China

There's no doubt the controls on Russian access to technology is impacting its oil industry, but the impact of those restrictions has been frustratingly slow, hence the concerted effort by Ukraine to permanently disable Russia's oil infrastructure. The combination of aerial attacks from Ukraine and limited access to critical spare parts will present Russia with challenges. The spoiler in all of this is the extent to which China can fill the gap left by Western sanctions. Russia has established supply chains with China and built new payment channels, including via cryptocurrencies. The ability of sanctions to strangle Russia's access to technology has been oversold by many political leaders. The reality is that the sanctions created friction, but with the support of China, Russia has been able to maintain its access to the components it needs for 'business as usual' maintenance.”

My research really is focused on the hardware and the material side. So you need, for example, permanent magnets for motors. They are really, really hard to get with non-Chinese supplies, and a lot more expensive. You also need germanium... for night vision systems. You want your drone in many cases to have that capability. These are really volatile parts of the supply chain. The prices spike really rapidly, it makes procurement really complex. And the most important thing really is that China has actually sanctioned some Western companies."

Western politicians were urged to treat drones supplies as a “fundamental pillar of defence resilience, akin to munitions or fuel,” wrote the report’s author Robert Tollast. “Unless the UK and Nato establish resilient, diversified manufacturing capacity, they risk entering future peer conflicts with a critical shortage of drones, drone components, and raw materials.”