The world runs on rock · Current events

The Drone War the minerals behind Ukraine's battlefield tech

The war in Ukraine is the first fought with drones by the million. Each one is a small bundle of rare-earth magnets, copper, lithium cells and silicon chips. Around them sit satellites, kilometres of glass fibre, and a fight over the minerals in Ukraine's own ground.

Scroll to take a drone apart

From hobby to front line

Millions a year

Small quadcopters began as camera toys and racing kits. In this war both sides build them in vast numbers. One 2025 estimate puts Ukraine's output at about four million drones a year.¹ Wartime counts vary and are hard to check.

A white four-rotor camera drone hovering over scrubland while its operators watch from beside a field trailer — A commercial quadcopter at a NASA drone traffic test, Reno, Nevada, 2016. NASA/Dominic Hart (public domain).

Lift

Four motors, fifty-six magnets

Each brushless motor spins a bell lined with small curved magnets around a star of copper windings. The magnets are neodymium-iron-boron, the strongest permanent magnets made. Ukrainian makers say their motors still need imported magnets and copper, and magnets still largely come from China.² Ukraine's biggest drone-motor maker, Motor-G, winds its own copper and was nearing 100,000 motors a month in 2025, but still buys its magnets from China.³

NdFeBCu

Power

A pack of lithium cells

The battery is a stack of flat lithium-polymer cells: lithium, a graphite anode on copper foil, a metal-oxide cathode on aluminium foil. Ukraine can assemble battery packs but must import the cells inside them, still largely from China.²

LiCCoNiCuAl

Brains and eyes

Chips, solder and a sensor

Under the battery sit two small circuit boards: a flight controller and the speed controllers that drive the motors. Silicon chips, copper traces, tin solder. At the front, a camera with a silicon image sensor sends live video back to the pilot.

The same parts fill hobby shops worldwide, which is why the war's drone supply runs through the world's electronics factories.

Follow the parts

One supplier for both sides

China makes most of the world's drone motors, magnets, cells and frames. On 1 September 2024 it restricted exports of drones and drone parts to both Ukraine and Russia, including flight controllers, carbon frames, motors and cameras.⁴ It has tightened the controls several times since.²

Ukraine

From 90% to 28%

At the start of 2024 about 90% of Ukraine's imported drone parts came from China. In the first eight months of 2026 it was 28%, by Ukraine's customs data, as Ukrainian firms began making motors, boards, frames and cameras at home. Many parts recorded as coming from Poland or the Czech Republic were very likely made in China.²

What Ukraine can't make yet

Magnets and glass

In a 2025 survey by Ukraine's Council of Defence Industry, only 5% of member firms said they used no Chinese components. Motor-G still buys its magnets from China; a fibre-drone workshop showed reporters fibre boxes stamped from China's Hubei province.³

Russia

A drone factory in Tatarstan

Russia builds Iranian-designed Shahed drones, which it calls Geran, at Alabuga in Tatarstan. The plant can reportedly make thousands a month. Research by CSIS, as reported in Ukraine, counted more than 685,000 Chinese components for Shahed engines delivered in 2024, and 7,800 lithium-ion batteries.⁵

Satellite image of Kyiv at night in January 2022: the city a bright web of orange and white lights along the river — Kyiv at night, January and March 2022, from the VIIRS instrument's Black Marble data. NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens (public domain).

Satellite image of Kyiv at night in March 2022: the same city much darker, with far fewer lights — Kyiv at night, January and March 2022, from the VIIRS instrument's Black Marble data. NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens (public domain).

Seen from orbit

The lights go out

A satellite that maps light at night caught Kyiv dimming in the weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of February 2022.⁶ With the grid under attack, the war ran on batteries, satellites and glass.

Overhead

Starlink

When Russia's invasion knocked out ground networks, Ukraine turned to SpaceX's Starlink satellites. By April 2025 it had received more than 50,000 terminals, 29,500 of them from Poland.⁷ Each dot here is one satellite.

Who gets a signal

A whitelist in orbit

Russian forces used Starlink terminals too. In early February 2026 SpaceX blocked every terminal in Ukraine until it was verified onto a whitelist, which cut off the ones Russia used.⁸

Every terminal is a flat panel of radio chips; every satellite has its own thrusters and solar wings. The SpaceX story takes them apart.

Out of reach of jammers

Drones on a thread

Radio links can be jammed, so both sides now fly drones that trail a hair-thin optical fibre from a spool. The spools typically hold 5 to 20 km of fibre; some reach 41 km.¹

What the thread is

Silica glass, again

The fibre is the same kind of glass as the internet's cables: pure silica, with a little germanium in the core to keep the light inside. The Signal zooms into it. Russia relies more and more on Chinese optical cable, and one Ukrainian workshop showed reporters fibre boxed in China's Hubei province.^1,3 China also refines 68% of the world's germanium.⁹

SiOGe

How much

Round the world, a hundred times

A rough sum, ours, from the observatory's figures: if about 10% of four million drones a year fly on fibre, and each carries 5 to 20 km, that is 2 to 8 million km of glass a year, 50 to 200 times round the Equator.¹ The globe shows the middle, about 100 times. Much of it is left lying on the ground.

On the globe

1 · Parts

Motors, magnets, cells and chips flow out of southern China to drone workshops in Ukraine and to Alabuga in Russia. China's share of Ukraine's drone-part imports was 28% in early 2026; most of the magnets are still Chinese.^3,2

2 · Noble gases

Before 2022, Ingas in Mariupol and Cryoin in Odesa supplied an estimated 45 to 54% of the world's chip-grade neon. Both stopped when Russia invaded.¹⁰ Ukraine was also a big source of krypton and xenon, gases that space thrusters use.¹¹ The Chip tells the neon story.

3 · Russia's metals

Russia mined 44% of the world's palladium in 2025, mostly at Norilsk, and is a big producer of nickel, aluminium and titanium.⁹

4 · Ukraine's ground

Ukraine has lithium, titanium, graphite and rare earths, much of it unmined. On 30 April 2025 it signed a minerals deal with the United States that set up a joint investment fund.¹² Two of its best-known lithium deposits are in the war zone: Russia claimed in June 2025 to have taken the village over the Shevchenko deposit, and had earlier captured Kruta Balka in Zaporizhzhia.¹³

Why "critical"

Cheap machines, scarce inputs

A drone is cheap because hobby electronics are cheap, and hobby electronics are cheap because one country makes most of the magnets, cells and parts. That makes rare earths, lithium, graphite and germanium matters of defence as well as of industry. This story covers materials and supply only.

NdRare earthsChina 69% CuCopperChile 23% LiLithiumAustralia 32% CGraphiteChina 78% CoCobaltDR Congo 74% GeGermaniumChina 68% PdPalladiumRussia 44% TiTitaniumChina 34%

Next: SpaceX, the metals behind Starship and Starlink. The series: The world runs on rock.

Sources

Shares of world output are from USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 via our minerals data; other figures are cited where they appear. Wartime figures come from governments, intelligence services and reporters, and are hard to check; single-source figures are marked as such. The drone is an illustration of a generic small quadcopter, not any model. Photos: NASA, public domain.