Ukrainian Drones Target Russian Semiconductor Plant and Disrupt Internet Near Moscow

[Daniel Nenni]

Ukrainian drones targeted a Russian military electronics plant and disrupted mobile internet services near Moscow in a major overnight air assault, officials said early Wednesday.

Oryol region Governor Andrei Klychkov said a “large-scale enemy drone attack” targeted the town of Bolkhov, around 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, damaging the Bolkhovsky Semiconductor Devices Plant.

The plant, which produces components for Russia’s electronic warfare systems, is under U.S. and Ukrainian sanctions. Klychkov said there were no casualties.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed 159 Ukrainian drones over nine regions, including Moscow.

Residents in the Moscow, Vladimir and Lipetsk regions reported mobile internet outages during the strikes, according to the Telegram news channel Astra.

“The military decided to temporarily disconnect [mobile internet services] for security reasons,” Lipetsk region Governor Igor Artamonov wrote on Telegram. “Access will be restored as soon as the situation allows.”

The drone barrage came as the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin visited the Kursk region, but it was not immediately clear if his trip coincided with the overnight attacks.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s national guard said a Russian ballistic missile strike killed six soldiers and wounded at least 10 others at a training site in the Sumy border region. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday evening it had targeted the site.

Ukrainian Drones Target Russian Semiconductor Plant and Disrupt Internet Near Moscow - The Moscow Times

Ukrainian drones targeted a Russian military electronics plant and disrupted mobile internet services near Moscow in a major overnight air assault, officials said early Wednesday.

www.themoscowtimes.com

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Semiconductors are targets now.

 

[Paul2]

The funny thing is that what Russians cannot replace are their own semiconductors from seventies, not the modern ones which their agents smuggle from abroad in bodily cavities.

 

[Xebec]

Semiconductors are targets now.

I imagine the semicondctors that will power Golden Dome are quite advanced..

 

[Paul2]

I imagine the semicondctors that will power Golden Dome are quite advanced..

I expect they will be no less than 30 years old.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

The funny thing is that what Russians cannot replace are their own semiconductors from seventies, not the modern ones which their agents smuggle from abroad in bodily cavities.

I remember helping with an article for a big news outlet when the war in Ukraine started. They had a list of chips in weapons used by Russia that were recovered, all were non Russian chips. A lot of programmable devices. It seems like we are now in a war of drones and that means newer chips.

 

[Xebec]

I expect they will be no less than 30 years old.

lol - yes being military, a lot of it will be older equipment for various reasons. But in this case, a lot of ground based 'logic' (and some space) will be pretty modern. A system like this is going to probably use AI type algorythms to identify and target threats. I'm also guessing space or ground based lasers that need to be highly accurate and fast as part of this too.

 

[Paul2]

I remember helping with an article for a big news outlet when the war in Ukraine started. They had a list of chips in weapons used by Russia that were recovered, all were non Russian chips. A lot of programmable devices. It seems like we are now in a war of drones and that means newer chips.

For new drones, yes, but their missiles still fly the same exact electronics with which they were designed half a century ago, and it seems so too for other high-value items.

lol - yes being military, a lot of it will be older equipment for various reasons. But in this case, a lot of ground based 'logic' (and some space) will be pretty modern. A system like this is going to probably use AI type algorythms to identify and target threats. I'm also guessing space or ground based lasers that need to be highly accurate and fast as part of this too.

Unbelievable train loads of money were once spent to verify, test, certify those designs, and thus nothing in those designs can ever be changed.

I believe the extensive use of programmable logic in Russian stuff is exactly because they use it to substitute previously available parts, and not add new functionality. They all are used for extremely trivial tasks, like a function of a few dozen logic gates in parallel.

 

[Xebec]

For new drones, yes, but their missiles still fly the same exact electronics with which they were designed half a century ago, and it seems so too for other high-value items.

View attachment 3197



Unbelievable train loads of money were once spent to verify, test, certify those designs, and thus nothing in those designs can ever be changed.

I believe the extensive use of programmable logic in Russian stuff is exactly because they use it to substitute previously available parts, and not add new functionality. They all are used for extremely trivial tasks, like a function of a few dozen logic gates in parallel.

Do you think Golden Dome won't have new missile types - hypersonic missiles, or guns with newer rounds?

I haven't seem much on the architecture, but to protect a whole continent, I don't think our existing designs/hardware will be sufficient at all. I don't think we'll be using D5's to shoot down other ICBMs?

(I do know a lot of "flown in space" stuff constructed by Lockheed uses FPGAs, though I can't speak to how advanced they are).

 

[Paul2]

Say, 50 years ago, they tested fully armed Minuteman with a real warhead, since then, they only know a single version of hardware that is 100% sure known to work. Since then, they haven't changed a single screw, because they can't test fire a minuteman now to test how design changes will impact it.

Thus, they kept the design frozen with absolutely prehistoric microchips, even while it's obvious that modern chips are 10000x times more reliable.

 

[Xebec]

Say, 50 years ago, they tested fully armed Minuteman with a real warhead, since then, they only know a single version of hardware that is 100% sure known to work. Since then, they haven't changed a single screw, because they can't test fire a minuteman now to test how design changes will impact it.

Thus, they kept the design frozen with absolutely prehistoric microchips, even while it's obvious that modern chips are 10000x times more reliable.

OK - but a Minuteman missile can't shoot down an ICBM which is the new requirement of Golden Dome.

 

[Paul2]

OK - but a Minuteman missile can't shoot down an ICBM which is the new requirement of Golden Dome.

I expect is that they will just rehash some of existing interceptor designs from 30-40 years ago, with still existing, and validated components, and they will change the bare minimum to avoid replacing known flown parts.

 

[Xebec]

I expect is that they will just rehash some of existing interceptor designs from 30-40 years ago, with still existing, and validated components, and they will change the bare minimum to avoid replacing known flown parts.

That's an interesting way to spend $1T

 

[Jozo035]

I expect is that they will just rehash some of existing interceptor designs from 30-40 years ago, with still existing, and validated components, and they will change the bare minimum to avoid replacing known flown parts.

Problem is that this is more expensive than designing new rocket. At least in case of western chips in Russia. To change guidance system means effectively re-develop entire think again with added constraints in form of bad decisions from 50 years ago.

 

[Paul2]

Problem is that this is more expensive than designing new rocket. At least in case of western chips in Russia. To change guidance system means effectively re-develop entire think again with added constraints in form of bad decisions from 50 years ago.

If you didn't add the certification, and testing regimen far in excess of an already strict civilian aerospace component, that would've been the case. Some nuts, and bolts inside bigger defence items are indeed verbatim reuse of 50 years old designs, as they carry no redesign, and paperwork costs by themselves.

With Russians, I can understand they have no choice, but keep using bricks full of 7400 chip clones as the original engineers are long dead. PRC pas no such problems, they would likely to just stick a single STM32 into their stuff to do everything. I guess American engineers would be glad to switch to a single STM32 too... if they could.

 

[Jozo035]

If you didn't add the certification, and testing regimen far in excess of an already strict civilian aerospace component, that would've been the case. Some nuts, and bolts inside bigger defence items are indeed verbatim reuse of 50 years old designs, as they carry no redesign, and paperwork costs by themselves.

With Russians, I can understand they have no choice, but keep using bricks full of 7400 chip clones as the original engineers are long dead. PRC pas no such problems, they would likely to just stick a single STM32 into their stuff to do everything. I guess American engineers would be glad to switch to a single STM32 too... if they could.

Kind of agree but You still need reliability, even if non-transparent environment allows them to cut corners.

Last year Russian jet fired 2 missiles at British spy plane. Both missiles failed.

 

[Paul2]

Kind of agree but You still need reliability, even if non-transparent environment allows them to cut corners.

Last year Russian jet fired 2 missiles at British spy plane. Both missiles failed.

Yes, and that's why a civilian parts are vastly superior this day than any purpose built military silicon from PMOS era, be it 10 times more aerospace grade, ceramic packaged, and rad hardened

Ceramic packages are far less reliable than epoxy, a die that is 10 times larger has 10 times larger chance to catch a space ray, but by far old chips are way more prone to die from banal process defects than modern ICs.

When minutemen were first designed, it was just taken as given that a certain percentage will be failing mid-flight from inevitable manufacturing defects in machinery and computers, no matter how hard the quality control will be. Our today's failure rates for KGDs will look miraculous to electronics engineers of the seventies.

 

[samwilde]

Those are 1980s and 2000s era Soviet and Russian chips. The Soviets did not have BGA packaging until near collapse (early 1990s). They were stuck with DIP for the most part. Those BGAs are likely 1990s or 2000s chip designs.
Most "modern" Russian weapons were developed in the late 2000s with the chips they had up to the early 2000s.
Russian chips from the 2000s are like what the US could produce in the late 1980s.

The US military often uses FPGAs to implement logic, it is cheaper than a custom chip, the Russian FPGAs are kind of expensive, the Russian MIC use gate arrays for the most part instead since those are more available and cheaper. Not to mention more rad hard.

The Russians have their own STM32 clones but they are too expensive to put in most weapons. Especially disposable ones. I think they became available in the 2010s. i.e. after most weapons like the Kalibr or Iskander were designed.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Those are 1980s and 2000s era Soviet and Russian chips. The Soviets did not have BGA packaging until near collapse (early 1990s). They were stuck with DIP for the most part. Those BGAs are likely 1990s or 2000s chip designs.
Most "modern" Russian weapons were developed in the late 2000s with the chips they had up to the early 2000s.
Russian chips from the 2000s are like what the US could produce in the late 1980s.

The US military often uses FPGAs to implement logic, it is cheaper than a custom chip, the Russian FPGAs are kind of expensive, the Russian MIC use gate arrays for the most part instead since those are more available and cheaper. Not to mention more rad hard.

The Russians have their own STM32 clones but they are too expensive to put in most weapons. Especially disposable ones. I think they became available in the 2010s. i.e. after most weapons like the Kalibr or Iskander were designed.

I toured a Russian fab a few years ago. It was 130nm and it felt like I was in a way-back time machine. I also met with the team that cloned the x86 for Russia and they were working on cloning 32-bit ARM cores. Even the tools they were using were 'cloned". They had an unlimited number of simulation and verification licenses. I did not go back.