9M534 and Feilong 60A Bring Russian and Chinese Military Industries Closer Together in 2026

The most important figure in the new assessment of Russian-Chinese defense cooperation is not the contract value, but 86 joint scientific publications on unmanned systems from 2022 to 2026. In the previous twelve years, there were only 36 such works. This does not prove the emergence of a unified Russian-Chinese army, but it shows a shift from trading components to exchanging knowledge, testing capabilities, and engineering personnel.

From Component Supply to Design Transfer

The report by the American research organization C4ADS A Marriage of Convenience, published in October, describes several levels of this cooperation. The most indicative example is the Russian scientific and production association "Splav" and the Chinese Norinco. In 2014-2015, "Splav" transferred technical documents on a reconnaissance missile to the Chinese side. According to the authors of the report, this likely referred to the 9M534 — a rocket munition released by a reconnaissance drone during flight.

In 2025, Norinco introduced the loitering munition Feilong 60A, launched from the SR-5 rocket system and designed for group use. A few months later, the Sky Eye — a drone launched from an artillery system — was tested. The similarity to the architecture of the 9M534 is not in itself proof of direct copying. However, the sequence of document transfers, the emergence of systems with similar purposes, and the Chinese practice of rapidly mastering external developments form a sufficiently convincing working hypothesis.

It is important not to fall into the usual trap of describing Russia solely as a supplier of outdated Soviet technologies. Its advantages remain in specific niches — aerodynamics, rocket engineering, structural calculations, and military operation. China, on the other hand, has a significantly larger industrial series, electronics, and the ability to quickly turn prototypes into mass products. This is an asymmetric exchange: Moscow sells or transfers what it can design, while Beijing provides what the Russian industry lacks for scaling.

Testing Infrastructure is More Important than an Individual Drone

According to C4ADS, the Russian Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute tested large models of Chinese aircraft in wind tunnels at least nine times in 2022-2024, after which it transferred the test results to Norinco. Formally, this may appear as a commercial service. In military economics, it is much more: access to testing infrastructure reduces the development cycle, decreases the number of failed prototypes, and allows for design verification before the start of expensive serial production.

At the same time, the academic network is changing. Researchers from the Moscow Aviation Institute published works with scientists from Chinese defense laboratories on algorithms for autonomous control and maintaining a group of devices during target search. In 2025, the establishment of a joint educational institute between MAI and the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, linked to the Chinese defense sector, was approved. For drone warfare, this means accumulating not only finished products but also human capital that will outlast any individual contract.

Sanctions Change the Geography of the Russian Defense Industry

An even more unpleasant conclusion for the West concerns not the drones themselves but the means of their production. The sanctioned Russian company "Stankomashstroy" plans to relocate the production of five-axis machines to an industrial park in China's Shaanxi province. Such machines are necessary for manufacturing complex parts for aviation and rocket technology. The state chip manufacturer "Element" created at least four subsidiaries in China in 2025 and began assembling chipsets there, and in 2026 acquired intellectual property for power electronics from the Chinese defense company Shijiazhuang Tonhe Electronics.

This does not mean that Russia has achieved full independence from Western technologies. Rather, it is transferring critical operations to jurisdictions where export control is more difficult to apply, while China gains access to Russian design competencies and military experience. Restrictions become not a wall but a tax on time and cost. For Moscow, this means technological degradation in some segments, but not a halt in production; for Beijing — the opportunity to acquire experience from someone else's war without direct involvement in it.

The Geopolitical Limit of Partnership

Beijing continues to avoid a formal military alliance with Moscow. China needs Western markets, capital, and technologies more than it needs Russia. Therefore, cooperation will expand where it serves China's techno-nationalist goals and be restrained where it creates excessive risks of secondary sanctions. This is why it is more appropriate to speak of not "unlimited friendship," but of distributed defense-industrial interaction with varying depths across sectors.

Russia brings to this interaction the legacy of its design school and combat experience, while China contributes scale, production discipline, and the ability to quickly turn knowledge into series. The question is not who "uses" whom, but which side institutionalizes this exchange faster.

My forecast is cautious: in the coming years, Moscow will maintain its role as a source of individual military solutions and a testing ground for tactical verification, while Beijing will turn these solutions into cheaper and mass-produced systems. If Western export control does not begin to monitor joint research, testing services, and production transfers as closely as it does the supply of finished chipsets, then the 9M534 and Feilong 60A will be merely early signs of a deeper process. The Russian defense industry will survive, but the cost of survival will consist of its best ideas increasingly being scaled not in Russia.

Sources

• C4ADS, A Marriage of Convenience? The Promise and Pitfalls of Chinese-Russian Advanced Conventional Weapons Cooperation, October 2026.
• The Kyiv Independent, “New report tracks how Russia helps China build better drones”, October 27, 2026.