Ukrainian authorities say that the Russian cruise missiles used in the 14 May deadly strike on Ukraine were manufactured this year using Western-made components.
The SR-71, designed largely to spy on Soviet countries, was made of titanium sourced from Soviet countries.
In the decades since then I would wager the arms race against “straw buyers” has favored the buyers. Especially when it’s just bare microchips. It’s not a dinky Polish auto-repair shop ordering five thousand Tomahawk missile nose cones. Some of these smuggling operations happen by accident, because the chip someone needs happens to be used in a fancy toy car. Or if you want to get conspiratorial, a toy car can be designed to use any chip in a missile, without raising a single eyebrow.
Amateur rocketry enthusiasts have run into tracking problems because commercial GPS and motion-tracking hardware is designed to shut off past a certain speed. That’s how mundane and widespread some of these weapon components are: if you can jailbreak a TomTom and a Wiimote, you’re left making the part that explodes slowly and the part that explodes quickly.
The SR-71, designed largely to spy on Soviet countries, was made of titanium sourced from Soviet countries.
In the decades since then I would wager the arms race against “straw buyers” has favored the buyers. Especially when it’s just bare microchips. It’s not a dinky Polish auto-repair shop ordering five thousand Tomahawk missile nose cones. Some of these smuggling operations happen by accident, because the chip someone needs happens to be used in a fancy toy car. Or if you want to get conspiratorial, a toy car can be designed to use any chip in a missile, without raising a single eyebrow.
Amateur rocketry enthusiasts have run into tracking problems because commercial GPS and motion-tracking hardware is designed to shut off past a certain speed. That’s how mundane and widespread some of these weapon components are: if you can jailbreak a TomTom and a Wiimote, you’re left making the part that explodes slowly and the part that explodes quickly.
And drones are still scarier.
The reality is slightly more complicated, but not a whole lot
Reality is like that.