A former engineer at a semiconductor manufacturer pleaded not guilty on Friday to U.S. charges that he illegally procured technology for an Iranian firm that made a key component of a drone used in a January attack by Iran-backed militants in Jordan that killed three U.

Three American service members died in a drone attack on a US outpost in Jordan on Jan. 28. A Natick engineer with American and Iranian citizenship faces 10 charges.

An Iranian-American Massachusetts resident, who was arrested earlier this month on accusations of aiding Iran in a fatal drone strike killing U.S. service members in Jordan in January, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges related to a scheme to illegally export sophisticated electronic components from the U.

A manufacturing plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region has significantly scaled up its production of Iranian-designed drones, using a range of Chinese components, and recruiting a low-skilled workforce of Russian teenagers and African women,

The battlefield in Ukraine has taken to the skies, as Russia floods the frontlines with waves of drones. Behind this relentless assault is a secretive factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, producing thousands of drones using Iranian designs,

In 2023, the factory produced 2,738 Shahed drones, and by the first nine months of 2024, it more than doubled this output, manufacturing 5,760 drones. According to anonymous sources, the factory is also assembling thousands of “fake” drones aimed at exhausting Ukraine’s air defense systems.