OPINION: China learns drone warfare on Kyiv’s back, and Moscow lends it a wind tunnel

The Academy of Sciences, September 28

Researchers at the windows.

A jump.

On September 28, a Russian strike hits the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.

Scientists jump out of the windows to escape the fire, Oleksandr Moiseienko reports for United24.

Scholars, all of them.

Not soldiers.

These men and women did science, far from any general staff.

The weapon that drove them from their offices carried, in its belly, technology that came from China.

That is the subject.

That is my anger.

A cold anger, fed by documents, patents and trade records.

Meanwhile, in Beijing

Elsewhere, others work.

In peace and quiet.

In Chinese laboratories.

They read reports from the Ukrainian front, compare drones, test models in Russian wind tunnels.

They learn.

No risk.

No windows.

While Ukrainian scholars flee the flames, their Chinese counterparts take notes on those flames.

The image is cruel.

Russia provides the battlefield, and China provides the notebook.

Both gain from it.

The image is exact.

It sums up a war where one country bleeds while two others swap notes.

The C4ADS report

A new report.

Its title asks a question.

“A Marriage of Convenience?”

It is signed by C4ADS, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington.

The author, Al Maggard, combed through Russian trade records, corporate documents, leaks and academic papers.

One conclusion.

The report rests on trade records, corporate filings and leaked documents.

Moscow is helping Beijing build better drones, Alisa Yurchenko sums up in The Kyiv Independent.

Not only.

The two regimes trade knowledge, parts, machines and data, under the West’s gaze.

The help flows both ways, and that is precisely what should wake Washington up.

TsAGI

A name first: TsAGI.

Russia’s Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute.

It is under sanctions.

Famous wind tunnels.

Chinese clients included.

The report establishes it.

A wind tunnel is where you learn how a machine flies before you fly it for real.

Moscow opened it.

The Kremlin offers Beijing a shortcut that years of research would not have been enough to draw.

A gift.

Between 2022 and 2024

Chinese models.

At least nine times.

Between 2022 and 2024.

TsAGI tested them, then returned them to Norinco with the test data, according to C4ADS.

Nine times.

During the war.

Russia bombed Ukraine by day, and its engineers measured Chinese wings by night.

Tests and measurements.

Curves, line by line.

Those curves feed Chinese design bureaus, which then build more stable and more precise machines.

Everything a Chinese design bureau would have taken years to obtain alone.

Every successful test in a Russian wind tunnel brings Beijing closer to a drone it could not have designed so fast.

What data is worth

Data is worth a lot.

It avoids errors.

It avoids crashes.

It saves time, and in an arms race, time is worth more than money.

Beijing gains time.

Moscow sells it, and receives Chinese components, raw materials and machine tools.

A trade.

Ukraine pays the price of both, since every improved drone sooner or later ends up in a sky at war.

It should also give pause to those who still believe Beijing remains neutral in this war.

Moscow was selling time to Beijing. Kyiv received the bombs.

SPLAV and Norinco

A second name: SPLAV.

Russian rocket launchers.

It sent Norinco, the Chinese arms giant, technical documents on a “reconnaissance rocket.”

In 2014 and 2015.

Then, apparently, in April 2022.

April 2022.

Less than two months after the invasion.

The Kremlin was sharing its artillery secrets at the very moment its troops were pulling back from Kyiv.

It is probably the 9M534, a rocket that releases a reconnaissance drone in mid-flight.

A rocket.

A drone inside.

A Russian concept that obviously interests the Chinese industry, always looking for shortcuts.

Norinco received it.

March 2025, the resemblance

March 2025.

China unveils the Feilong 60A.

A loitering munition.

Launched by the SR-5.

Three months later, the Sky Eye, a drone fired from a cannon, according to the same report.

Feilong, first.

Sky Eye.

Two products.

The chronology does not prove an identical copy, but it sketches a transfer that is hard to deny.

Documents in 2022.

Products in 2025.

Three years.

The number that accuses

A number, now.

Eighty-six papers.

That is the number of scientific papers on drones co-signed by Russian and Chinese researchers between 2022 and 2026.

About 17 a year.

Before, 36.

From 2009 to 2021.

About three a year.

Three before the war.

Seventeen during.

That jump owes nothing to academic fashion; it follows the curve of the war exactly.

The war against Ukraine multiplied Russian-Chinese scientific collaboration on drones by nearly six.

This is no coincidence.

It is an alliance.

An alliance of laboratories, quieter than a military alliance, but just as useful to Beijing.

Quieter, yes.

Knowledge that circulates

One name keeps coming back.

Evgeny Neretin.

From the Moscow Aviation Institute.

In June 2025, Beijing approves its joint institute with Northwestern Polytechnical University, The Kyiv Independent notes.

A joint institute.

Shared students.

Shared research.

A joint institute can train engineers useful to both defense industries.

The report speaks of “a likely building block for drone swarms.”

Swarms of drones.

Tomorrow’s nightmare.

Tested today on Ukraine.

Swarms that might one day target American ships or Taiwanese cities.

Stankomashstroy

Not just drones.

Factories count too.

Stankomashstroy, a Russian manufacturer, plans to move its production of five-axis machine tools to China’s Shaanxi province.

Five axes.

The high end.

In 2025, it sold equipment to the Votkinsk plant, which produces ballistic missiles.

And to Kupol, in Izhevsk, which makes air defense and long-range drones, according to C4ADS.

Votkinsk, then.

Kupol too.

Kupol makes machines that strike Ukraine, and its supplier is preparing a move to China.

The circle is complete.

The machines that make the missiles that hit Kyiv now go through China.

Element and Shijiazhuang

Another group.

The Element group.

Four Chinese subsidiaries.

Then, in 2026, the purchase of intellectual property from Shijiazhuang Tonhe Electronics.

Subsidiaries and patents.

Constant exchanges.

These subsidiaries give the Russian group direct access to Chinese suppliers, without going through visible intermediaries.

The Kyiv Independent sums up the report: “Russia’s defense cooperation with China extends far beyond imports of dual-use goods.”

Far beyond.

More than chips.

Real integration.

C4ADS identifies 314 shipments, 52 Russian suppliers and 21 Chinese recipients from 2010 to 2025, United24 reports.

Cold numbers.

Shenzhen Xingkai Technology was ready to supply mesh modems to the Alabuga drone factory.

Even knowing the military use.

Telefly LX-WP-160

Back to the jet-powered drones.

The Geran.

Versions 4 and 5 use a Chinese turbojet, the Telefly LX-WP-160, according to United24.

Telefly Telecommunications Equipment.

Registered in Hong Kong.

On March 29, 2010.

Hong Kong.

So China.

Hong Kong remains a main channel for Western chips into Russian weapons, according to The Kyiv Independent.

That engine was later replaced by a Russian version assembled in Alabuga, the TRD-200, made of Chinese parts.

Replaced, they say.

A Russian engine made of Chinese parts remains a Chinese engine under another name.

Not really replaced.

Western parts too

And us?

Western components.

Texas Instruments.

Monolithic Power Systems.

CTS too.

And Infineon.

A CTS oscillator found in one drone was dated September 2025, Moiseienko reports.

September 2025.

Very recent.

A part made in 2025 inside a Russian drone proves that our export controls still let recent parts through.

Our sanctions leak, and part of the leak runs through Chinese intermediaries we know about.

We must shut those taps.

And fast.

Every month of delay lets through components that will come back to strike Kyiv in the form of drones.

The specifications

The Geran-5 changes scale.

Between 450 and 600 km/h, according to Ukrainian military intelligence cited by United24.

About 950 kilometers of range.

A 90-kilo warhead.

About 120,000 dollars apiece.

“The equivalent of a cruise missile.”

A trifling price.

A conventional cruise missile costs far more, and Russia can launch many more of these.

Mass wins.

The Geran-5 flies “higher, faster” and remains “significantly harder to intercept,” The Kyiv Independent notes.

Harder to stop.

Faster too.

Defenses designed for old, slow Shaheds struggle against this new generation.

Adaptation is needed.

Iran interested

The market widens.

Iran approached Russia to obtain upgraded Gerans, according to the Financial Times, cited by United24.

Iran, yes.

No delivery confirmed.

The circle could close: an Iranian drone, upgraded in Russia with a Chinese engine, would go back to Iran.

Three regimes.

Russia, Iran and China form a military mutual aid network that the West still underestimates.

Not for long.

One drone.

One target: the Western order.

No commercial accident.

It is a supply chain of the authoritarian axis, and it works far better than our sanctions.

The CSIS study

CSIS dug in.

Lilly Min-Chen Lee and Kateryna Bondar read more than 90 Chinese sources.

Forty-five outlets.

July 2022 to August 2026.

Their title says it all.

Learning without bleeding.

That is the doctrine.

A doctrine that turns Ukrainian casualties into data for the Chinese army.

Not a drop.

Chinese analysts publish on an innovation about four months after it appears on the Ukrainian front.

Four months.

For hardware? A year.

Nearly half of these texts appear in defense industry journals.

The test site

The Chinese words are raw.

Ukraine? A test site.

2024 becomes “year one of world drone war,” in those Chinese journals.

A Chinese participant sums it up: “The errors we make in trials are detours the troops will not have to take.”

Our errors.

Their detours.

Ukrainian dead serve as free trials for an army preparing another war, elsewhere.

Taiwan, obviously.

CSIS writes it: these lessons feed the same cycle of adaptation across the strait.

Ukraine bleeds. Beijing takes notes, for Taiwan.

What the PLA Daily says

The PLA Daily calculates.

In March 2025.

A drone: under 1% of a fighter’s price.

For over 90% coverage.

One percent.

Ninety percent.

The equation appeals to a general staff preparing low-cost mass warfare against a rich adversary.

We are the rich adversary.

Our fighter jets cost tens of millions, and Beijing is preparing swarms that cost almost nothing.

The equation is worrying.

A million in one year

China takes notes.

More than a million small drones bought by Ukraine and Russia in 2024, according to CSIS.

A million.

In a single year.

A strike three to five minutes after detection: that is the Russian timing Chinese sources describe.

Three to five minutes.

No more.

A window that short requires drones wired into artillery and command networks, which Beijing wants to copy.

For Chinese planners, that mass becomes the model of drone war.

A million on one front.

How many tomorrow?

The answer is being prepared in Chinese factories, fed by data from the Ukrainian front.

Asymmetric

C4ADS does not dramatize.

An asymmetric relationship.

Moscow may pay the price.

China limits its cooperation when it does not serve its techno-nationalist goals.

Beijing chooses.

Beijing doses.

Moscow depends.

The Kremlin needs Beijing to last, and Beijing knows it perfectly well.

It takes advantage.

The worst scenario, according to the report, would be an axis that erodes the “long-standing” American “monopoly on precision warfare.”

Our monopoly.

Our lead.

A lead the United States took decades to build, and that the authoritarian axis is now nibbling away.

The crack to exploit

There is a path.

China needs the West more than it needs Russia, C4ADS writes.

That is the crack.

C4ADS recommends speeding up innovation with allies and treating Beijing and Moscow separately, to add friction.

Friction is the point.

Separating Beijing from Moscow takes patience, firmness and a real trade strategy.

Not indifference.

The “no limits” partnership has limits, and they run through our markets, which Beijing does not want to lose.

Let us use those limits.

Beijing would lose more.

Beijing needs Western markets, capital and technology, according to C4ADS.

Sixty percent

Some good news, still.

Ukraine learns too.

Nearly 60% of Geran-4s were intercepted over three months, Tania Myronyshena reports in The Kyiv Independent.

Sometimes 80%.

Classic Shaheds: 95%.

F-16s on the hunt.

Mirages too.

MiG-29s as well.

On the ground, Gepards, Shilkas, Skynex, Skyrangers and Terrahawk Paladins.

A mixed arsenal.

And an effective one.

Fighter jets play a significant role in these interceptions, according to the General Staff.

A feat.

What is missing

But 60%.

Not 95%.

Four Geran-4s out of ten still get through, and each one can hit a building, a power plant or an academy.

The gap costs lives.

Every Chinese improvement to an engine or an antenna pushes that rate down, and Kyiv has to run again.

An endless race.

The Geran-5 is coming.

Kyiv will need more.

More interceptors.

More fighter jets.

And fewer Western components in Russian drones, thanks to export controls that are finally serious.

Wang Yi and lethal weapons

In July 2025, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi denied supplying lethal weapons to the warring parties.

No lethal weapons.

Beijing even restricted some drone and engine exports in September 2024, United24 recalls.

On paper.

On the ground, Chinese parts keep arriving in Russian factories, the investigations report.

The wind tunnels, the rockets, the machine tools and the engines tell another story, a less diplomatic one.

No weapons, says Beijing.

Just the tools.

What I am asking

Not war.

I am asking for clear eyes, and for policy choices that follow from them without waiting for the next crisis.

Clear eyes, first.

Russia strikes Ukraine today, but China is preparing tomorrow’s world with the lessons of this war.

One name.

Beijing, first.

We must shut the component leaks, sanction the Chinese intermediaries, and arm Kyiv faster than Beijing learns.

Faster.

Always faster.

Kyiv learns fast, but it cannot learn alone against two powers.

Moscow fires on Kyiv. Beijing learns to fire better.

China learns drone warfare on Kyiv’s back, and Moscow lends it a wind tunnel.

How many more Ukrainian researchers will have to jump from windows before Washington treats Beijing as the threat it is?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.