I’ll tell you about the technological race of drones in Ukraine
Ukraine produces 1.3 million FPV drones per year. Twice as many as the Russians, but four times fewer bullets and twenty times fewer Lancets, the long-range kamikaze drones. Ugo Poletti's analysis
When a country is under an attack that threatens its survival, as has happened to Ukraine for two and a half years. the resistance of the whole society is crucial to not succumbing. Without not only material but also moral support from the rear, the soldiers would stop fighting.
YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS AT WAR NEXT TO UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS
There are two little-studied elements in the framework of Ukrainian society's resistance to the large-scale Russian invasion. The first was the birth of many entrepreneurial initiatives by young Ukrainians, who created companies or converted their businesses, to make up for the shortcomings of Ukraine fighting for its independence. The second is the great collaboration between public administration and private companies to offer the Ukrainian army innovative technological solutions to make it more capable of resisting the mammoth Russian military machine. Faced with a quantitatively stronger and more experienced enemy, Ukraine had to make up for it with more intelligence and creative solutions.
THE NEW DRONES TECHNOLOGY
The new drone industry is revealing of this trend. Many of the innovations achieved in the field are the result of enterprises born after the invasion began. While the Russian system is very hierarchical and moves only on orders from above, the Ukrainian system has moved from bottom to top, bottom-up, without waiting for government authorizations. Indeed, the Ministry of Defense has accepted proposals for prototypes and technologies from various industrial sectors.
This is the story of Alexander Yakovenko, 34 years old, a young entrepreneur from Odessa with a shipping company of agricultural products and fuel, who became one of the first drone manufacturers in Ukraine.
AN ENTREPRENEUR IN THE TRENCHES
In 2022, a few months after the Russian attack, he decided to join a platoon of soldiers on the front line, on the Zaporizhia front, even though he was not a soldier. He was shocked by the ruthlessness of the Russian military. He had recently visited Bucha, north of Kiev and was determined to do something to stop the invasion. That's why he decided to share the experience with the Ukrainian soldiers. One day he sees one of them running out of the trench, into no man's land, to retrieve a drone. She asks him why he came out and risked being killed for a toy. And so he discovers that the drone is essential for reconnaissance and that the soldiers have collected money to buy it.
Since then he began to create a parallel drone production business, taking engineers and technicians, preferably veterans returning from the front, and applying his knowledge of logistics to purchase components. All this without the help of public funds, but financed by private donations. “I don't understand how I ended up among the top three Ukrainian drone manufacturers, with ten separate factories and four hundred employees,” says Alexander.
THE LOGISTICS OF DRONES COMPONENTS
He succeeded by studying everything about the issue on the internet, looking for the first funds, and then traveling around China, Taiwan and Czechoslovakia which supply 75% of the components. An effort not only organizational and financial, but also political, to convince the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Digital Transformation to authorize its first low-cost drones, from 300 to 450 dollars each, to be sent free of charge to the fighters at forehead.
Alexander is like many others of this young Ukrainian generation that the emergency of war has produced. For an entrepreneur from Odessa, logistics is typical of the city's professional culture. The big problem in the production of drones is the impact of the costs of transporting components from China. That's why Alexander started traveling to China to meet with Chinese drone component manufacturers to ensure production quotas and stable prices.
After the competition on costs, today the competition has shifted to quality. The drone is no longer a toy, it spreads death, but it can save the life of the fighter, faced with a Russian assault wave that threatens to overwhelm their lines. Today an FPV drone (First Person View), identifies a type of radio-controlled models, which are not piloted in the traditional way, i.e. looking at the model, but via wearable screens or viewers, which give a view of the pilot as if he were at the controls of the model itself) if it is powerful enough, powered by solid fuel, it can take to the sky, loaded with 3 kg of explosives, travel 20 km and go and blow up an enemy tank worth a million of dollars.
UKRAINE'S COMPETITION NOT TO FALL BEHIND IN PRODUCTION
Today, Ukraine produces 1.3 million FPVs per year. Twice as many as the Russians, but four times fewer bullets and twenty times fewer Lancets, the long-range kamikaze drones. In this gap lies the problem of Ukrainian weakness. The Russian Lancets can hit up to 200 km, and the Ukrainians, who are on the defensive, are forced to wait for the Russians to come within range of their FPVs. “We are losing the technological competition,” worries the young entrepreneur. While waiting for Ukraine to find a more efficient solution, the fighters rely on the excellent Caesar cannons, which however are too few French ones, and on the Himars , the American multiple rocket launchers, which have an exorbitant cost. While on the Donbas front the waves of Russian assaults follow one another.
TERRESTRIAL DRONES ARE ALSO COMING
However, the future direction of armaments is now clear. "Inland Drones", i.e. land-based drones, capable of attacking or defending themselves, opening fire and bombing, placing mines or evacuating the wounded, have already been tested for many months. Without human intervention, except for the operators behind, attached to their consoles or wearing virtual glasses. All coordinated by Artificial Intelligence to find targets, identify them and destroy them with unprecedented precision.
“We are already working on it,” says the Odessa entrepreneur. How can we cheaply produce, create relay drones to remotely control those on the ground from the sky, despite obstacles, forests and hollows in the ground? Again, the challenge is price, technology and logistics.
THE MEDAL FROM ZELENSKY
Like other Ukrainian entrepreneurs who dedicated themselves to the defense of their homeland, Alexander Yakoshenko also received the Medal of the Order of Merit, the highest honor for a civilian, from President Zelensky. But he doesn't seem to care. He is worried about the race against time, so as not to be left behind in the technological growth of drones, the protagonists of this war, on which the freedom of his country also depends.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/vi-racconto-la-corsa-tecnologica-dei-droni-in-ucraina/ on Sun, 15 Sep 2024 02:46:08 +0000.