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Ukraine says the Russian Shah people are increasingly being discovered by Chinese antennas.
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These devices can help attack drones bypass electronic assurance and spoofing.
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The Ukrainian Air Force said this means Kiev must significantly increase the amount of disruptors it uses.
According to reports from Ukraine, Chinese-made antennas are helping Russia’s explosive Shah drone fight against Ukraine’s electronic warfare.
Devices are controlled receive mode antennas or CRPAs, which are advanced systems to prevent signal blockage or spoofing – when sending fake GPS signals to the drone to deviate them from the way.
Ukraine has reported since January that Chinese tentacles were found among the Shah people. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said at the time that the equipment was originally made for agriculture.
But Sergey “Flash” Beskrestnov, a popular Ukrainian radio technologist, said on Friday that Shahed, the most advanced Chinese anti-crime device, was discovered last week.
He posted a photo of a circular dish with 16 elements, part of an antenna that can process signals. By contrast, there are eight elements of the device discovered in January.
Antennas with more elements can often help drones handle higher-powered jammers and more spoofing signals simultaneously.
“This is the first instance of record it uses,” Beskrestnov wrote.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Colonel Yuriy Ihnat addressed changes in technology during the local channel ICTV broadcast on Monday.
“If there were eight channels before, and now there were 16 channels, it means our electronic warfare system had to suppress them,” he said in Ukrainian.
Inat said Ukraine must respond by soaring the number of electronic warfare systems it deploys.
“The more antennas the drone has, the more suppression systems we need. That’s the serious effort of our military industrial complex, and the assistance of partners and organizations,” he said.
Iran-designed SHAHED drones are usually not known to contain Chinese anti-bone antennas. Russia has 12-element military antennas, and Ukrainians also say Ukraine discovered this in February on a Shah drone.
The emergence of Chinese equipment on Russian explosion drones could provide clues about how Moscow’s military industrial bases handle Western sanctions that attempt to cut off the supply of important electronic parts for weapon development.
Ukraine said the sanctions have not yet completely besieged Russia. It said in November that Moscow is deploying bait drones equipped with Western-made components such as transceivers.
Meanwhile, Russia has been trying to expand its production of long-range attack drones modeled on SHAHED, which relies heavily on strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and air defense measures. One version of these devices is Geran-2, similar to Winged Shahed-136.
Bloomberg reported in July that European officials said Russian and Chinese companies were working together to develop another drone.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comments sent by business insiders during regular working hours.
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