Ukrainians Took Apart a Tornado-S Rocket and Found AliExpress Parts

 

The Tornado-S is one of the newest Russian multiple launch rocket systems. Russia doesn’t have a whole lot of them and some they already lost in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military analyzed a captured Tornado-S rocket and said that the chips found inside were made in China. The rocket itself was manufactured on February 1, 2023.

Tornado-S system somewhere in Ukraine in 2023. You can see the boxed Z marking on the side. Image credit: Mil.ru via Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)

The Tornado multiple launch rocket system has been in service in Russia since 2014. The Tornado launcher has a wheeled truck chassis and, depending on the type of rockets, has a range of up to 200-300 km. It is a very dangerous weapon with a crushingly devastating power.

There are several versions of the Tornado systems. The Tornado-S is special in that the rockets of this system have GLONASS satellite navigation modules borrowed from the Smerch system. A single Tornado-S system can launch up to twelve 300 mm rockets in a rapid succession.

A still frame from the video showing the disassembly of the Tornado-S rocket.

The Russian army is the sole operator of the Tornado systems and they are few and far between. Before the war, Russia is believed to have had around two hundred Tornado-G and Tornado-S systems.

Ukraine captured some Tornado-S rockets and examined one that was manufactured on February 1 of this year.

After disassembling it, they found that the rocket’s electronics were made in China. This is not really surprising – Russian military electronics are bought where a significant part of the population is looking for their electronics – in Chinese online stores.

It is noted that in 2022 in September, experts from Conflict Armament Research analyzed debris from Tornado-S guided rockets. They found that some of the components may have been purchased from AliExpress.

Those components were not designed specifically for the military, but were adapted by the Russian army to serve a new purpose.

According to the open source intelligence website Oryx, Russia has lost at least 17 Tornado-G systems in Ukraine. In actual reality, they probably lost many more – just that not all of them were photographed, filmed and published on the internet.

Almost half of those lost Tornado systems were captured by the defenders of Ukraine(at least two were captured with some damage). No Tornado-S systems were captured by the Ukrainians, but some of their rockets may have been found.

Multiple launch rocket systems are a devastating weapon, used by both sides in Ukraine. Russian systems may not be as accurate as some of the others, but Russians have a lot of them and have developed their tactics since the Second World War.

The knowledge Ukraine is currently gathering may be extremely valuable to their international partners once this war is over.