Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Hi,
im not convinced of china not want to supply awacs to Russia, if China is ready to supply
awacs to Egypt im sure Russians are more closest to China one way or the other, might be
some other factor coming from Russian side, at least for the time being if not latest but somewhat
like ZDK kid of awacs like been supplied to Pakistan.
I don’t know what’s going on with Russian side not getting Chinese help, though China bought lots
of engines and SU35 from Russia
thank you

Nah, it just one of Russia's weird hang-ups. Probably similar hangs up as to why they haven't allowed PL integration on the Su-35's of the PLAAF.

vincent said:

I think i read here many Russian munitions, including Iskanders, still use lots of Western chips.

Click to expand...

Those chips have Russian analogues. The original Western chips are cheaper so they use them. This is all civilian grade technology easy to smuggle. If for whatever reason the Western chips became unavailable they would use their own. This would raise the price of the weapon systems but the Iskander could still be produced.

gelgoog said:

Those chips have Russian analogues. The original Western chips are cheaper so they use them. This is all civilian grade technology easy to smuggle. If for whatever reason the Western chips became unavailable they would use their own. This would raise the price of the weapon systems but the Iskander could still be produced.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't Chinese made chips be even cheaper?

gelgoog said:

Those chips have Russian analogues. The original Western chips are cheaper so they use them. This is all civilian grade technology easy to smuggle. If for whatever reason the Western chips became unavailable they would use their own. This would raise the price of the weapon systems but the Iskander could still be produced.

Click to expand...

Depend on the chip. For some like less complex chips like power semiconductors,RF chips, logic gates and some ASICs, I think Russia semiconductor industry is capable enough, so I don't think they will have too much difficulty.
But It seems the Russian designers use a lot of FPGAs to reduce complexity and increase flexibility in the design.

These are high end FPGAs with large quantities of logics gates and these chips are more difficult to make. These will have to be made in Chinese fabs who have 45nm and below capabilities. Another option is to buy Chinese FPGAs chips with similar capabilities.

I don't know the intrinsic of Russia electronics workflow to tell how that would work out.
Another option is to replace the FPGAs for ASICs chips but that will increase the complexity of the electronics and decrease the flexibility of the design. The good news for Russians designers is that these chips are pretty ubiquitous in the market and easy to get.

Exactly. You can replace an FPGA made on a
newer process with an ASIC made on an older process. This is also how Huawei got around the ban of the sales of modern FPGAs to them.

The only problem the Russians are having is with systems which require high definition video or AI. Like the Lancet. That uses NVIDIA AI chips. But the Lancet isn't a strategic weapon platform and a carrier of nukes.