Russian Drones Rely on Chinese Parts
Crack open a wrecked Russian drone and the global supply chain comes into view.
“There is a good number of Chinese components and microprocessors in Russian drones, along with basically everything that is needed to assemble first-person view drones,” Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses’ Russia Studies Program who focuses on unmanned systems, told the Epoch Times.
“The transfer is direct and unobstructed.”
He noted that Russian builders order first-person view drone parts straight from Chinese factories and online marketplaces.
“The supply is cheap and plentiful,” Bendett said, claiming that it was so plentiful that it hurts Russia’s own attempts to make those parts domestically.
A Reuters investigation published in July tracked Chinese L550E engines—relabeled as “industrial refrigeration units”—to a sanctioned Russian maker of attack drones used in Ukraine. Kyiv has also blacklisted several Chinese suppliers after finding their parts in downed aircraft.
Beijing has tightened some dual-use exports since July 2024 to safeguard its national security interests—moves that have driven up prices and complicated shipments of components such as infrared cameras and inertial sensors.
Yet this display of leverage also underscored how dependent global buyers remain on Chinese supply, accelerating Washington’s push to reduce reliance through Section 232 measures, the Blue UAS program, and procurement bans, according to Cao.
Ukrainian Drones
“If China’s advantage lies in its mass and supply capabilities, Ukraine’s advantage is speed and adaptation,” Cao told The Epoch Times.
He noted that over the past year, Ukrainian units have transitioned from solo-drone strikes to artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted swarms that coordinate their own attacks under heavy jamming—still small in scale, but designed to expand in scope.
The Pentagon has allocated $50 million for 33,000 AI “strike kits” from Auterion, a Swiss-American defense and robotics software company, to equip the Ukrainian military. These kits transform low-cost drones into jam-resistant, target-tracking weapons, integrating battlefield upgrades into regular inventories.
Ukrainian sea drones such as the Magura V5 forced key Russian naval assets to pull back from Crimea, reshaping Black Sea operations since late 2023. U.S. naval planners are taking notes as they draft deterrence concepts for Taiwan.
Electronic warfare delivers the hardest lessons, according to Cao.
“Jamming can blind or hijack a drone; the counter is better autonomy and navigation that doesn’t rely on GPS,” he said, pointing to Russia’s fiber-optic-tethered first-person view drones, which sidestep conventional jammers.
Bendett said that when AI-driven drone swarms arrive in force, cyber defenses alone won’t be enough—armies will also need physical shields such as wire netting, cage armor, decoys, and old-fashioned kinetic weapons.
Both Russia and Ukraine are already developing lasers for that role, he noted.
The United States is also experimenting with directed-energy weapons.
At a live-fire trial in late August, U.S. electromagnetic-warfare company Epirus proved that a single pulse from its Leonidas high-power microwave system can disable a swarm of 61 drones, showcasing a potential low-cost shield.
Who’s Ahead and Why It Matters
In consumer and commercial drones, as well as the parts ecosystem that supports them, China leads by a considerable margin.
Civil-military fusion lets Beijing field “good-enough” platforms quickly and back them with a growing suite of counter-drone weapons, Cao said, noting that much of the PLA’s newest gear remains untested in combat.
“The parade ground is not a battlefield,” he said.
The United States still sets the pace in high-end autonomy, battlefield-proven intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; strike drones; and software that integrates mixed fleets. Its stumbling block is turning rapid-fire innovation into industrial-scale output—precisely what initiatives such as Replicator, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, and Blue UAS aim to fix, Cao explained.
The United States pioneered military drones starting from the Vietnam War, setting benchmarks with Predator and Reaper, while China’s early advances leaned heavily on copying, according to Cao.
“But today’s race isn’t about cloning airframes,” he said. “It’s about standardization, modularity, and speed—treating autonomy like software that can be pushed quickly and bought by the thousand once it works.”
What the US Can Learn From Ukraine
Cao identified three lessons that he says frequently reappear.
First, numbers matter more than perfection: Open-architecture designs, fast logistics, and continual software updates consistently outperform exquisite weapons that arrive too late.
Second, signals have become a battlefield; jammers cut control links, driving drones to rely on onboard autonomy, which, in turn, demands smarter counters. Those counters must be cheap—microwave pulses, lasers, decoys, even wire cages—so a soldier does not fire a million-dollar missile at a hundred-dollar quadcopter, he said.
Third, supply chains are a strategic element; as long as Chinese parts dominate, sanctions turn into a cat-and-mouse game, according to Cao. The more innovative approach is to out-produce and adapt quickly with allies—and it must be done fast.
China’s strength is mass mobilization. America’s answer must be software, allied production, and speed, Cao said. If Washington can convert today’s demos—AI strike kits, swarm control, robotic wingmen—into repeat orders and fielded units, it can offset China’s factory edge and raise the cost of any fight for Beijing. If not, he warned, the skies and seas around Taiwan may be dominated by those who ship faster, rather than those who design better.
