Forty years ago I led a small experts team to Paris. We arrived at Terminal 2 early in the morning, hauling a 12 inch by 12 inch wood box that was about five or six feel long. At the Customs desk the agent asked us what was in the box. We said, “Russian sonobuoy.”
“Bien sûr,” said the inspector, and we were on our way downtown.
The reason we took the Sonobuoy was to show our colleagues at the Coordinating Committee on Multilataeral Export Controls how the Russians were copying US technology. COCOM was the multilateral organization, founded in 1949, to regulate sensitive exports to the USSR and others such as China.
In the mid-1980s, in the middle of the Soviet arms build-up, our goal was to try and cut off Soviet access to US technology, especially computers and microelectronics. The Russian sonobuoy, which had been recovered at sea, contained printed circuit boards stuffed with microchips that were copies of integrated circuits made in America, right down to the fact that the US company logo was faithfully reproduced on the chip’s internal circuitry.
At the time it was our opinion that the Soviets did not really have an independent microelectronics capability but its silicon industry, centered in a town called Zelenograd to the north of Moscow (then a closed city), was told to copy American electronics, rather than design its own components.
We also viewed electronics as an essential force multiplier: computerized weapons were better able to find and destroy targets than traditional weapons. All of this was before the age of drones, or even smart weapons. Even so, it was an impressive leap for weapons technology.
One especially effective capability was a “black box” put on US and Israeli F-15s starting in the early 1980s. Integrated with the aircraft’s radar and fire control systems, this gave the F-15’s a look-down shoot-down capability – meaning that the planes could spot an enemy from above and knock him out of the air before he knew what happened. The black box could sort out an airplane below from ground clutter, something Russian radars could not do then.
It was first used in combat by Israel in the Bekaa Valley in a famous confrontation with the Syrian air force. The decisive outcome was that Syria lost between 82 and 86 MIG and SU fighter jets; Israel reported damage to two F-15s. In addition, Israel was able to destroy 29 of 30 Syrian surface to air missile sites, thanks in part to sophisticated tactics and effective radar jamming.
The Russians were clearly in catch-up mode. Despite their efforts Russia’s electronics industry barely evolved. With the dissolution of the USSR took place in 1991 Russia also lost access to key players in Eastern Europe supplying electronics and computers, including the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.
Fast forward to 2025. It is now 40 years since Russia tried, mostly through subterfuge and espionage, to steal American and western computer and microelectronics know-how. On the whole, it didn’t work. At least it did not work well enough for the Russians to create a leading-edge microelectronics and computer capability.
The latest field reports coming from Ukraine help us understand a key Russian dilemma for the future.
This past April, in a visit to Kapustin Yar missile test range in the Astrakhan region of Russia, during a visit by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, the Russians showed off the new S8000 Banderol cruise missile, which some think is a joint project with China.
The Banderol either can be launched from a helicopter – or from a drone, reportedly the Kronshtadt Orion (Ambler, иноходец). Orion has a range of 1,440 km (890 miles) and Banderol’s range once launched is 500 km (311 miles). The Ukrainians say that Banderol can use GPS or other satellite links for communications and targeting or rely solely on an inertial navigation system.
Banderol turns out to be interesting for three reasons. The first is that some of its components, including its jet engine. are Chinese. The engine model is Swiwin SW800Pro and is commercially available on Alibaba for $18,000. Other parts come from China, from the US, from Europe and (possibly) Australia. The Ukrainians report of some of the components follows:
- RFD900x telemetry module (Australia) or its Chinese copy
- Inertial navigation system, likely of Chinese origin
- Murata rechargeable batteries (Japan)
- Dynamixel MX-64AR servo drives (Robotis, South Korea)
- CRP jamming antenna Kometa-M8 (Russian Federation, VNIR-Progress), also used in Geran loitering munitions, UMPK kits for converting unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions, and UMPB precision-guided glide bombs;
- Almost two dozen microchips from US, Chinese, Swiss, Japanese and South Korean manufacturers
Take note that the Russians must have acquired a significant stockpile of these components to go ahead and serially produce the Banderol cruise missile. Related to this is that many Russian weapons in use in Ukraine are chock full of Western and Chinese parts. This means that the supply system to ferret these items to Russia must be large-scale, perhaps even massive.
The US and its allies have done next to nothing to break up the Chinese-Russian supply chain, and it may be they either don’t know how or consider the probability of any success very low.
There are a couple of serious downsides for Russia. The first is the Russians must depend on China to facilitate supplying Russia’s arms industry with needed components. Should the supply chain be broken, the Russians face an unenviable challenge to supply their military.
Related to this is that China will cooperate with Russia up to a point, but the Chinese may not supply the most advanced components to Russia, thereby preserving their lead in certain weapons. This means that Russia has to run behind, not ahead of, China in arms development in the future.
We don’t see that too much as yet, but if China is successful in becoming independent in producing artificial intelligence semiconductors and computers, Russia will inevitably have to beg Beijing for help. Balancing this, the Chinese are certainly interested in some powerful Russian capabilities, significantly the Avangard hypersonic ICBM and its mid-range counterpart, Oreshnik.
Technologically, the Russian armed forces and their domestic manufacturing base remains a significant challenge to Europe, but less so globally. China, on the other hand, with massive industrial potential and enviable supply independence, is in a better position to expand its global footprint.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
