In early November 2022, a @conflictarm team had access to 1x Shahed-131, 2x Shahed-136, and 1x Mohajer-6 UAVs used by Russia in Ukraine. Here’s what we found in them: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7a3941…
Through visual comparison with four other UAV models documented in 2017-2022 in the Middle East, @conflictarm confirms that the Shahed-131, Shahed-136 and Mohajer-6 UAVs used by Russia in Ukraine were made in Iran.
The @conflictarm team could also document a Qaem-5 precision-guided munition, with a May 2022 date of manufacture, indicating Iran has carried out at least some supplies since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Shahed-131, Shahed-136, and Mohajer-6 UAVs were made almost exclusively of recently produced non-Iranian parts. Most of the components for which @conflictarm could identify a date of manufacture were made in 2020-2021.
We found that 70 different manufacturers from 13 different countries produced the components @conflictarm documented in the Shahed-131, Shahed-136, and Mohajer-6 UAVs. 82% of the components were made by US-based companies (yes, 82%).
This report demonstrates that Iran has been able to circumvent current sanctions to get the higher-end tech it needed to build these single-use UAVs (Shahed-131 and -136). The @nytimes discusses it here: nytimes.com/2022/11/22/us/…
The new report by @conflictarm on Iranian UAVs used by Russia in Ukraine shows that Iran, like Russia, is highly dependent on foreign components to produce weapons. Documenting these components and investigating their chains of supply is essential to avoid future diversions.
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In July 2022, @conflictarm returned to #Ukraine to continue to document components of Russian weapons. There, we made an interesting discovery. Follow along... 1/19
We documented parts of the SN-99 satellite navigation systems of three different Russian cruise missiles: the 3M14, the Kh-59, and the Kh-101 2/19
We had already documented the satellite navigation system of a 9M544 rocket back in May 2022, and it looked exactly the same 3/19
A @conflictarm team just returned from #Ukraine, where we saw some pretty recently introduced systems. Here's a short thread showing a couple of them 🧵 1/
We saw a Merlin-VR (Мерлин-ВР) UAV, which seems to have been first reported on in late September 2021 web.archive.org/web/2021092822… 2/
We also saw a Lastochka-M (Ласточка-М) UAV, which was also seen in late September 2021 during the Zapad exercises tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/1…