The regulation appears to pertain to _Three or more axis_ CNC machine with a sub 1.1 micron repeatability on one or more axes. That's not a 50s manual jig borer, that's a very high end modern(ish) CNC machine.
To be fair... I did try to find the specific grinder, but it doesn't appear to be listen in any article. Also, I agree that having CNC, and all the other upgrades is nice.
.75 microns? Bah, may as well be a clapped out bridgeport clone! =). In all seriousness manual jig borers feel a little like a Monarch 10ee -- an absolutely incredible machine that will never be built again due to how constraints have changed, that solves a problem that I will never actually have.
Though if I lived out in the country someplace with a huge garage...
Edit: to respond to your specific point it's the 3+ axis CNC that's the key thing, not the accuracy. They were that repeatable in the 50s, but not when interpolating a 3d spline! Can you even 'side mill' a #3 style jig borer without destroying it?
The document you link refers to an absolute accuracy spec of 2.3 microns. The repeatibility will necessarily be much better than the accuracy. In terms of repeatability it's almost certainly better than 1.1 microns on every axis (even after 10 years).
The new programmable CNC grinders they sell appear to have approximately the same accuracy. Today they don’t report “greatest error in any inch” as a metric.
> Using NDA GmbH as a front company, Orekhov and Kuzurgasheva sourced and purchased sensitive military and dual-use technologies from U.S. manufacturers, including advanced semiconductors and microprocessors used in fighter aircraft, missile systems, smart munitions, radar, satellites, and other space-based military applications. These items were shipped to Russian end users, including sanctioned companies controlled by Telegin and Tulyakov that serviced Russia’s military. Some of the types of electronic components obtained through the criminal scheme have been found in Russian weapons platforms seized on the battlefield in Ukraine. As alleged, in 2019, Orekhov travelled to the United States to source parts used in the Russian-made Sukhoi fighter aircraft and the American-made F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft.
"According to court documents, beginning in 2018, Eriks Mamonovs, 33, and Vadims Ananics, 46, both citizens of Latvia who operated CNC Weld, a Latvia-based corporation, conspired with Stanislav Romanyuk, 37, a citizen of Ukraine and resident of Estonia who operated Estonia-based BY Trade OU, and others, including Janis Uzbalis, 46, of Latvia and individuals in Russia and a Russia-based company, to violate U.S. export laws and regulations and smuggle a jig grinder that was manufactured in Connecticut to Russia." -- Emphasis mine
>> Some of the types of electronic components obtained through the criminal scheme have been found in Russian weapons platforms seized on the battlefield in Ukraine. As alleged, in 2019, Orekhov travelled to the United States to source parts used in the Russian-made Sukhoi fighter aircraft and the American-made F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft.
> "...to violate U.S. export laws and regulations and smuggle a jig grinder that was manufactured in Connecticut to Russia." -- Emphasis mine
Unless the world is far more bizarre than I ever imagined, I don't think a jig grinder is a "part used in" a fighter aircraft or the kind of thing that you'd find in "weapons platforms seized on the battlefield".
Specifically I was asking about the "electronic components" common to both the "Russian-made Sukhoi fighter aircraft and the American-made F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft." I'm guessing they will either turn out to be very interesting or extraordinarily mundane.
A GPS chipset is extraordinarily mundane (there are billions if not tens of billions of them by now) until it's one that lacks altitude or speed lockouts, and is attached to a thousand pounds of high explosives (or ~10-20 kG of Spicy Metal) falling from the sky.
The indictment was sealed up until just a little bit ago, it should be on Recap soon. Here's some excerpts from that section:
> On or about May and June 2018, the defendant YURY OREKHOV attempted to procure radiation-hardened, space-grade Field Programmable Gate Arrays ("FPGA") from a California-based technology and semiconductor company ("U.S. Company 2"), an entity the identity of which is known to the Grand Jury, for Network Technologies. FPGAs were integrated circuits used in a variety of weapons systems, including ballistic missiles and smart munitions, and were controlled by the DOC under ECCN 9A515.el, which required a license from the BIS to export to Russia for reasons of national security. On or about May 23, 2018, an NDA GmbH employee sent an email inquiring about purchasing 60 FPGAs for approximately 4.5 million Euros from a licensed distributor of U.S. Company 2, copying OREKHOV. In response, the distributor wrote, "[U.S. Company 2] will arrange for a detailed export check. This special military/space component is subject to the strictest security measures." An offer letter was attached to the email, listing NDA GmbH as the "deliver to" company but did not reference Network Technologies. OREKHOV immediately forwarded the email and offer letter to the defendant SERGEY TULYAKOV.
..
> In or about May 2019, the defendant YURY OREKHOV attempted to obtain radiation-hardened random-access memory ("MRAM") devices from a Petmsylvania electronics company ("U.S. Company 3") and radiation-hardened supervisory circuits from a California-based semiconductor company ("U.S. Company 4"), entities the identities of which are known to the Grand Jury, for the benefit of Abtronics. These MRAM devices and supervisory circuits had military applications, and the MRAM devices were controlled by the DOC under ECCN 9A515.e.2 ("'Spacecraft' and related commodities"), which required a license from the BIS to export to Russia for reasons of regional stability, as well as for missile technology, due to their potential use in ballistic and hypersonic missile systems.
..
> On or about May 2019, the defendant TIMOFEY TELEGIN sent the defendant YURY OREKHOV a message that he had "five interesting positions," that is, five items he was interested in, and listed two types of MRAM devices and three types of supervisory circuits from U.S. Company 3 and U.S. Company 4, respectively. TELEGIN instructed OREKHOV, "[Y]ou can procure the positions as is or you can procure different quantities of each position." OREKHOV asked TELEGIN to send the necessary details. On or about May 21, 2019, an NDA GmbH employee inquired with an electronics distributor about the same two MRAM devices and three types of supervisory circuits requested by TELEGIN.
..
> After the meeting, Individual 1 received several inquiries from the defendant SVETLANA KUZURGASHEVA requesting assistance in obtaining a variety of military-grade components typically used in fighter jets. In the first inquiry, occurring shortly after the meeting between defendant YURY OREKHOV and Individual 1, KUZURGASHEVA requested a quote for 18 tactical air navigation interrogators and 18 multi-mode receivers, both of which were reportedly used in the 2022 Russian SU-30SM2 fighter jets' upgraded navigation systems. In July 2019, KUZURGASHEVA again contacted Individual 1 and requested assistance in obtaining a radiation-hardened, militarygrade two-terminal temperature transducers manufactured by U.S. Company 2. Later, on or about September 19, 2019, KUZURGASHEVA contacted Individual 1 and asked for price quotes for two communications devices that the U.S. military uses to transmit Top Secret voice and data traffic. Both items were manufactured by a Florida-based technology company and defense contractor ("U.S. Company 6"), an entity the identity of which is known to the Grand Jury, and both items were on the USML and controlled under the ITAR and other applicable regulations.
They weren't buying GPS modules - they were looking for high performance, high reliability components specifically for use in weapons systems.
I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases just the tooling bits are around $5000, leaving aside the whole machine. For high-resolution machining, e.g. for lens fabrication, there's a whole science to drill bits, where special processes allow for achieving up to sub-nanometer surface roughness in parts. If they're making holes in hard metals they might be using titanium, diamond, or carbide drill bits that have crazy physical properties and cost a pretty penny.
In some sense CNC machining is also a WWII era technology, but CNC machines from that era couldn't touch what modern-day machines can do and the repeatable precision with which they can do them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIvhlKT7SY
While on the subject, this really is a fascinating field and it rules the world more than people might think. Consider that TSMC's core machines are made by ASML. Among the most important and specialized-IP parts in ASML machines are the huge lens which are made by Zeiss. Zeiss makes the lens with some next level machining equipment from companies around Heidelberg and Karlsruhe area. High-resolution machining isn't super known to the general public but it is so fascinating once you get to see the things they can pull off.
Yep. CNC machines of sufficient accuracy/precision are considered export-controlled munitions because they can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons components or nuclear fuel processing equipment, such as gas centrifuges).
Their sale/ownership are registered with the government. Some of them have GPS chipsets or are otherwise set up to detect when they're being moved, and stop functioning to some degree until they're recommissioned by the manufacturer - though this is also abused by manufacturers to force a company to have to pay to re-commission a machine if it is re-sold, even if it doesn't qualify under munitions rules.
Other things that are sometimes export-restricted include components that could be used in missiles like accelerometers, inertial navigation units and GPS chipsets if they're the sort that have sufficient accuracy or lack speed/acceleration/altitude lockouts.
> Yep. CNC machines of sufficient accuracy/precision are considered export-controlled munitions because they can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons components or nuclear fuel processing equipment, such as gas centrifuges).
> Yep. CNC machines of sufficient accuracy/precision are considered export-controlled munitions because they can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons components or nuclear fuel processing equipment, such as gas centrifuges).
> stop functioning to some degree until they're recommissioned by the manufacturer - though this is also abused by manufacturers to force a company to have to pay to re-commission a machine if it is re-sold
I imagine that moving a machine with a resolution in the realm of nanometers might affect it's performance if not done perfectly or jostled too much in transport (they have special postuments built for them in the place they will sit and are calibrated once settled in place). If I was a new owner of such a machine, I would order manufacturer checkout anyway.
I worked for a company that made nanometer precise stages and robotic hardware for the semiconductor, microscopy and metrology industries. We made stuff that was so precise that we had to pause our testing twice a day when the train would go by 1/4 of a mile away because we'd see the vibration in our tests.
The owner got a "special" deal from our machine tool supplier for a "open box" milling machine. It was normally a 500k 5 axis large volume milling machine with extremely high precision, at least that's what we were told.
After buying it, installing it, andd trying to use our laser interferometer on it we discovered it was not even close to its stated accuracy, and in fact wasn't even as accurate as a basic mill. It couldn't make parts that were worth a damn.
After a bunch of back and forth, it turns out that this specific mill was a trade show demo unit, it had been taken around the country and and setup in conference centers to show. Somewhere along the way it was also crashed (when you accidentally run an axis, or several, into things your not supposed to). They neglected to tell us any of this before we bought it.
The founder/owner of that company was a real piece of work - so I suspect this has more to do with karma than anything.
Dan Gelbart once demoed his workshop and mentioned some Moore jig grinder, where after calibration, loaders had to use aluminized insulating overalls like in metal foundries, because their radiated body heat would affect machine precision.
The first NC machines were punch card driven and used to make stuff like propellers and rotors for turbines after WWII. The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has a Ferranti mill [1] on display that produced radar wave guides in the 50's along with an example of its output [2]. It must have been like alien tech at the time, but still not CNC and extremely rudimentary compared to the machining center in that video. Computer NC was born in the late 1950's.
Nukes are also WWII era technology, yet you would face some very critical questions if you tried to build one in your back yard. So are rocket engines and jet engines for that matter.
This type of jig grinder is absolutely not comparable to the things you can find on Ebay, let alone for 5k.
Also, if they were model rocketry or ham radio enthusiasts who took things way, way, way too far they're still in trouble for all the oil smuggling and money laundering they did.
These machines were perfected in the '60s and '70s. They are not only exceptional for their ability to make a hole perfectly located and perfectly sized, but also for making it perfectly round.
Their ways being perfectly straight and perpendicular, and metallurgically stable, they are often bought just as a platform for converting into special tooling (for making air bearings, diffraction gratings, metrology and semiconductor equipment, and so on).
No, no, it clearly must be a WWII relic. That’s clearly why they would arrest these people. The guy on HN that has private knowledge about the indictment said you could find the same ones on ebay for $5k.
So, two things. First, if you find a modern high-precision multiaxis CnC on Ebay for $5K, snap it up, you saved six $digits.
Second, dual-use tech is not about cost or sophistication. Did you know that Casio F91W watches get special attention from LEOs in many places? That isn't because a 1980s watch is super advanced. It is because they're popular bomb triggers.
And a bonus thing. When I see something happen in the world that seems absurd, there are two alternatives. Maybe it really is absurd; stupid things happen. But the other possibility is maybe I am ignorant of important details.
I personally learn a lot by entertaining the second option, even if it turns out the first was the case.
Now, if they dug into our national labs for information exfiltrators who probably sell said information to non-friendlies, they might come across even more interesting catches. It's probably part of doing business, but also they could probably batten the hatches tighter.
.. and how will you feel that this precedent has been set in the court of international affairs, when your country decides to usurp and defeat other sovereign nations around the world?
I mean, sure. Lets have Russia treated the way a country should be treated when it invades another sovereign nation. That'd be progress, and it would be a great way to stop the US' imperialism, also, while we're at it ..
Whatever sanctions Russia should suffer, the USA and its allies should also suffer the next time they drop troops in a sovereign nation and destroy its government.
* if done unilaterally without the consent of the international community, in contradiction to UN guidelines, and while committing war crimes against the civilian population, sure, I might could go for that. But this Russian situation is vastly different from the majority of actions taken by the US.
So you would agree at least some actions taken by the U.S. are not that different? In particular, the U.S invasion of Iraq seems to be pretty much the same thing Russia is doing, but with even less justification.
You missed the part about the support of the international community. At the time the US invaded Iraq, they (we) unfortunately had widespread support in the general sense, even if some countries were less supportive on the specifics.
International consensus means quite a bit in cases like this, right or wrong.
On the other hand, yes, if the US had been defying international consensus when invading Iraq, I do hope that the International community would push back in a way that caused the US to rethink their (our) approach.
While the US had no business invading Iraq, they were not doing genocide there, they were not explicitly bombing civilians far away from the frontlines, and also not annexing territory, so those invasions are wildly different.
Yes, it surprises me a lot how people ignore the part about annexing territories.
I tried to find what was the last time USA annexed a territory, but I am not sure about the technical details. Would it be Wake Island conquered in 1945? No permanent population, in the middle of nowhere, almost 1000 km from the nearest inhabited place. Or Hawaii which became the fiftieth state in 1959, after being annexed in 1898? To find some analogy to what Russia is doing today, one has to look more than a century ago.
Meanwhile, Russia is trying to grow to the size of the former Soviet Union.
Yet somehow, for many people, it is the same thing.
Agreed. The amount of sanctimonious hypocrisy it takes to forget or forgive all the unprovoked invasions and nation building the U.S. has conducted over the last 50 years is really difficult to understand.
Surely you meant the US can request that other countries non-randomly arrest people (who are indicted for serious crimes, hence the "non-randomly" part), and then extradite them.
The US mostly can't do that, but EU countries have the European Arrest Warrant mechanism which more or less does allow them to do this by bypassing normal extradition procedures.
It's way harder for someone in the US to have you grabbed off the street in Italy for a bullshit reason than it is for someone in Bulgaria or Hungary.
Oh, and that stuff works by fax. It would be incredibly easy to send in a fake one and have anyone you’d like arrested.
I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay. Skill and care is required to make them, apparently their education system collapsed a generation ago.
[Edit/PS] This serves as a cautionary tale against neglecting Industrial Arts Education.
I'm guessing that this was a Moore jig grinder. There are few places in the world still capable of manufacturing a machine such as those. I'm not sure if even America still can. The fact that they go for $5000 on eBay is not a testament to them being easy to manufacture. It's a testament to their incredible abilities being underappreciated in the modern world, such that their manufacturers have virtually disappeared or gone into other businesses.
I went on a deep dive on mechanical accuracy based on a post here on HN of the book authored by Wayne Moore, the founder of that company. Really fascinating to dig into how everything starts from extremely flat reference planes, and how that accuracy can get transferred to other geometries to build high accuracy cnc machines.
Indeed, although the machines were designed to be manually operated and not CNC. The precision is such that they never wear out, because the surfaces are geometrically accurate to the point that even the leadscrew has full-area contact against its mating surface.
Moore does not, and sadly cannot, make these machines anymore.
Are you talking about a specific model? They appear to be selling high precision jig grinders from Connecticut, which sounds similar to what the Justice Department’s statement is referring to. https://mooretool.com/jig_grinders.html#mooreprogrind
Yes, the #3. (I should have clarified that). The new CNC machines are not the same as the ones in the book the GP linked to. CNC use requires ballscrews and roller ways, instead of leadscrews and sliding ways. As a result the machine and its manufacturing process are quite different.
But you're right, the article specifies that it's computer controlled, so probably not a #3.
Specialized tooling is hard to make. For example, Russia is currently suffering from a reduction in railway capacity as they are unable to make some types of replacement ball bearings for rail cars, and they are also unable to make the devices for manufacturing them. The world is quite interconnected, and if you can buy a rare component at a good quality and price whenever you need one, then bootstrapping an industry for that doesn't make sense - since you alone anyways won't have the scale required to be cost-effective for it.
Russia today is ironically poised for a communist revolution more so than at any other point in the last 30 years. A centrally planned economy is the only way for a third world nation to industrialize and they need that badly.
Many things that are quite cheap require very specialized knowledge.
It's not appropriate to send a bunch of scientific instrument builders on a major project when you can just buy it.
Notice also that tools like these made in China exist, but that they still wanted this US tool. Perhaps they already have many of the same model, or it's actually special.
> The tip of a ballpoint pen is what makes it a ballpoint pen. At the tip, a freely rotating ball is held in a small socket which connects it to an ink reservoir that allows the pen to write or draw lines. Manufacturing a ballpoint pen tip that can write comfortably for a long period of time requires high-precision machinery and precisely thin steel, but for years China was unable to match those crafted by foreign companies.
It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse.
(and after pulling that up, I see that a recent cousin comment in another thread brings the same article and point)
> It isn't unreasonable to believe that there are other, more specialized tools, that have similar difficulties in manufacturing without the proper equipment and expertise. Some of them are just not common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse
In the middle of fighting a war no less, time is a factor.
>common enough to dedicate significant resources to try to build inhouse.
Basically. Especially relevant for the ballpoint pen anecdote which wasn't about how hard it was to make ball point tips, but some products were not economically worth pursuing over existing off the shelf solutions, but STILL important to develop indigenously due to gaining knowledge/capabilities that knockon/support ther strategic / critical sectors. The TLDR is Premier LiKeQiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, using rough PRC ball-point tips quality as example, and 2 years later PRC industry developed tungsten carbide manufacturing capabilities for advanced munitions. There was no economically sensible reason for domestic ballpoint tip manufacturing, the entire market dominated by Japanese and Swiss was only worth 20M. Zero rationale for Chinese industry to coordinate tons of resources for this project outside of national security.
An related apocryphal annedote I read was the steel for tips made in JP/CHE were made in small batches (because tips are tiny), ditto with early half assed PRC efforts. But for ball point pen project, a state steelwork (high volume, billion dollar operation) had to stop the lines to make an industrial sized batch with correct metallurgy at a financial loss. 100+ billion of domestic PRC ballpoint tips made in the past 5 years have barely chipped away at that batch.
this tool may be special, it may have been irradiated and or have fission/fusion derived isotopoic content, may also have detectable radionuclides contaminant.
you can work backwards and determine the core components of a detonation.
or you can make very precise wave guides or very spherical objects to make your own detonation.
I agree, but imagine how many things we commonly use in the US that we don't make and would be impossible to get if China & couple other countries introduced export controls on them.
> I find it stunning that Russia doesn't have the ability to make internally a thing that goes for US$5000 used on Ebay.
If you dig a bit you'll find it's the case for a lot of things. Outsourcing production to Asia&co completely wiped entire industries, the knowledge is gone after one or two generations. Once the infrastructure and the knowledge are gone it's game over, you have to start from scratch again
> [Peter Zeihan] says they're mopeds with wings, and a third rate US factory could churn them out, but Russia can't build them.
Who is he to make a technical evaluation of drone quality? Americans are very biased to assume everything made by anyone besides their first-world allies is crap, and IMHO that kind of thinking will be their undoing.
Russia is adapting to sudden supply chain constraints it was obviously unprepared for, and Iran almost certainly has a lot more experience dealing with (and working around) them. Russia could have all the skill in the world, but they won't be able to build anything if they can't source some critical part for their existing designs. If Iran has the parts for their designs, they can build.
Honestly they are kind of crap in the sense that they really are mopeds with wings, which have sometimes even been shot out of the air by policemen with small arms. They are decidedly not crap in the sense that the type of air defense most nations have developed so far will struggle engaging such drones cost effectively.
If you use a 500k missile to shoot down a 20k drone, that is a win for the drone operator. If you don't shoot it down and it severely damages a 10m power plant, that is also a win for the drone operator. The aircraft vs air defense arms race in the past couple of decades has been towards more capable (and thus more expensive) platforms on both sides, leaving room for this kind of cheap drone on the bottom of the market. There are plenty of systems that can cost-effectively engage drones though, from old-style flak guns to other cheap drones to (in the future) lasers. It is only a matter of time before the West finds proper countermeasures.
The Germans found no counter measures for tanks in WWI and neither did the French in WWII. The only viable counter to tanks between 1915 and 1955 were more tanks as the USSR and US showed.
I see what you mean but think that it is not applicable to the current drone situation in Ukraine. It is quite possible to shoot down these drones, it is merely difficult to do so cost effectively with the means they have at the moment. An old-style flak gun coupled to a basic anti-air radar would probably work just fine and is definitely not out of reach for the West to build; the challenge is to get enough of those out in the field quickly enough.
Something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard would be an absolute beast against simple drones, but according to the wiki the Ukrainians only have about 30 of them and they are limited to ~5 km range. They would need a lot more, which would take some time to acquire. Then again you could dispense with the tracked undercarriage for defending static objects like power plants, so just getting the guns would be enough.
I think the key word is "viable." IIRC the Bazooka was better than nothing but not particularly effective. And your quote's characterization of the Molotov cocktail as a "weapon of last resort" speaks to its ineffectiveness.
And, ultimate, the reason you have to keep your opponent from gaining air superiority (if not gain it yourself) to operate tanks effectively: CAS aircraft.
I mean the fact that a significant portion of its potential workers has either been drafted into the army, went into hiding or fled the country probably isn't doing them much good either.
But do they have the equipment, the materials, the money and the workforce for it?
What they can import is heavily restricted; there was another article that said the chips they import now are grey market, lower grade stuff with a much higher failure rate. You can't even make a moped with wings if your chips don't even work. I guess you could make dumb drones but what's the point if they're less accurate than WW2 V1 / V2 ?
I would imagine China still has the capacity to make these though, they're the world's biggest manufacturer, which includes precision machines.
(I recall a Chinese company buying up all the stock of automated CNC machines for YEARS to meet Apple's demand for the macbook and iphone when they were all aluminium. Not as precise as these though).
> A jig grinder is a high-precision grinding machine system that does not require a license to export to European Union countries but does require a license for export and reexport to Russia because of its applications in nuclear proliferation and defense programs.
Oh boy I can't wait to see what happens to businesses like Autozone who might accidentally sell screwdrivers to Russia. /s
Seriously though this is a relatively cheap tool which has largely been abandoned in favor of CNC technology. I used one to make engine parts for my Honda in shop class. It strikes me as absolutely bizarre they would arrest anyone for what amounts to a few generations old hand operated tooling. Maybe Putin needed to fix a Lada? Who knows.
Who knows what it was. I feel like that's calling a Ferrari a "grocery getter". I mean it's probably not wrong - people do probably take their Ferraris to pick up milk - but it feels like the author isn't familiar with the subject.
The regulation appears to pertain to _Three or more axis_ CNC machine with a sub 1.1 micron repeatability on one or more axes. That's not a 50s manual jig borer, that's a very high end modern(ish) CNC machine.
The Canadian implementation (Obviously not US law but it's implementing the same treaty), is a little more readable. https://www.international.gc.ca/controls-controles/about-a_p...