to federal restrictions as defense items.
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“Company of Engineers from an electronics college can build this,” Menendez explained.
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He also pointed to the “pickle” of parts that Russia uses to build its high-precision weapons. This may explain why Russian cruise missiles are not that accurate. Errors in non-standard GPS components when processing satellite signals can cause a cruise missile to hit very far from its target. According to Menendez, the Russian approach to electronics in weapons is as follows: “If you can't develop everything yourself, steal the technology and try to make what you can from it.”
