RUSI looked at 27 Russian weapons systems used in Ukraine including cruise missiles, communication systems and electronic warfare complexes and found 450 unique components made outside Russia.
Most were designed in the USA but 77 cane from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Singapore. Europe and Australia.
“Some 34 pieces of technology were designed and manufactured by Japanese companies, including cameras, multilayered ceramic capacitors and surface mount inductors,” says the report.
It would, said RUSI, be ‘non-viable’ for the Russians to produce these parts. “Without the requisite domestic manufacturing capabilities, Russia and its armed forces remain highly vulnerable to multilateral efforts to choke off these component flows and raise the costs of its aggression in Ukraine,” says the report.
Therefore the government should “”identify and close down Russian covert procurement networks,” says RUSI, adding that the devices “will likely have been procured illicitly and clandestinely shipped to Russia or fraudulently diverted to military end users at some point prior to the invasion.”
Measures suggested to choke off the supply of these parts include preventing manufacturing under license in states that support Russia and discouraging third countries and jurisdictions from facilitating re-export and transshipment of the components,” says the report, citing the use of “false end-user certificates and front companies.”
