YAY!!
Now let's do the same kind of thing to make IMPORTING all the stuff we are trying to keep Russia from getting their hands on like drones and chips and stuff. Yeah, I know it's a much smaller target than boats full of grain, but still...
The sort of integrated circuits the Russians are buying are not the latest Athalons from AMD, they are low end ICs made in China and other countries like the Maldives. China makes a high percentage of the world's low end ICs, and some of mid-grade ICs. China lacks the tech to make high end ICs. Only a few countries have the skill base to do it, Taiwan is one of the world's leaders and if China invades, all of Taiwan's skilled experts will suddenly move to the US. One of the leading Taiwanese companies is building a factory in Arizona right now. China may capture the foundries, but they won't have the skill to use them.
Low end ICs include devices like the 8051 processor which is heavily used for embedded devices. It's an 8 bit processor developed by Intel in the 1970s. I believe it pre-dates the 8086 processor which was used in early IBM PCs (the first PCs actually used the 8088 which started out as an 8086 that had part of the processor fail test). The 8051 is now off patent and made by a large number of manufacturers and is ideal for a lot of simple uses. Things like remote controls, appliances, etc.
About 10 years ago I worked on a USB interface. The chip I chose had the USB interface combined with an 8051, memory, and peripheral connections. I had to drive a peripheral chassis from this that could be up to the size of an NYC hot dog cart (it was a piece of industrial test equipment). We were looking at purchasing the part in low volumes and they cost about $0.50 each. The compiler to write and compile the code was available for free.
Just this one part is made in the millions every year. If you look at all parts with 8051s, you're looking at many billions of parts.
And that's just one low tech processor. There are lots of them out there. And there are low end parts that don't have processors.
The world IC market is over $500 billion USD a year (expected to top $1 trillion in the early 2030s) and the bulk of it is low end ICs. Trying to corner that market would be a fool's errand and would cause disruptions in the entire world's economy bigger than the problems we had with world trade in 2021 coming out of the pandemic.
Even if China agrees to play along with the US sucking up all the drones, there are always individual players in China who will be willing to break sanctions to make an extra few yuan. The sanctions are forcing the Russians to pay a lot more for many of these things than they used to pay, but cutting off the gray and black market flow is going to be impossible.
I've noted that both Ukraine and Russia have been buying staggering numbers of high end commercial drones, but the prices for these in the US have not gone up by much. That indicates the production of these is massive.
The thing to do is work to cut off the illicit supply route Russia is using. Many of these go through central Asian countries that border Russia. Unfortunately for the US, US diplomats have been ignoring these countries for some time. They focused on them during the Afghan war to support US operations, but as soon as the war was over it was Uzbekistan who? As a result these countries aren't all that thrilled with the US right now.
I don't think much Russian logistics is going that way (T2206 - M14).
I'd be very interested to know what is the condition of the Dnipro rail bridge. It was damaged by both sides and made un-usable, but there are no good photos of the post-damaged status online.
en.wikipedia.org
View attachment 963506
The rail bridge is in the red oval. The red oblongs are where the Ukraine forces have been most active on the east bank in this area. If you look on the map there are also a number of old ferry crossing terminii and/or old bridge construction docks. Ukraine only needs to find one way through. Russia needs to be strong at all these points.
View attachment 963509
If only Ukraine had sufficient air control then all this would be easy, the Western way !
Absent this Ukraine needs to push Russian field artillery back out of range of the river crossing (ferry) terminals so that they can get heavy weapons across safely.
I never thought that Ukraine was going to do much more than just conduct raids across the Dnipro, but they are establishing serious bridgeheads on the left bank. Ukraine can't move very fast, but Russia seems helpless from preventing Ukraine from moving. Whatever ground Ukraine has tried to take, they have tended to keep it.
Opening up the left bank of the Dnipro might be the breakthrough the Ukrainians have been looking for.
Germany officially announced they donated two more Patriot air defense launchers to Ukraine.
Nice but not very useful without any missiles. There is a growing world wide shortage of them.
