‘Silicon Lifeline’: Report Reveals Western Technology Guiding Russia’s Weapons in Ukraine

Most of the weapons rely highly on Western-made microelectronic technologies, according to report co-author Gary Somerville, a research fellow at RUSI’s Open-Source Intelligence and Analysis Research Group. “It doesn’t appear that they actually have the ability to reproduce – at least to the same level of sophistication and at scale – a lot of these critical microelectronics. These are the ones that would be absolutely essential for, for example precision-guided munitions which have very sophisticated processing units,” Somerville told VOA.