Christopher Nye & Charles Sun
In March 2026, Iran’s drone campaign consumed thousands of expendable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The critical technologies, manufacturing equipment, and components underpinning these platforms trace to the civilian manufacturing ecosystem of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), channeled through private capital acquisition, reverse engineering, and the systematic exploitation of dual-use trade ambiguities.
The PRC’s drone supply chain operates as a “manufacturing plain”—a flat landscape of interchangeable micro-enterprises, as distinct from the “mountain peak” defense contractors that sanctions are designed to neutralize. Individually targetable but collectively inexhaustible, with minimal staffing and nominal business scopes unrelated to aviation, these firms channel drone-applicable materiel to sanctioned end-users at scale.
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