Russian missiles carried Western chips. Sanctions had not kept them out.

Russia’s weapons could be designed and assembled at home while depending on electronics made elsewhere. RUSI found that contradiction inside the systems themselves.

Its August 2022 report, *Silicon Lifeline: Western Electronics at the Heart of Russia’s War Machine*, examined 27 of Russia’s modern military systems, including cruise missiles, communications equipment and electronic-warfare complexes. The researchers inspected equipment captured or expended in Ukraine after February 2022, matched component markings and serial numbers to manufacturers and compared the findings with trade and corporate records.

The report identified at least 450 different kinds of foreign-made components across the 27 systems, according to the RUSI report and its summary material. The executive summary says at least 80 types were subject to US export controls. The components came from a wide group of technology-producing countries, including the United States, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

This is stronger evidence than a claim based on a supplier’s marketing material. RUSI’s teams physically inspected a significant sample of the equipment and checked component information against manufacturer and open-source records. The report also states that some parts could not be fully identified and that counterfeit components are a global problem. It treated most identified parts as genuine, while acknowledging that further scrutiny could improve certainty.

The evidence reached into specific weapons. Reuters, reporting on the RUSI collaboration, said a Russian Iskander 9M727 cruise missile contained digital signal processors, memory modules and other foreign components. Researchers found 31 foreign components in a Kh-101 cruise missile. The report identified US-made parts from companies including Texas Instruments, Advanced Micro Devices and Cypress Semiconductor, as well as cabling associated with US, Dutch and German companies.

The finding does not mean those companies knowingly supplied Russian military customers. RUSI expressly said that identifying a manufacturer in a weapon did not, by itself, allege wrongdoing or sanctions evasion. Reuters reported that the companies cited said they complied with trade sanctions and had stopped selling components to Russia. Many of the parts were ordinary commercial electronics that had been widely available before the invasion.

That availability explains how a military supply chain can become dependent without looking dependent. A component designed for a consumer product can still perform a critical function inside a missile, radio or navigation unit. Before export controls tightened, it could move through ordinary commercial channels. Afterward, the same ubiquity could make diversion possible, but it did not make lawful procurement simple.

RUSI identified components classified as dual-use and subject to US export controls. Its report concluded that Russian military procurement had, over decades, used foreign microelectronics and had developed networks to obtain them. After new sanctions and tighter controls, Russia sought import substitution. The report judged that approach non-viable in the cases it examined and described third-country transshipment hubs, front companies and other clandestine procurement routes.