Ukraine's Intelligence Finds 52 U.S.-Made Parts Among 93 Foreign Components in Geran-5 K5-K

Ukraine's military intelligence agency, HUR, has published its analysis of a new version of Russia's jet-powered Geran-5 attack drone, designated K5-K. According to HUR, the drone contains 93 foreign electronic components, 52 of them made by U.S. companies. Russia began using the variant against Ukrainian cities in early autumn, and HUR says its performance puts it in the category of a small cruise missile.

What is new about the K5-K

The findings were posted on HUR's War&Sanctions portal together with an interactive 3D model. Investigators examined a drone that, for reasons that remain unclear, came down almost intact in a field. Based on HUR's data, as reported by the Kyiv Post and Ukrinform, the K5-K differs from the standard Geran-5 in several ways:

• it is 4 metres long instead of 6.5 metres, with a 3-metre wingspan instead of 3.2 metres;
• its ceiling has risen from 5 km to 6 km;
• it cruises at more than 450 km/h and, according to HUR, can reach up to 1,000 km/h during certain manoeuvres;
• range (1,000 km) and warhead weight (90 kg) are unchanged;
• the examined drone carried a TBBCh-90 thermobaric warhead and a TRD-200 turbojet, which HUR says is assembled at Russia's Alabuga site from Chinese components.

The airframe uses a conventional layout with a high-mounted wing and a single tail fin.

Navigation and electronics

HUR says the drone's avionics match the latest Geran-4 Seeker versions, including a flight controller, an inertial navigation unit, a localised copy of a 16-element Harxon antenna, a tracker and a mesh-network modem. The agency highlights the Susanin optical correlation system, which compares camera images with a stored reference image to stay on course. In the K5-K it works with a dual-band camera, and image processing runs on a Chinese-made Coke Pi microcomputer, an equivalent of the Raspberry Pi.

Of the 93 foreign electronic components, HUR says 52 came from U.S. manufacturers and 10 each from Chinese and Swiss ones. Among the makers whose parts were found, the agency names Texas Instruments and Murata. HUR stresses that identifying a manufacturer does not show how a part reached Russia, and it says Russian producers are trying to hide the markings on digital signal processors and inertial modules.

Why it matters

Jet drones have become one of the biggest challenges for Ukraine's air defences: they fly much faster than classic Shahed-type drones, making them harder for mobile fire teams and interceptor drones to bring down. Overnight on Nov. 9 alone, Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 317 drones, 105 of them jet-powered. On the same day, Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russia was relying heavily on jet drones using mesh networks and artificial intelligence to strike energy facilities more accurately.

HUR argues that the effort to conceal markings shows sanctions are working: they complicate supply chains, push up prices and lengthen delivery times. In the agency's view, sustained pressure and tighter enforcement of controls on restricted components could deprive Russia of the means to keep fighting at its current pace.

What comes next

Ukraine first examined the basic Geran-5 in January 2026. At the time, according to The Kyiv Independent, HUR described it as a copy of Iran's Karrar drone, flying at 500 to 600 km/h with a Chinese-made Telefly turbojet. Vladyslav Vlasiuk, the Ukrainian president's sanctions commissioner, estimated that Russia received around 2.2 million imported electronic components in 2025, and that up to 30% of Western-branded chips found in Russian weapons may be counterfeit or illegally over-produced.

Ukraine regularly publishes such teardowns on War&Sanctions to draw the attention of governments and manufacturers to export controls. Earlier in 2026, investigators reported U.S. and European microchips in the basic Geran-5. The new findings are likely to feed into calls for tighter oversight of electronics being re-exported to Russia through third countries.