Analysis: Russia’s Lethal Electronics Are Impossible Without the West, 14 May 2024

US sanctions are hindering the supply of high-tech equipment to China, Beijing is very concerned about its own microchip production and is making every effort to upgrade its own fleet of photolithography machines. As a result, machines of previous generations may appear on the secondary market.

At the same time, Russia is also extremely interested in producing its own microchips, which are needed to create its own missiles, UAVs, and drones...Currently, it has only a 90-nanometer (nm) process available to it. By comparison, the US is preparing to transition to 2 nm, and China is trying its best to lower the bar below 10 nm.

However, even 90 and 65 nm are of great interest to Russia, which produces tens of thousands of FPV drones for its army monthly, as well as missiles, drones, and other devices that require modern microprocessors. Russia cannot manufacture its own photolithography machines for production of chips, nor can it buy them directly from manufacturers because of sanctions – it only has access to the secondary market (say, China). But it will most likely buy supplies for these machines from Western companies and Japan. And apparently does so, given the scale of production of the strike drones flying to Ukrainian positions every day...

Taiwanese TSMC, along with Intel, Qualcomm, and Samsung are considered the world’s main chipmakers. Thus, due to the sanctions imposed on Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian missile and strike drone manufacturers cannot freely purchase high-quality microprocessors directly from manufacturers. There have been known cases where Russians have bought batches of chips abroad, supposedly for repairing laptops, washing machines, and various household appliances, erased the manufacturer’s name with acetone, and inserted them into kamikaze drones, reconnaissance drones, and missiles of their own production. At least, these are the chips that the Ukrainian military has repeatedly found when examining the “innards” of the Russian weapons they have shot down. After all, any microprocessor is a dual-use product, and it makes no difference whether it is in a washing machine or a missile flying at an apartment building in Kharkiv...

In Russia, there are three factories that have the capacity to produce significant volumes of microprocessors. These are the Mikron and Angstrem-T plants in Zelenograd (Moscow region), as well as Milandr...

There are few companies in the world that make photolithography machines of the required quality. They are located in the Netherlands (ASML Holding NV) and in Japan (Nikon Group, Canon Inc., Screen Holdings). As mentioned above, the Chinese, are actively trying to produce something like their more developed competitors, and the United States is equally actively trying to prevent this. For example, in 2023 they influenced the restriction of sales of Dutch machines and 23 types of Japanese semiconductor production equipment to China...

In short, the market for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries is a place where all the major players are known and most supply chains can be traced, if one has such a goal. If all sanction measures were in full effect, Russia would have little chance of acquiring thousands of microprocessors every day to make killer products. But where does it get them from?

Perhaps the Russians have their own machines? There were indeed rumors of their attempts to do so. There is information about Micron’s attempt to create a Russian photolithograph, and the National Center for Physics and Mathematics in the closed Russian city of Sarov (the place where the Soviet atomic bomb was developed), the Institute of Microstructure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Research Center of the Institute of Applied Physics, and the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center have all been involved in developing their own photolithographic machines. An important nuance is that such a machine requires special optics, which are produced by one and only one company in the world, the German Zeiss Group. Considering how the United States pressured the Dutch not to sell machines for China, it can be assumed that the Germans of Zeiss are unlikely to sell their optics to the Russians (at least not openly)...

...It’s time to recognize that Russia’s military-industrial complex is impossible without the help of Western countries. The irresponsible attitude of some Western companies to the end recipient of their products leads to the fact that the Russian army continues to build up its power and rearm, focusing on newer and newer forms of destruction of Ukrainians.

Today, in a situation of uncertain sanctions policy, constant slowdown in military aid, and at the same time insufficient obstruction of Russia’s access to consumables and technologies for the military-industrial complex, Ukraine simply does not understand the West’s position.