I missed this bit of news from late August.
A Russian microchip factory likely producing technology for sophisticated weapons has been targeted in a significant strike, Daily Express US has heard.
A drone downed over the Bryansk region in Russia this week fell on the Kremny EL factory, dubbed “Silicon El”, according to the Mash Telegram channel.
Military blogger Romanov Light said a fire broke out at the plant’s 16th building and was extinguished around an hour later – at 1.50am local time. Staggering footage shared online shows the shocking moment the plant was struck.
Michael Bociurkiw, global affairs analyst and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, told Daily Express US the microchip factory was a significant target.
It was one of several Russian sites struck in one of the biggest waves of attacks on Russian soil since Putin’s illegal war began.
According to Wikipedia’s vaguely accurate list of semiconductor fabs around the world, Kremny EL was running a 500 nm process, which was state of the art…in 1987. This clearly translated from something that’s not English, they seemed to originally be running power supply chips. Lots of military applications for those, and not too demanding as far as chip design goes.
So it was a military target. Could they use it for smart weapon guidance systems? Yeah, you could build something as powerful as, say, a 386 on it, and that’s plenty sophisticated enough to guide bombs and missiles with.
How long will the strike set Russia back? Hard to say, but the contamination means the entire fab will need to be decontaminated before they can process wafers again. Maybe a month. Debris may have damaged some of the machines, though the tech is so old that there are probably lots of spare parts for things that can be had despite sanctions. If they hit the power center, the air-handling system, or the DI water system, that could take a while to repair, especially if they need modern western parts. And if they took out the power, all the wafer processing machines will have to be requalified, which is a gigantic pain in the ass and quite time-consuming. But most of the in-process wafers will be safe inside FOUPs, and can probably continue processing, once the fab is up and running again.
Still, it will be a setback for Russia. It’s just unclear how large a setback.
Tags: Bryansk, drone, Kremny EL, Military, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Semiconductors
The Great Ball Bearing Raid of the Ukrainian war. And just as in WW2, Lawrence Person nails it. The correct targets were never the factories, it was the fuels and electric power systems.
In The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945, Alfred C. Mierzejewski makes a compelling case that the allied strategic bombing campaign only became effective when they prioritized hitting the rail marshaling yards of the Ruhr, which were the heart of the Third Reich’s logistical system.
“Ukraine Drone Hits Russian Fab”
It might be their drone, but it’s NATO intel, NATO targeting, NATO maintenance and operations, and NATO’s Guidance and then they say “here Ukraine…press this button”.
What’s interesting is if it’s NATO intel and targeting why this target? But I’ve stopped believing in this most massive 21st century of proxy-farces.
[…] SURPRISED THIS WASN’T BIGGER NEWS: Ukraine Drone Hits Russian Fab. “How long will the strike set Russia back? Hard to say, but the contamination means the […]
If the Ukrainians are smart, and they appear to be, they’ll let the factory be repaired to about 90%, and then hit it again. And again. Force the Russians to move the fabs. New construction elsewhere and then qualification of all the equipment will be a significant time sink.
Now then, the Ukrainians need to find the factories that are producing all the heavy artillery shells, and hit those with drones…
“[L]et the factory be repaired to about 90%, and then hit it again. And again. Force the Russians to move the fabs.”
Conceivably they could relocate beyond the Urals. But their history of being manhandled by the Japanese navy may have left them uneasy about that area of operation.
What happened to Germany as the raids destroyed every target in turn was inevitable. Little pinpricks delivered by a tiny almost impotent power against Russia are reminiscent of Germany bleeding the European edge of the Soviet Union without having any impact whatsoever on the course of the war as the factories in the Urals and lend/lease filled the Russian arms requirements without fail. All that prolonging the war does is more thoroughly and irrevocably destroy Ukraine.
“All that prolonging the war does is more thoroughly and irrevocably destroy Ukraine.”
If the counteroffensive can be prolonged until late winter, Ukraine will cross the frozen Dnipro river south of Kherson, turn Russia’s flank and roll their motorized brigades into Melitopol.
Liddle D,
Relax, LP is all in for this proxy-war. Kinda makes McNamara and Cheney seem bland in comparison. Democracy in name only at any cost. Yup.
Minor problem, Curtis: Today’s Russia ain’t the Soviet Union of yore, and they’re not taking on Nazi Germany alongside the vast resources of the US and the UK.
Russia isn’t even a major power; their economy is comparatively miniscule: Three US states have larger GDPs than Russia: California ($3.1 trillion), Texas ($1.78 trillion), and New York ($1.7 trillion). California’s GDP is 80% larger than Russia’s GDP, at 2.448 trillion dollars.
The problem isn’t Russia’s strength, which is non-existent, but that they’re a minor regional power cosplaying as a superpower, based on legacy military strengths that they’re pissing away killing innocent civilians. All those missile strikes on the cities of Ukraine? Ask yourself this: Why aren’t they targeting actual, y’know… Military targets? Or, industrial ones that might have an effect on the war?
Ain’t because they’re this big, scary superpower that’s holding back; it’s because they can’t do any better than targeting some random block of apartments.
Good Christ, but are they militarily incompetent at the ground level. You saw that all throughout the last year and a half; truck convoys with zero security, parked bumper-to-bumper on the way to Kyiv as though they were on a parade. Not even an attempt at dispersal or security on the part of the play-acting little boys with guns manning them, either…
If Russia were a major threat, we’d be seeing a much different war, and it would have ended, at most, about three months after it started. Because they’re incompetent boobs, they’re getting manhandled by a country that’s a fraction of their size, and are likely going to get thrown out of Ukraine bodily before much longer.
I think we’re gonna see that Lanchester Square collapse sometime this fall, when they can’t maintain the fiction any more. Then, they’ll likely do something even more stupid, or there will be a major coup/revolution in Russia.
This drone strike could have a major adverse effect on Russian military electronics production.
JSC Gruppa Kremny EL is operating 350 nm line pair processes as well as the 500nm process. The 350 nm process is the worldwide standard for radiation hardened chips scribed on partially depleted silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers. We are at the same 350nm line pair spacing on our radiation hardened SOI military chips (as used in most of our missiles and radars).
The SOI composite silicon wafer has a layer of oxide buried below the transistor layer so SOI chips are inherently more tolerant of radiation than ordinary doped silicon chips. But SOI chips cannot be scribed as tightly as conventional doped silicon wafer chips.
“Little pinpricks delivered by a tiny almost impotent power against Russia are reminiscent of Germany bleeding the European edge of the Soviet Union…”
Little prick Putin’s Russia is reminiscent of Mussolini’s Italy “cosplaying as a superpower” in a futile endeavor to recapture a lost legacy of glory and Imperial expansion. Like Mussolini, Putin turned to fascism when communism failed him.
“Fab”?
Thanks LP for the book suggestion – The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945, Alfred C. Mierzejewski . will read soon.
Wafer fabrication plant. Where semiconductor chips are manufactured.
FAFO.