Our drones won't be competitive as long as we export raw materials to China, says Chadayev.
Russia has yet to create a complete production chain for its own drones and remains critically dependent on China.
Drone developer and CEO of the Ushkuynik research and production center, Alexey Chadayev , announced this on the Tsargrad TV channel , as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"The Ministry of Industry and Trade is incentivizing drone manufacturers to ensure their UAVs are as Russian-made as possible. But what's the problem? As one of my industry colleagues put it: ' I can make a completely Russian drone, but it won't fly .'"
For example, we don't have domestically produced neodymium for magnets. It's mined at a number of factories, but it's shipped to China, where it's processed into neodymium dust.
To establish a drone manufacturing facility, you need X amount of investment. To establish a facility to assemble these large components—motors, batteries, and so on—you need 10X the investment. And to establish production of, say, neodymium or lithium for batteries, you need 100X the investment.
And in this sense, no matter how much you invest in drone manufacturers, they will not be competitive as long as they are made from components that are purchased there, and these components, in turn, are not made from basic materials that are produced there.
And the smart thing to do would be not to stimulate drone production until you're blue in the face, but to invest once in the production of preforms for fiber optics, lithium for batteries, neodymium for magnets, that is, that very first stage of processing.
That's when we're competitive, including on the global market. And as long as we're dependent on imports for these supplies, we'll still be more expensive than them ," Chadayev stated.
Our drones won't be competitive as long as we export raw materials to China, says Chadayev.