Thread by @kamilkazani

They probably can't. China just doesn't produce enough precision manufacturing tools. Russian military industry including the missiles industry, uses German tools, German cutting fluids, German software (Siemens & Heidenhain). I have no evidence of the latter being disconnected

https://twitter.com/WelshJontweets/status/1541445004090085376

Just a single example. This is a Russian submarine-launched ballistic missile R-29RMU Sineva. It's a new weapon of the Putin's era. Being produced after the Soviet collapse, it is fully import dependent. It is produced on the Krasmash (Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant)

Theoretically the ballistic missile production is secret. Still, you can get a lot from the open sources. Like the magazine of the Krasmash factory krasm.com/Files/3053-Sin…. Look at the Page 5 where among many new innovations they discuss the cutting fluids by ZET-Chemie company

The Krasmash magazine Sineva doesn't name all producers of tools, appliances, etc the factory is using. But the new cutting fluids were apparently provided by the German Zet-Chemie company, and it was in 2017, well after Crimea

zet-chemie.de/en/

Consider this article from 2017:

"Germany and Czechia help Russia to build ballistic missiles Sarmat and Sineva that can deliver the nuclear warheads"

There used to be more articles like this, most were cleansed. This is one of the few remaining

rucompromat.com/articles/germa…

Anonymous authors of the article could draw quite a lot of info about the Russian technological import from the boastful programs on the Russian TV. Here you see the VLC 4000 ATC+C1 machine on the ballistic missiles producing Krasmash plant

Look 0:07

VLC 4000 ATC+C1 is produced by the Czech company TDZ Turn, a partner of Siemens

On their website the TDZ Turn claims that their "market share is middle between Europe and Russia"

Although it might be difficult to track the exact way of how did the Czech machine get to the Russian ballistic missiles producing Krasmash plant, we can make an educated guess

On their website, they list "КР Пром" company among their partners tdz-turn.com/cs/profil-spol…

And the КР Пром company is a supplier of the Krasmash ballistic missiles producing plant

Most probably the TDZ Turn company would sell their machine tools to the Russian military factories, including the Krasmash through the "КР Пром" distributor

synapsenet.ru/searchorganiza…

Key facts to understand the Russian military industry:

1) Most of it is dual use. It can produce both civilian and military goods. It was designed this way by Stalin
2) Soviet technological chains died in 1990s and couldn't be revived
3) Putin's rearmament fully relied on import

Which import it was? Well, regarding the import of components that's complicated. Pretty much from everywhere. Some divergence happened after 2014 when some countries (US) tried to reduce that import, and others (France) worked hard to increase it

investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/eu-sta…

But the situation with the import of machine tools is simpler (it's a very geographically concentrated industry) and with the software - the simplest of all. It seems to be provided mostly by just two German companies. And there's no evidence of it being disconnected. End of 🧵

PS Two German companies supplying the software for the Russian military industry are Siemens and Heidenhain