Ukraine Finds Western Parts in New Heavy Hunter Drone That Crashed

• Ukraine said it found Western-made parts in the wreckage of a new Russian drone.
• Russia’s S-70 Okhotnik-B “Hunter” crashed in eastern Ukraine last month.
• The reported find marks the latest discovery of Western parts inside Russian weapons.

Ukraine said on Friday that it found Western-made parts inside the wreckage of a new heavy Russian combat drone that crashed last month.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that an analysis of the S-70 Okhotnik, or “Hunter,” drone that was downed over eastern Ukraine in early October, revealed components made by companies in the US and Europe.

Officials said they found microelectronics and other technological components inside the wrecked drone made by US-based companies Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx-AMD, as well as Infineon Technologies in Germany and STMicroelectronics in Switzerland. Ukraine uploaded purported evidence of the Western-made parts to a government portal, where several other companies were listed.

Business Insider reached out to the companies mentioned in the HUR’s statement for comment on Ukraine’s findings and received a response from two of them.

Infineon and ST said that since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, they have taken steps to prevent their technologies from falling into Russia’s hands in violations of sanctions and export control measures.

Achieving airtight compliance can be tough, though. The recent find marks the latest discovery of Western-made components inside Russian weapons, despite widespread international sanctions aimed at curbing Moscow’s war efforts.

Ukraine has previously found Western components inside Russian missiles, and analysts at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute think tank have reported that a range of Moscow’s weapons and military systems contain parts made in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency, also known simply as the HUR, said that the S-70 was shot down on October 5 near Kostyantynivka, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Western intelligence said in the aftermath that Russia likely lost control of the drone and decided to destroy it to avoid it falling into Kyiv’s hands, something that happened anyway.

Russia only has four prototypes of the $15 million S-70, according to the HUR. The jet-powered drone, a product of Russian aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi, weighs some 20 tons and has a 65-foot wingspan. It also has a similar shape to the US military’s RQ-170 Sentinel built by Lockheed Martin.

The S-70 has been under development since the early 2010s and took its first flight in 2019 before making its combat debut during the Ukraine war. According to Britain’s defense ministry, the drone has a reduced radar cross section that’s intended to give it stealth capabilities for deep-strike missions.

Russia’s Okhotnik was built to operate alongside the fifth-generation Su-57, but the latter hasn’t played much of a role in the war in Ukraine, assuming it’s played any at all.

Analysts have said that the loss of an S-70 would be a major blow for Russia and provide Ukraine and its Western partners, including the US, with a significant intelligence win.