The signal receiver made by the Irish company Taoglas is tiny, cheap and almost weightless.
It is a mass-produced ceramic antenna designed to be fitted to a circuit board which allows it to receive GPS signals. The chip is not very advanced and has long been superseded by newer models.
In fact, the company, which is headquartered in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, stopped manufacturing this particular version more than a decade ago.
But in the last two years, this chip – and others like it – has become a vital part of the Geran-2 kamikaze drone which is being deployed in vast numbers by the Russian military in its war on Ukraine.
The Geran-2 is a central pillar of the Russian strategy of…