Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative team Schemes took apart a Russian Geran-4 Seeker that came down almost intact in Ukraine and found a Chinese turbojet, a Chinese mesh modem, two cellular modems, a 16-channel anti-jamming antenna and Texas Instruments parts on the flight computer. The drone was assembled at the Alabuga special economic zone in Tatarstan. Schemes published its report on September 19, 2026, and RFE/RL posted the four-minute English teardown video on September 25.

The specialists who opened the airframe study wreckage after Russian mass attacks on Kyiv and the surrounding region, and RFE/RL withheld their names for their safety. The report’s verdict on the drone’s national origin fits in one line: “What is Russian in this drone is the assembly.”

The stakes are in Kyiv’s own numbers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on September 26 that Russia launched more than 2,730 jet-powered Shaheds in September and Ukraine shot down or jammed just over 1,500 of them, a 55 percent rate. Against the propeller Shaheds the rate is above 90 percent.

The Geran-4 Climbs To 26,000 Feet On A Chinese Engine Sold For Model Aircraft

The turbojet takes the Geran-4 to 26,000 feet (8 km), twice the ceiling of the propeller Gerans, at 280 to 310 mph (450 to 500 km/h). Drones with the same engine have flown from occupied Crimea to Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, more than 435 miles (700 km), the specialists said.

The engine is a Chinese TJ-2000-class turbojet, and nothing about it is military. The specialists told Schemes it is the same class of engine sold for model aviation and sport flying, that the Chinese maker rates it for 30 hours of running, and that classified listings put it at $20,000 to $25,000 in China and about $65,000 in Ukraine. Anyone can order one. Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), which identified the Telefly TF-TJ2000A and LX-WP-160 in the Geran-4s it tore down in May, puts the price Russia pays at $35,000 to $40,000 per engine and says Russia has no domestic replacement.

One scrap of paper inside told the supply story better than the parts did. The engine’s components carried Chinese markings, but a slip left in a compartment recorded that it had been test-run at Alabuga and signed off as fit for use by a local technician. RFE/RL said it has investigated cases where these engines were put together in Russia from Chinese parts.

The 26,000-foot ceiling is 10,000 feet above the 16,400 feet (5,000 m) HUR published in its May assessment. The camera now sits in a molded bay instead of being bolted to the fuselage, offers day, night and infrared channels with 10x optical and 32x digital zoom, and its factory cover is stamped “Mini-buterbrod,” Russian for mini sandwich.

Two SIM Cards And A Mesh Modem Let An Operator In Bryansk Steer It To The Target

A Chinese mesh modem with a 186-mile (300 km) range sends live video back to an operator and can relay for other drones in the same wave, extending control beyond one link. Two GSM modems with different SIM cards report the drone’s position over cellular networks in flight.

Last year’s Gerans carried one modem; the Geran-4 has a built-in slot for two. The SIM cards recovered in recent months came from carriers in Ukraine, Russia and several EU countries, with the English video adding Belarus to that list and the Ukrainian-language report Kazakhstan. A 16-channel CRPA antenna shields the satellite navigation from jamming, up from the 12-element array HUR documented in the Geran-3 on its War & Sanctions portal. With a relay in the chain, the specialists said, an operator at a workstation in Bryansk, Oryol or Crimea guides the drone all the way in, and recent strikes have landed where they were aimed.

The flight computer’s boards carry Texas Instruments parts, which HUR lists on the portal’s Geran-4 page. The American presence is not new: half the 45 foreign parts in the Geran-3 came from US manufacturers, and a single Geran-5 recovered in January held six Texas Instruments chips.

The volume is. HUR told Militarnyi on August 12 that Russia builds about 3,000 Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month at Alabuga, has stopped making the Geran-3, and now turns out more jets than the roughly 2,800 propeller Geran-2s it builds monthly. On the night of September 18, Ukraine’s Air Force counted 93 attack drones, 46 of them jets. Ukraine’s Security Service released its first video of an interceptor killing a jet Shahed the following day.

DroneXL’s Take

The Texas Instruments chips will get the headlines, and they are the least important thing in this teardown. Western chips do keep arriving: the Geran-5 that came down in January carried oscillators built in 2024 and 2025, so the leak is live rather than a warehouse leftover. But a transceiver has a dozen substitutes. A 160-kilogram-force turbojet at model-airplane prices has one supplier, and it is in China. HUR’s own assessment is that Russia has no engine of its own and pays $35,000 to $40,000 for each Chinese one. At 3,000 airframes a month, that is $105 million to $120 million a month in engines alone, on HUR’s figures.

I think the sanctions effort is aimed at the wrong end of this drone. Western export controls can reach the Texas Instruments parts because they are Western, and the Geran keeps flying anyway. A Chinese civilian turbojet an aeromodeller can order is outside every one of those controls, and the one government that could shut that supply off has spent four years leaving it open. The 55 percent interception rate traces to a 30-hour hobby turbojet lifting a 198-pound (90 kg) warhead to 26,000 feet, and Beijing decides how many of those ship.

Sources: RFE/RL Schemes (Radio Svoboda), RFE/RL video, Militarnyi, United24 Media

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.