Russian missiles are guided by American chips – Bloomberg
Very often, when Russian missiles hit their targets, they are completely destroyed, leaving no navigation or control systems intact. But very rarely, Ukrainian forensic experts are lucky and can collect certain parts at the detonation site, Bloomberg reports.
At the site of the missile explosion, parts, chips and navigation components were found that were manufactured by Analog Devices, an American chip maker, Germany's Infineon Technologies and Integrated Silicon Solution Inc., an American company with Chinese capital.
Markings on the engines of the missiles whose parts survived and some of their components showed they were assembled no earlier than March 2023, more than a year after the United States and its allies imposed export controls that banned shipments of a wide range of of technologies to Russia to disrupt weapons production.
The restrictions made it illegal to supply Western-designed semiconductors to Russia if they could be used for military purposes, even if they were made in China.
Analog Devices Inc., based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, is the company that produced the most American chips in Russian missiles. Of the more than 21 Western components found at the blast site, it produced 3800 percent. That’s more than any other foreign company. Texas Instruments Inc. was the second American company, with 14 percent of the components found. Overall, 86 percent of Western chips in Russia came from companies headquartered in the U.S. and Europe.
Since March 2022, tens of thousands of components of Western and, in particular, American chips for weapons systems have been sent to Russia. As Bloomberg writes, it is already obvious that the West is not coping with the control over its exports, especially in the field of microcircuits and fire control systems.
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