On the War&Sanctions portal of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry, the component base of another Russian drone, the “Gerbera,” has been published.
Russia, assembles these multi-purpose UAVs at a factory in Yelabuga. The “Gerbera” drone can carry an explosive warhead as a kamikaze drone and conduct radio-electronic reconnaissance, particularly for detecting air defence positions and recording hits from other strike drones.
This UAV imitates the Shahed-136/Geran-2 and is widely used by Russia to overload Ukraine’s air defence systems.
Due to the use of simple materials (plywood, polystyrene), the “Gerbera” is significantly cheaper than the Shahed/Geran. However, the design of this drone contains the typical set of foreign components commonly found in Russian weaponry.
Research on downed samples has shown that the Russians produce “Gerberas” based on a Chinese prototype, using imported components from China. The developer of the UAV is the Chinese manufacturer Skywalker Technology Co., Ltd., which also produces fuselages and organizes shipments of kits to Russia through third-party companies.
The jamming-resistant antenna (CRPA) of the “Gerbera” contains chips from Analog Devices and Texas Instruments (USA), NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands).
The universal flight controller also contains components manufactured by companies such as Texas Instruments, Atmel (USA), STMicroelectronics, U-Blox (Switzerland), NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands), XLSEMI (China).
For targeting the kamikaze version of the UAV and conducting aerial reconnaissance, the “Gerbera” is equipped with a Chinese camera with a three-axis gimbal Topotek KHY10S90 and a modem from Xingkai Tech Mesh Network XK-F358.
The DLE60 engine is manufactured by the Chinese company Mile Hao Xiang Technology Co., Ltd. In the summer of 2024, this company was sanctioned by the USA for supplying to Russia.
It should be noted that the component base of the Russian “Parody” UAV, which the enemy uses for the same purpose — overloading Ukrainian air defences to target a larger number of civilian objects — has also been published. The DLE55RA engine of the “Parody” is also produced by the Chinese company Mile Hao Xiang Technology Co., Ltd.
