WSJ: Russia adapting to battlefield too.

Just as Ukraine was learning how to parry Russia’s drone attacks, Moscow has moved the goal posts with a new generation of innovative jet-powered weapons.

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New Geran drones and Banderol cruise missiles are lethal reminders that Russia still has the resources and supply chains to field fresh threats, this time packed with advanced electronics that allow them to find targets accurately and evade interception. Crucially, the leap forward was enabled in large part by components sourced from China, in violation of international sanctions, say Ukraine and others, based in part on wreckage from the few shot down so far....

Russia’s new and relatively inexpensive weapons show its military remains adaptable and innovative, say analysts and diplomats. Russia developed and fielded both weapons within a couple of years by modifying earlier models, combat-testing them and quickly starting mass production, say analysts.

In doing that, Moscow stole a march on its adversaries. Ukraine has shown it can move quickly—it developed one of the first effective jet drones—but lacks production resources and much capacity to think beyond the near future.

The U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, meanwhile, are struggling to increase production of vital arms such as Patriot interceptors. Western governments are also grappling with how to accelerate turning innovations into mass-produced equipment.

“Here in the West, we tend to underestimate Russia, but they can go very fast from idea and experimentation to production,” said Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Wadhwani AI Center in Washington. “This loop is something Western militaries should learn from Russia....

Moscow has managed to field its new weapons despite Ukraine’s increasingly damaging strikes on critical nodes in Russia’s economy. President Vladimir Putin has used his iron grip on the country to largely reorient it behind his conquest of Ukraine, allowing him to funnel cash from the budget and state-owned banks into the defense sector. He has mobilized in a way that NATO’s democracies haven’t considered doing since World War II.

Banderol and Geran both address a need for cheap yet capable one-way weapons—an economic middle ground that Ukraine and Western countries are also pursuing. The new weapons are a mix of upgraded low-end arms and simplified high-end ones. They each represent a different mix of cost, range, speed, explosive power and ability to reach a target without interception.

Banderol and Geran-5 are both estimated to cost around $100,000 each. High-end U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles and comparable Russian models cost more than $2 million each.

Geran drones began as versions of relatively slow, propeller-driven Iranian Shahed drones, which Ukraine has become adept at intercepting after heavy investment in equipment and training to counter the threat. Russian engineers, through successive iterations, added speed and survivability thanks to better electronics for navigation and communications, overcoming much of Ukraine’s defenses.

The latest model, the Geran-5, looks more like a missile than a Shahed, which resembles a miniature delta-wing airplane. The Geran-5 has forced a rewrite of the counterdrone playbook, created for propeller drones, because “it’s essentially a poor-man’s cruise missile,” said Mike Monnik, chief executive of DroneSec, a drone-threat intelligence company.

DroneSec analysts concur with Ukrainian assessments that Russia relies heavily on Chinese components including jet engines, navigation computers and communications electronics.

“Russia is critically dependent on Chinese components” for its drone program, said Monnik.

Most of the Chinese gear is commercially available, so-called dual-use components made for civilian or military applications, say analysts. Russian engineers are skilled at exploiting off-the-shelf equipment to maximum benefit, such as in creating antennas that thwart electronic countermeasures and communication networks that overcome jamming.

Once designs are adopted, Russian companies quickly move to large-scale production, which fulfills another strategic goal of all sides today: volume. Since the Cold War, the U.S. and its rivals have largely pursued expensive, exquisite weapons systems, which proved effective in limited conflicts.

“Now we see that mass is a huge part of success,” said Bondar.

For Ukraine, Moscow’s advances are confounding because it also faces Russian ballistic missiles, which carry massive explosive payloads and are especially difficult to intercept. Russia is also pummeling Ukrainian troops with glide bombs dropped from warplanes, which Ukraine has almost no way to stop. The pounding threatens Kyiv’s ability to maintain its front lines.

“While the drones are a problem, by far the biggest problem for Ukraine is glide bombs,” said Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

For the U.S. and its allies, Russia’s improved drones create an economic headache. American forces in the Persian Gulf and NATO have resorted to using expensive equipment like Patriots and jet fighters to intercept inexpensive drones and missiles. Kyiv and Western governments are seeking cheaper ways to thwart low-cost attacks.

Western military-tech companies that have been developing interceptors for propeller drones are scrambling to create faster models. Merops interceptors, produced by a company backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and deployed by U.S. forces both along NATO’s eastern flank and in the Persian Gulf, are now being redesigned in a jet-powered version. Auterion, a leading software supplier to Ukrainian drone makers, is working with partners on high-speed propeller interceptors and jet-powered ones, said CEO Lorenz Meier.

Sourcing inexpensive jet engines for interceptors is a big challenge for the West. Chinese jet engines for Gerans cost $45,000 or less, DroneSec estimates, and defenders generally fire several interceptors at each incoming weapon....

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