Thread by @sambendett

1/ Its back: Russia's Almaz-Antey defense enterprise just announced that it plans to manufacture between 2000-3000 Dobrynya quadcopters per month starting in July for the war.

https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1598656966955515904

2/ Almaz-Antey apparently built around 1000 of these quadcopters already and sent them to the front for testing and evaluation. The Dobrynya drone caused a lot of controversy after it was discovered to contain many Chinese-made parts and components.

3/ Russian military bloggers and commentators were less than kind to Amlaz-Antey after Dobrynya was first unveiled in November 2022. The enterprise had to issue a detailed explanation why it used Chinese parts. See this thread:

https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1598656966955515904

4/ Starting last year, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels were openly critical of the Russian defense-industrial sector for not moving fast enough to manufacture cheap, light, expendable combat quadcopters and FPVs to start phasing out dependence of DJI and Chinese-made parts.

5/ The Russian defense industry mostly concentrates on more expensive, reusable and multipurpose UAV projects - building expendable and cheap drones probably did not make much financial sense to them. My thread on this issue:

https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1651946194292326402

6/ At the same time, numerous volunteers, military correspondents and others working on the quadcopter/FPV manufacturing were calling for the Russia's massive defense industry to put its capacity and resources into building these tactical drones.

7/ The addition of several thousand tactical quadcopters per month can in fact make a difference for some Russian units and forces. But doubts remain whether Almaz-Antey can completely break off its dependence of Chinese-made quadcopter parts and components.

8/ And even if Almaz-Antey does not import-substitute such parts for domestic ones, there is evidence that it has enough of a capacity to import such Chinese-made parts in large quantities for Dobrynya manufacturing, at last for now.

9/ And Almaz-Antey is not the only defense company to start building small quadcopters - Rostec announced a year ago it is apparently doing the same, although no production numbers were announced, nor are there actual Rostec small drones at the front in sufficient quantities.

10/ Last fall, the Russian MOD basically said most domestic small drones are "inadequate" for the war effort, citing "components" issues.

https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1575204769009803264

11/ The key issue is promised capacity to deliver thousand per month, and the ease of use/operation - DJI and DIY FPV quadcopters are still preferred by both sides because they are simple to use, maintain and operate.