“Somebody’s at least thinking about how to address that problem”
Dealing with the parts problem for anything is difficult but man has always found a way to get around it. An example is the Shahed-136.
Not all components are equal, and some were more susceptible to disruption and more important for the capabilities being targeted.65 Generally, however, there is no exhaust port on the Russian death star. The loss of a critical component will tend to lead to the alteration of the production sequence until a new supply of the component can be found, or it is substituted with an inferior component. his will impose cost and delays, and often impact the reliability of the system when it enters Russian service. But it does not stop the system being made. Two interesting examples highlight this trend.
When Shahed-136 UAVs began to hit Ukraine, it was noted that they had servo motors that manipulated their control surfaces which were built in the Philippines by South Korean-owned company HiTec.66 Pressure was subsequently put on HiTec to stop manufacturing the product. But this did not stop the Russians and Iranians from building Shahed-136s. Ukrainian observers noted that the original servo motors were swapped for Chinese ones, and that these were of inferior quality, causing some Shahed-136s to crash and limiting the acuteness of anoeuvres the aircraft could perform, simplifying its interception by air defence.67 As a result, Russia must launch more Shahed-136s to deliver the same effect, and has less assurance that it will be achieved. In other words, they have learned to jerryrig things but with the increased amount of units, it accomplishes the same goal until they can jerryrig it different or get a source for the original needs for better results. And obviously, less product means being frugal.
They’ll find a way.
wy69
And it's our job to get out ahead of them and stop it. Which is the whole point of that RUSI article I posted. It CAN be done, if western nations (i.e. NATO) will put a few sharp project managers on the job, and will break down the "silos" that each country reflexively builds around their intelligence operations.