"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (10 Viewers)

buffnut453 said:

Possibly...but it's a complicated mess. Did Russia have stockpiles of spares before the invasion that they can draw down? Are they lowering fleetwide operational readiness to maintain a smaller combat-ready force (increasing the number of hangar queen/Christmas tree airframes that are used as sources for spares)? Is Russia manufacturing its own spares that are cloned from originals? How many parts are available on the second-, third-, or fourth-hand markets?

It's worth noting that older aircraft can be hard to maintain simply because the chips and other hardware aren't produced any more. We had that issue with the Tonka back in the '90s. Under those circumstances, I think it's pretty likely that Russia may well be making its own spares.

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GTX said:

And your point being?

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MiTasol said:

Given the Shaheds have a lot of Western electronics we can discount the stockpile theory. Last night alone Russia launched 728 Shaheds on Ukraine.

Total Shahed production was some 12,000 before Xmas with current monthly production exceeding 2500 giving a total Russian supply of somewhere in the region of 27,000 as Russian is still getting Shaheds from Iran as well as producing them locally. Shaheds only account for about half of Russia's drones and I think it is safe to say many of the other drones, as well as the current production Sukhoi's and other aircraft, contain Western drones

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Although Russia certainly makes circuit boards I have not seen a suggestion of chip manufacturing. China is certainly supplying chips but they are not absolutely identical to US chips down to the makers logo and part number which means they came from the US, Germany, Japan and other western sources.

Having current production chips strongly suggests that they do not come from the second hand market as that would require thousands of current production items to be salvaged per month just to supply Russian drones, let alone all the other items (Tanks, BMPs, marine craft etc) that contain western components.

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buffnut453 said:

I have little doubt they are being "laundered" through a number of subcontractors that have no immediate tie to either Iran, Russia, or the military weapons market.

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Thumpalumpacus said:

Shell companies set up by interested intel operatives, my guess, or legitimate companies hoodwinked by them. No doubt a few legitimate operations are gambling on not getting caught, but tracking and so on is not something they will omit, unlike the shadowy outliers.

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MiTasol said:

Last night alone Russia launched 728 Shaheds on Ukraine.

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Dimlee said:

Just a small correction. When the media says "Shaheds", that means drones of all types, most of the time.
In the last mass drone raids, about 30% were "Shaheds" (Geran-2 and similar), the rest of the other types, including "Gerbera" - max 10 kg weight, plastic foam body, often used as decoys.

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MiTasol said:

I thought that was self evident but also I must not be hard for manufacturers to work out which those shelf companies are. Lets face it if brand x is making 20-30 thousand chip part number x or board part number y and 2500 of them are ending up in Shaheds then it is going to be pretty obvious who is buying them on Russia's behalf.

Even if the Russians split that into ten orders of 250 given that drone manufacture is increasing far faster than most other electronics it should be not that hard to identify the middlemen. Increasing sales to Josef Bloggski when inflation is reducing the overall sales of many products is going to be a strong hint.

Reducing the batch numbers printed on components from lots of many thousands to just a few hundred would cause a minimal cost increase and quickly narrow down the middle men involved. With modern computer and printing technology it is probably possible to produce a different batch number for each original wholesaler which would narrow the search very quickly. Requiring wholesalers and retailers to report the details of any sales of more than say 50 units to the manufacturer and/or NATO would again place a minimal disruption on legitimate wholesalers and vendors but quickly identify.

I would doubt the Russians have purchased in small lots as they will want the discount that comes with quantity purchases so just requiring wholesalers and retailers to send NATO or Ukraine's СБУ historic sales records (including credit card or bank records) for purchases of more than x units for the last 12 months could possibly identify the culprits.

Ukraine's СБУ have a strong incentive to find and neutralise those entities who ship the components to Russia and may well find that they can exchange the components for "better" ones just like Mossad exchanged a large number of Hamas bound pagers with "better" ones.

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buffnut453 said:

I agree with Thumpalumpacus that a thorough analysis needs to be conducted to work out where these components are coming from. I have little doubt they are being "laundered" through a number of subcontractors that have no immediate tie to either Iran, Russia, or the military weapons market.

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