That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells. Certainly no Chinese electronics. Even lenses for thermal optics are now Ukrainian-made. They don't even come out as much more expensive anymore - there's still some slight price gap but not a considerable one.

Having Chinese drones in the sky is a risk. Having a dependency on their supply is another risk.

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palmotea 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells.

Source? My understanding is that Ukrainian drones are pretty much 100% off-the-shelf Chinese components.

	▲	anovikov 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That was the case in 2023. Not anymore. Simplest builds still use Chinese parts, but many producers are using all-Ukrainian electronics, designed and produced within Ukraine (GALYCHYNA FC, FRANKIVSK ESC etc. - all clones of SpeedyBee, of course), and some producers are making a further step and use Ukrainian motors, Ukrainian cameras, Ukrainian props (these are so far rather shitty), and frames were made in Ukraine from the beginning. I'm not speaking about bigger - mid-range and long-range drones - they use no Chinese, and sometimes no US-made (for the same reasons), components. https://motor-g.com/en this company alone produces 100K motors per month now - enough to equip around 7-8% of 4M of quad copters Ukraine makes annually.