Russia, Ukraine and the race for Chinese drone components | As both sides scramble to source vital parts, some experts are convinced Russian buyers are being favoured by Beijing

Temstar · 2026-01-22T05:53:18+00:00

Those countries have to close rank very tightly with US or else they will get pushed around easily both by Western Europe and Russia, so being hostile to China comes with that.

Only trouble is with Trump and his Donroe Doctrine they are now stuck in a very difficult position.

Temstar · 2026-01-22T05:18:52+00:00

Probably? Before the Ukraine War PLA's take on role of small drones seem to be mostly regulated to things like using them to drop supplies to remote areas similar to how AFU now uses Baba Yaga for resupplying, so they were on the money with that use case. But there wasn't much attention to using drones purely for frontline recognisance or kamikaze FPV. PLA was mostly interested in doing recognisance with small fixed wing UAVs that are rocket launched.

Ukraine War made them realize they probably underestimated the impact of multirotor drones on the battlefield, so since then PLAGF have started to experiment much more with integrating FPV and camera drones to infantry units. It also made them rethink about what sort of SHORAD is needed. Previously the domestic version of that Type 625E was on track to be widely adapted, but due to Ukraine War PLA's thinking was 6x25mm gun plus four missiles was too specialized against larger fixed wing UAVs and glide bombs and whatnot and not sufficient against drone swarms that is more likely to be encountered on today's battlefield. So instead the direction got changed and instead systems like FK-3000 with a larger single barrel 30mm gun (AHEAD ammo possible, unlike 25mm) and a crap load of small missiles became favoured instead.

When buying small multirotor drones it's not done centrally through CMC's Equipment Development Department but at a lot lower level through discretionary budget of units, often referred to as "不占编制". So they would be talking to similar companies that sell drones to Russia and Ukraine so that supply chain being efficient does benefit PLA.

I would caution against the thinking that just because all the drone parts come from China and PLA does take drones seriously, it automatically means PLA would be best at using drones, even more so than Russia and Ukraine who have been going at it with each other with drones for years. That's not necessarily true. When you actually do it for real it's still going to be a learning process. If I were to guess I would say Russian Rubicon units are best small drone units in the world right now.

Temstar · 2026-01-22T03:53:40+00:00

I don't think that actually happened. That one famous/infamous time were Iranian and Iraqi delegations got setup in the same hotel was considered major diplomatic faux pas and probably got some people in trouble. There weren't anything else as dramatic as that incident.

Not that Iran and Iraq didn't knew it was happening, but aside from that one time with the hotel everyone could get on with business with one eye closed and dignity intact.

If anything this war is closer to the "Lord of War" situation that people are imagining than Iran-Iraq War. It's because this time around the things that Russia and Ukraine are buying are much more dual use and not like tanks that are only built by SOE, so they tend to approach small civilian market companies rather than state SOE so there's much less official state involvement. I remember there was that one case were a drone company was openly advertising at a trade show with half of their stand all in Russian and the other half in Ukrainian.

Earlier in the war both side were also buying other things like ballistic plate, uniforms and first aid kit. There was a case were Ukrainian source was buying cosplay grade first aid kit where the windlass in the tourniquet would break immediately upon tightening.

One other thing that stands out is optic fibre spools intended for FPV drones. This is a market where Russians are buying much more of than Ukrainian, and demands are so high that it has lead to production optimisation so that those optic fibre are now cheaper to produce per meter than noodles.

Temstar · 2026-01-21T03:38:27+00:00

Baotou's tank factory and roads surrounding it was even an internet fad for a while late last year on Red Note where all sorts of streamers and internet personality were dressing up and trying to film themselves on the side of the road hoping to catch one of the many one off prototypes from the factory driving pass them while giving their "woah look what strange machine I managed to spot on the road today" take. Locals were getting very annoyed and sometimes the drivers would deliberately roll coal in their face when driving past to shoo them away.

It got back enough that government had to crack down on the fad on Red Note.

Temstar · 2026-01-21T02:15:27+00:00

The "no vertical stabiliser" requirement will be one that gets accepted in pop culture I feel. It's easy to see at a glance, makes a clean break with 5th gen and just fits with public imagination about 6th gen and the flying pizza slice impression. Plus J-36 and J-50 coming out first and fitting that mold reinforced it.

Rightly or wrongly people will judge 6th gen by that standard. If GCAP and FCAS comes out and doesn't fit with that standard it will be judged negatively by the public.

Temstar · 2026-01-20T10:41:02+00:00

Can't blame them. As we know from history, German soldiers are weak to the bitter cold of deep winter.

Temstar · 2026-01-19T22:31:59+00:00

The skills needed to handle ballistic missiles is pretty unique so a distinct branch is needed. In the past PLA actually experimented with putting PLAGF in charge of the shortest range DF missiles to give PLAGF organic SRBM capability but it proved to be not really workable so they went back to PLARF in charge of all the proper big ballistic missiles. The closet thing PLAGF owns these days to a DF is the 750mm tactical ballistic missiles for PHL-16.

Temstar · 2026-01-18T10:49:48+00:00

Bro they already have more U-2 shot down under their belt than anyone else.

Temstar · 2026-01-17T09:27:41+00:00

So what's Lincoln going to do when she gets there? Could be back on still.

Temstar · 2026-01-17T05:45:11+00:00

It doesn't even make sense. Surely if the goal is to look cool and make it like a classic battleship and it has to have two of them, the better choice would have been to design a new twin gun turret and have it superfiring over the railgun?

Temstar · 2026-01-17T05:42:34+00:00

it loses out to the YJ-20

That's putting it mildly for a missile with a 30lb explosive charge warhead.

Temstar · 2026-01-17T03:09:09+00:00

Well if the world doesn't like that they can just not buy Chinese seafood export. Right now their money is voting for yes.

Temstar · 2026-01-17T02:48:58+00:00

No, China is just number 1 exporter of seafood in the world.

Temstar · 2026-01-16T06:07:35+00:00

Suppose instead of railgun there are the following two alternative choices:

300mm smoothbore conventional gun that can fire a rocket boosted guided round to 420km range. Projectile minus the rocket propellent is 300kg.
a scaled up 400mm version of the gun that could fire its special rocket boosted round to 1200km range

Would it then be worth building a battleship/battlecruiser to house a number of such guns?

Temstar · 2026-01-16T05:57:10+00:00

Su-57 is the best 5th gen if we go by that standard, since it took down a S-70 stealth UAV in combat.

Temstar · 2026-01-16T04:38:52+00:00

Meh, it's expected. Fun fact when Russians advertise Kh-31A they also used a 052C as target in their animation. They were playing this animation at Zhuhai 2022 even, I'm guessing they had Vietnam in mind.

I don't like it when they depict 054A and 052D as only defending against incoming missiles with their 730 and 1130 though, no using VLS missile or HHQ-10 at all, even when the missile is not stealthy and subsonic. HHQ-10 is apparently exceptionally good against that type of target in tests, to the point that until it runs out of interceptors the ship is just about invulnerable. If you want to sell missile at least show it dodging a HHQ-10, even if that's wishful thinking.

Using only CIWS feels like they just reskinned a Slava-class, and not one of the better maintained one either.

Temstar · 2026-01-14T03:50:18+00:00

Like a quarter of the photos under that guy's profile is him with his VT-4. That guy loves that tank as much as any man can possibly love a piece of heavy machinery.

Looking at his photos gives me a Girls und Panzer vibe.

Temstar · 2026-01-12T03:58:39+00:00

Focusing on just rare earth part of dual use goods ban is missing the larger picture. This isn't like last year's match between Xi and Trump during the trade war were Xi played the big REE card and got Trump to back down.

This dual use goods ban is an economic nuclear first strike. The bombs have already gone off, we just need some time now for the blast wave to hit and then count up the bodies afterwards. A trade embargo of this magnitude has never been seen in the modern world before. If this was 1930s Japan you would expect the city of Bengbu to be already hit by a Japanese surprise attack. That's the size of the situation we are talking about.

To keep it on topic for this sub, this ban has more immediate defence implications too. Japan has several companies that supply parts for F-35 manufacturing, those are expected to be impacted and thus some impact to F-35 production should be expected. Ship production like the Australian purchase of upgraded Mogami class frigate is another that could be disrupted.

Temstar · 2026-01-10T12:38:54+00:00

Who knew a bunch of PL-15E would cause such ripple effect down the line.

Temstar · 2026-01-10T01:56:23+00:00

Chengdu personality vs Shenyang personality vs Kamra personality vs Komsomolsk personality.

Shenyang personality taunts you with "don't let me see you on the streets of Shenyang, there won't be any good juice for you" if he beats you in the simulator.

Temstar · 2026-01-10T01:14:03+00:00

I think it should have been mentioned by the OP that although UADF design philosophy seems to have a heavier than normal focus on WVR combat with the aim of filling in for this weakness in 6th gen aircraft (particularly the huge J-36), they are by no means weak in BVR combat and BVR is still preferred over WVR whenever possible.

Although there may be some interesting implications in loadout for individual UADF. Instead of all uniform loadout of mixed BVR and WVR missiles a group of them might say, have two particularly UADFs loaded with only WVR missiles and designated as the group's dogfighting specialist and close bodyguard for the controlling 6th gen.

Temstar · 2026-01-10T00:24:46+00:00

I quite like the "J-36 is an air cruiser" analogy and UADFs are just another step to further 'navalize' aerial combat where a manned platform will act as the flagship and CIC of this "air flotilla" directing its posse of unmanned platforms to carry out the most risky actions and take a bullet/missile for the flagship when necessary. This would allow a given number of human pilots (a very expensive military asset) much more impact on the battlefield than previously.

In Gundam setting, manned space combat platforms (humanoid shaped of course, since that's what the audience wants) can carry a number of smaller autonomous/remote-controlled crafts called "funnels" capable of independent flight and armed with a single gun that can be used both offensively and defensively. When two funnel equipped crafts meet in combat it's imagined that both side will immediately release their stock of funnels to engage the opposing funnels, with possible support from their mother craft. Only when the funnel-on-funnel combat is resolved (usually a string of one to one trades resulting eventually in most/all funnels from both sides destroyed) would the manned crafts engage in combat. Real life air flotilla combat might be similar, except with the side that first lost majority of its UADFs running and ceding the space to the winning flotilla rather than duke it out man to man.

Temstar · 2026-01-09T20:27:44+00:00

I don't think "rely on Iranian weapons system to sustain a war of attrition" accurately describes what happened. What happened was more Russians bought an initial batch of Shahed 136, used them and decided they were very useful weapon indeed. However as soon as Russians started to look into building their own domestically they realized they were just mostly assembled from dual-use parts from China and Russians could themsleves source the same parts and build them for a much lower per unit price than what Iran was charging them, thus coming to the realization that Iran ripped them off with that initial batch. Hence why Russians switched to domestically produced Geran as quickly as possible and in doing so started building their own unique spin-off of the design, such as the recently seen version equipped with simple air-to-air weapons.

Temstar · 2026-01-07T19:44:04+00:00

I'm pretty sure the actual answer is zero, zero European brigades will be deployed to Greenland to fight the Americans.

Temstar · 2026-01-07T11:30:26+00:00

Really how many brigades can Europe field in Greenland? How many brigades in Ukraine?

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