---
title: "Fiber Shortage Drives Up the Price of Jam-Proof Drones, but Not Yet Their Numbers"
description: "Ukrainian drone makers pay six to 10 times more for Chinese fiber than in 2025, while Russia, cut off from its only plant, buys far more of it."
author: "rews special report"
published: 2026-11-10T12:15:32Z
modified: 2026-11-11T00:38:43Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/ukraine-s-jam-proof-drones-are-losing-a-fiber-supply-war-to--e8d012
language: en
type: special report
tags: ["ai", "war", "infrastructure", "chips", "economy", "world"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Fiber Shortage Drives Up the Price of Jam-Proof Drones, but Not Yet Their Numbers

*Ukrainian drone makers pay six to 10 times more for Chinese fiber than in 2025, while Russia, cut off from its only plant, buys far more of it.*

Special report · By rews special report · November 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/ukraine-s-jam-proof-drones-are-losing-a-fiber-supply-war-to--e8d012

## In brief

- A Ukrainian drone maker says fiber for jam-proof drones costs six to 10 times more than in 2025, with the worst shortage around March
- Russia bought nearly 60 million km of fiber in 2025, about 10.5% of world output, after Ukrainian strikes idled its only plant
- TrendForce forecasts a 180 million fiber-km global shortfall in 2026 and tight supply through 2028 as data center demand rises
- Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says fiber-drone deliveries rose in early 2026 under a contract price-adjustment mechanism
- China’s new drone export controls take effect Nov. 18 but do not newly cover optical fiber

The glass fiber that Ukraine’s jam-proof drones unspool behind them now costs six to 10 times what it did in 2025, a Ukrainian drone maker told [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/11/ukraines-fiber-optic-drones-get-squeezed-by-ai-data-center-demand/) in written answers published on Nov. 10. Two armies and the global build-out of artificial intelligence data centers are now buying from the same strained supply, and most of it comes from China.

The shortage is real and will last. The market research firm TrendForce expects global demand for optical fiber to outrun supply through 2028. So far, though, the record doesn’t show the shortage capping how many fiber-optic drones either side flies. It shows each drone getting more expensive. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says deliveries to the front kept rising through the worst of the price spike this spring, and Chinese customs data show Russia’s fiber imports climbing again over the summer.

The squeeze lands on money and access. A Ukrainian drone unit that paid $300 for a 50-kilometer spool now pays about $2,500, one of its soldiers wrote in May. Some Chinese factories have told Ukrainian buyers they had nothing to sell them. Russia lost its only fiber plant to Ukrainian drones last year. It now gets its fiber from China and buys far more of it than Ukraine does.

![A spool of golden thread sits inside an open navy blue case with cream lining against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/9cf047777a77f4666bf483ca78f5f0f1156d70a6.webp)

The stakes can be read off a map. A radio jammer can’t touch a drone steered down a strand of glass, and both armies use these drones to hunt supply trucks, command posts and jamming stations ahead of an assault. Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Washington Post in October 2025 that Russia takes “territory by chunks that equal the distance fiber-optic drones can fly,” according to [a summary of the Post’s report in *National Security Journal*](https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/how-is-russia-overwhelming-ukraine-with-drones-the-answer-is-china/).

## How the wire took over

Russia put its first fiber-guided attack drones, the KVN and the Gortenziya, on display at the Army-2024 arms show. By September 2024, Alexei Chadaev, who heads the Ushkuynik center that developed the KVN, said it had been used about 1,000 times against armored vehicles, radar stations, electronic warfare systems and strongpoints, [The Insider reported](https://theins.press/en/news/289756). “The drone is heavy and unwieldy because it carries both a spool and a warhead,” Mr. Chadaev said.

Russia first used the drones in large numbers to push back Ukraine’s 2024 incursion into the Kursk region, and Ukraine soon built its own. In the spring of 2025, Russia’s Rubicon drone unit used fiber-optic FPVs in Kursk to damage or destroy hundreds of Ukrainian trucks and other vehicles within a few weeks, and Ukrainian forces pulled back, David Axe [wrote for Euromaidan Press](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/06/unjammable-russian-drones/).

[![How fiber optic drones reshape warfare in Ukraine](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NwkOxXgAWZ0/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwkOxXgAWZ0)

Francis Farrell of the Kyiv Independent explains how fiber-optic FPV drones work and why jamming cannot stop them. Video: Kyiv Independent · YouTube

How common they are depends on where you stand. In January, Serhiy Melnyk of Ukraine’s 69th analytical center put fiber drones at no more than 15 percent of all drones along the whole line of contact, [Oboronka reported](https://oboronka.mezha.ua/en/chomu-ukrajina-dosi-vidstaye-u-dronah-na-optovolokni-307959/). A Ukrainian pilot who goes by Maloy told the outlet that in his sector the Russians had “almost completely switched to optics.” Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight, estimated this summer that Russia launches about 10,000 FPV drones a day and that in some sectors 60 percent of them are fiber-guided. Oleksiy, the BlueBird Tech engineer, said radio-controlled drones are still the larger share overall.

Range has grown with the spools. Most drone fiber runs 10 to 20 kilometers and some passes 30, [Light Reading reported](https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/optical-fiber-prices-are-also-soaring-on-ai-demand) in February. Ihor Raikov of the 13th Khartiia brigade told Oboronka that his unit had gone “from 10 to 25 km” and was now working at 40 to 50 kilometers. On Nov. 3, The Insider reported that a Chinese company, Jiangxi Guangbo Optoelectronic Technology, was offering Russian buyers reels of 70, 80 and 100 kilometers, though a longer cable adds weight and cuts into speed and warhead size, [Militarnyi noted](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/chinese-company-optical-fiber-for-drones-100-km-russia/). Whatever the length, a spool gets used once.

The spent fiber stays where it falls. The Conflict and Environment Observatory, a British group, estimates that about 2,900 kilometers of cable are used for every kilometer of front line, [Meduza reported](https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/07/29/fiber-optic-cables-used-to-guide-drones-are-blanketing-ukraine-s-front-line-researchers-are-only-beginning-to-understand-their-environmental-impact) in July.

![A black leafless tree wrapped in cream-colored cords stands against a vivid blue background, with looping strands stretching outward above coral-colored ground.](https://rews.cc/img/5950a58677402eb7bca0df63e323686154e0fc9d.webp)

## One plant in Saransk

Until last year Russia had its own source. Optic Fiber Systems in Saransk, about 630 kilometers east of Moscow, drew about 4 million kilometers of fiber a year and supplied about 20 Russian cable makers.

Ukrainian drones hit it on April 4, 2025, as part of a wave of strikes on fiber and explosives plants, the Kyiv Independent reported (some accounts give the date as April 5), and again on May 7. “The fiber optic systems plant in Saransk was very seriously damaged after the strike,” Andrii Kovalenko, an official at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that day. The [Kyiv Independent](https://kyivindependent.com/ukrainian-drones-reportedly-hit-russias-only-optical-fiber-plant-in-saransk/) said it could not verify his claims, and Mordovia’s authorities banned publishing images of the aftermath.

The plant hasn’t made fiber since May 2025, Leonid Konik, chief executive of ComNews Group, told the business daily Vedomosti, [The Moscow Times reported](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/26/russia-forced-to-rely-on-chinese-optical-fiber-imports-after-ukrainian-strikes-halt-domestic-plant-a92054) in February. Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade then drafted a rule pushing back to 2028 the requirement that cable use Russian fiber to count as domestic, and it does not expect output to recover before the end of 2027, according to Kommersant, [as summarized by Mezha](https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/russia_delays_optical/). Alexander Smilgievich, the chief executive of the cable maker Incab, said Chinese suppliers now demand full prepayment.

![A drone carries a spool of pale thread above green farmland, with a single strand trailing into a tangled mass across the fields.](https://rews.cc/img/4871d9f6e95e59952320d5a643ffda8ffe533b4d.webp)

The imports grew to fill the gap. Russia bought nearly 60 million kilometers of fiber in 2025, about 10.5 percent of world output, Chun Sheng, an analyst at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, estimated for Vedomosti. In earlier years Russia’s share had never been above 1 percent. In China, the price of G.652D, a common telecom grade, went from 16 yuan ($2.33) a kilometer in early 2025 to 25 yuan by year’s end and 40 yuan ($5.80) in January, Mr. Konik said.

Chinese customs data first showed the gap between the two sides. In August 2025, China shipped 328,000 miles (527,865 kilometers) of fiber-optic cable to Russia and 72 miles to Ukraine, The Washington Post reported on Oct. 13, 2025, up from 119,000 miles to Russia in May and 130,000 in June, according to [Euromaidan Press’s account](https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/10/14/wp-china-sent-ukraine-just-72-miles-of-fiber-optic-drone-cable-but-gave-russia-328000-miles-to-power-its-fpvs/) of the report. Asked how much Beijing’s supply mattered, Ms. Bondar told the Post, “It’s critical; it’s crucial.”

## Numbers that do not reconcile

The production figures conflict. Ars Technica put combined Russian and Ukrainian output at an estimated 50,000 fiber-optic drones a month. The Insider put Russia alone at about 50,000 a month as of April 2025. Ushkuynik said monthly KVN output reached 50,000 by September 2025, a claim no one has independently verified. Denys Shmyhal, then Ukraine’s defense minister, said his country was sending more than 50,000 a month to the front. If both of the national claims hold, the combined total is about twice the Ars estimate.

![A tilted cream abacus on a bright blue background has three rods holding dark navy beads, with two orange beads and two beads outside the frame.](https://rews.cc/img/73d6cf252c8d11f4d657058cd1cc79509c262912.webp)

The fiber figures conflict more. The Conflict and Environment Observatory estimated that Russia needed at least 6 million kilometers of fiber for drones in 2025, a tenth of the 60 million Mr. Chun estimated it bought. The Post’s record month of cable shipments, about 528,000 kilometers, was smaller still. The figures count different things: bare fiber, finished cable, drone use and total purchases. How much of Russia’s 60 million kilometers went into drones, how much into telecom lines and how much into warehouses isn’t clear.

A rough calculation puts drones in proportion. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says the military received 374,000 fiber-optic drones through state contracts in 2025. At 20 kilometers a spool, those drones used about 7.5 million kilometers of fiber, a little over 1 percent of the 577 million fiber-kilometers TrendForce expects the world to use this year. Drones are a small part of world demand. But they all want the same narrow grade.

## Data centers and drones

That grade is G.657.A2, a bend-insensitive single-mode fiber, and data centers want it too. TrendForce said on Oct. 19 that world demand would reach 577 million fiber-kilometers this year, with a shortfall of 180 million, [according to a summary of its forecast](https://iconnect007.com/article/152032/optical-fiber-prices-surge-amid-data-center-driven-shortages-through-2028/152029/aep). Data centers account for 18 to 20 percent of that demand, it said, and will reach 30 to 35 percent in 2027. Factory utilization is 92 percent. Inventory has fallen from four months of supply in 2024 to one month. Some leading suppliers are booked into the first quarter of 2027, and the firm expects spot prices to reach 2.8 to 5 times their 2025 levels, or more, depending on the fiber type.

> AI data centers are fueling optical fiber demand, with a global supply shortfall of 180 million fiber-kilometers expected in 2026. As spot prices rise, how will chipmakers and telecom operators respond?💡More analysis from #TrendForce: 🔗
>
> — **TrendForce** @trendforce on X · [October 19, 2026](https://x.com/trendforce/status/2112212500938715581)

The jump came early in the year. The price of G.652.D fiber rose 75 percent in January to a seven-year high, and all four of China’s major fiber makers were running at full capacity, according to the China Electronic Components Industry Association. China Telecom halted two optical projects in Guangdong. Robert Clark, a contributing editor at Light Reading, named both causes in his report’s subtitle.

> Fiber manufacturing capacity has maxed out due to rise in AI and military drone sales, and prices are soaring.
>
> — Robert Clark, contributing editor, Light Reading, [lightreading.com](https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/optical-fiber-prices-are-also-soaring-on-ai-demand)

The limit is the glass rod that fiber is drawn from. “Glass preform has become a critical bottleneck in the value chain,” Ahmed Ali of the commodities consultancy CRU [wrote in February](https://www.crugroup.com/en/communities/thought-leadership/2026/optical-fibre-prices-rise-as-preform-availability-tightens/). Chinese bare-fiber prices rose more than 80 percent between November 2025 and January, he wrote, putting them above European prices for the first time in more than seven years, and restarting idle lines will take “months rather than weeks.” He named rising demand for A2 fiber, “including applications linked to fibre-tethered drones,” as one cause. New preform plants take 18 to 24 months to build, and some Chinese producers shifted lines from telecom-grade G.652D to G.657A, causing shortages of the cheaper grade, Lisa McDonald wrote in [*Ceramic Tech Today*](https://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/data-centers-and-drone-warfare-fiber-optics/), citing DigiTimes.

Which buyer drove the spike is disputed. Futu Securities, quoted by Light Reading, said the market sees AI data centers as “the primary driver.” Ms. McDonald called fiber-guided drones the main driver. The numbers support both, in different years. CRU’s figures, as Ms. McDonald reported them, put data centers below 5 percent of world fiber demand in 2024, with their demand up about 76 percent in 2025. That puts their 2025 share in the same range as the 10.5 percent Russia alone bought. By TrendForce’s estimates, data centers pulled clearly ahead only this year. On this record, AI is the bigger force in the shortage now and later. The 2025 jump owed at least as much to the war.

The new buyers sign long contracts. On Sept. 8, Verizon and Corning [announced a deal](https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-corning-broadband-ai-fiber-agreement) for more than 80 million miles of fiber, about 129 million kilometers, to be delivered from 2027 to 2032. Corning had already agreed to a supply deal with Meta worth up to $6 billion. Ukrainian workshops, by contrast, were getting quotes revised weekly.

![A large dark spatula is wrapped in cream-colored coils, with a trailing strand extending toward a small drone against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/6ca73bd4baf8aa0835f6fa2852eb0205823389a4.webp)

## What a spool costs

Yevhen Sukhinin, founder of Ptashka Drones, said his company signed and paid for a contract at $5 a kilometer, and then the Chinese factory told it: “either you pay another $20 per kilometer, or we’ll return the money,” [Oboronka reported](https://oboronka.mezha.ua/en/v-ukrajini-deficit-optovolokna-309156/) on March 5. “Prices are rising like Bitcoin in its best days,” he said. The drone maker VYRIY said the fiber it uses went from about $4 to $29 a kilometer in under a quarter, and that the price of its fiber drones had roughly doubled. Volodymyr Zinovsky, chief executive of TAF Industries, said the drone and its spool used to cost about the same, and that the spool now makes up most of the price. Alexey Babenko of VYRIY told Militarnyi that a 35-kilometer reel cost $700, more than a Starlink terminal.

Dimko Zhluktenko, a co-founder of the charity Dzyga’s Paw who now serves in Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, wrote on X on May 10 that fiber drones were still flying, “although not as much as it used to be,” and that his unit’s 50-kilometer spools had gone from $300 to about $2,500, [DroneXL reported](https://dronexl.co/2026/05/11/ukraine-fiber-optic-spool-price-ai-data-center-demand/).

Oleksiy, a research and development representative at BlueBird Tech who gave only his first name for security reasons, told Ars that prices were worst around March and have “stabilized to some extent” since. China is still the source, he said, even when fiber goes through intermediaries in other countries. Russia has more direct routes, and some Chinese sellers have refused Ukrainians outright.

> There have also been cases where Chinese manufacturers have told Ukrainian buyers that they did not have material available for them because they were from Ukraine.
>
> — Oleksiy, R&D representative, BlueBird Tech, [arstechnica.com](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/11/ukraines-fiber-optic-drones-get-squeezed-by-ai-data-center-demand/)

Russian buyers pay similar prices. Posing as a Russian military buyer, the investigative group Nordsint ordered 500 pre-wound 50-kilometer reels from Zion Communication of Hangzhou at an average of $27.8 a kilometer, and got a quote of $34.5 from Hongan Group of Weihai, [The Insider reported](https://theins.press/en/inv/290627) on March 24. A Hongan representative said the company was booked through the end of August because “many customers are buying it up in insane volumes.” Another seller wrote, “Priority goes to whoever offers the highest price.” Hongan has also shipped fiber to a Ukrainian weapons maker. The 100-kilometer reels on offer in November were priced at 300 yuan a kilometer, more than seven times January’s price for bulk telecom fiber, though a finished drone reel and bulk telecom fiber are not the same product.

## Spooling at home

BlueBird’s main response has been to wind its own spools. The company buys fiber from China on large industrial spools, rewinds it onto drone-sized ones and tests each one. Oleksiy said this costs somewhat less than importing finished spools, but quality is the main reason: the company has found defects in finished Chinese spools. Only larger makers can afford the equipment, technicians and test rigs, so smaller ones still buy finished spools at home or abroad. It is the same constant reworking found [across Ukraine’s drone workshops](https://rews.cc/a/in-ukraine-s-drone-workshops-no-weapon-is-finished-it-is-onl-5b7ac8).

> If a fiber-optic spool has a defect, you can lose the drone, lose the mission, and lose the target.
>
> — Oleksiy, R&D representative, BlueBird Tech, [arstechnica.com](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/11/ukraines-fiber-optic-drones-get-squeezed-by-ai-data-center-demand/)

Winding uses up fiber too. Trainees make mistakes, and training “can require many kilometers of fiber,” Oleksiy said. The more defects in a bulk spool, the fewer usable drone spools it yields. Every finished spool gets a link test, and a sample from each batch is flown on a real drone. Air-raid alerts halt customs clearance. Russia buys pre-wound coils from China, while Ukraine learned winding largely from scratch on homemade machines, an anonymous coil maker told Oboronka in January: “If you make a kink somewhere, wind the fiber crookedly... you’re screwed.”

Not every maker kept up. The director of B-Drone, who goes by Hamlet, said big manufacturers buy up incoming fiber as soon as it arrives, and his company closed its winding shop. Ptashka paused new orders. General Chereshnya bought raw fiber in Europe and avoided a critical shortage. TAF said it was considering more drones with jam-resistant radio links in place of fiber.

## Weighing the shortage

The case that fiber now limits numbers rests on the front line and the price. Haye Kesteloo, DroneXL’s editor in chief, wrote that the price rise “is doing what Russian electronic warfare could not.” Mr. Zhluktenko’s unit flies fewer fiber drones. Even before the spike, Maksym Bugel of the 95th Air Assault Brigade’s Boryviter battalion told Oboronka that optics were “sorely lacking,” and Mr. Raikov said the state directly covers only about a third of his unit’s needs. Units pay for the rest from their own budgets and donations.

The official record points the other way. The Defense Ministry said in April that it had already delivered more than 92 percent of 2025’s 374,000 fiber drones in under four months, [Euromaidan Press reported](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/21/ukraine-has-delivered-92-of-last-years-fiber-optic-drone-total-to-front-in-under-four-months/). That works out to about 344,000 drones, close to three times 2025’s monthly pace. Since late March, the ministry has let contract prices move with the cost of fiber, spools and reels, and it has signed the first supplemental contracts at higher prices. In March, the Defense Procurement Agency said stockpiles built up in late 2025 meant “there are currently no critical or massive delays in supply.”

The Russian figures show no cap either. Chinese exports of optical fiber cable to Russia “surged in value, weight, and per-kilogram costs” in July and August, Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who edits the China-Russia Report, [wrote on Sept. 28](https://chinarussiareport.substack.com/p/drone-relevant-exports-to-russia), writing in a personal capacity. He said he didn’t know why. Tatarigami argued in a thread this summer that China supplies the fiber at the center of Russia’s adaptation.

> Russia’s response to electronic warfare wasn’t a single solution. It evolved along two major paths: fiber-optic drones and mesh networks. This thread summarizes Frontelligence Insight analysis based on OSINT data and a report by the Center for Defense Reforms. Thread🧵
>
> — **Tatarigami\_UA** @Tatarigami\_UA on X · [July 30, 2026](https://x.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/2082874914550517793)

Weighed together, the evidence shows a shortage that works through price, not one that rations supply, at least through the spring for Ukraine and the summer for Russia. The ministry’s figures count deliveries, not sorties, and can’t be independently verified, and the late-2025 stockpiles that softened the first shock won’t last forever. But price is a limit too. When a spool is most of a drone’s cost and units pay for two-thirds of what they use, a sixfold rise means fewer drones from the same money. That falls harder on Ukraine, with its longer supply route, its refused orders and its smaller workshops, than on a Russia buying in bulk over a shared border.

## What comes next

On Oct. 19, China’s Commerce Ministry, its customs agency and the Central Military Commission’s equipment department issued Announcement No. 49, which adds licensing requirements for 13 categories of drone parts and technology, from motors to swarm software. The rules take effect on Nov. 18. Fiber-optic cables “are not newly controlled” under them, [Army Recognition reported](https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2026/china-tightens-drone-export-controls-raising-supply-chain-risks-for-the-us-europe-and-ukraine). China has barred the military transfer of drones and dual-use parts to both sides since 2023, but The Insider’s investigations found sellers working around that. Frontelligence Insight has urged Western governments to put export controls on drone-grade fiber, reels and winding equipment.

New supply is years away. TrendForce sees the shortfall lasting through 2028. Verizon’s deliveries start in 2027. Russia’s ministry doesn’t expect Saransk to produce again before the end of 2027. In Ukraine, VYRIY estimates a domestic fiber plant would cost about $60 million and take at least two years to reach stable output, and Anatoliy Khrapchinsky of the Defence Builder accelerator put a full production cycle at hundreds of millions of dollars, with raw materials and equipment still imported.

China’s new drone export rules take effect on Nov. 18. Optical fiber is not on the list.

## See also

- [Gone Fishing: Nordsint and The Insider reveal the scheme supplying Russia with drone components from China](https://nordsint.org/2026/03/24/gone-fishing-nordsint-and-the-insider-reveal-the-scheme-supplying-russia-with-critical-drone-components-from-china/) — nordsint.org · The full undercover investigation, with supplier invoices and payment routes
- [Learning Without Bleeding: China's Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine Drone War (CSIS)](https://www.csis.org/analysis/learning-without-bleeding-chinas-lessons-russia-ukraine-drone-war) — csis.org · How China's military studies fiber-optic drones and other tactics from the war
- [How Russia Is Building a Sovereign Drone Ecosystem for AI-Driven Autonomy (CSIS)](https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-russia-building-sovereign-drone-ecosystem-ai-driven-autonomy) — csis.org · Kateryna Bondar's report on Russia's drone industry and its Chinese inputs
- [Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies (Jamestown Foundation)](https://jamestown.org/russias-drone-surge-depends-on-chinese-supplies/) — jamestown.org · Analysis of Russia's dependence on Chinese fiber and other drone parts
- [Drone shortages and severed links: why Ukraine still trails on fibre-optic UAV production](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2026/01/25/8017810/) — pravda.com.ua · Ukrainska Pravda on Ukraine's fiber-drone gap with Russia in early 2026
- [Fiber-optic drones are leaving miles of plastic trash along Ukraine's front lines (NPR)](https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s1-5493263/fiber-optic-drones-are-leaving-miles-of-plastic-trash-along-ukraines-front-lines) — npr.org · What the spent fiber leaves behind on the battlefield
- [Fiber optic drone (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optic_drone) — en.wikipedia.org · Background on the technology, its history and its spread beyond Ukraine