Because we didn't have anything. We have to come up with
something just to survive.
Since the beginning of full scale invasion, people used pretty much everything.
They used civilian cars to stop tanks, they used
Molotov cocktails, and they used
simple civilian drones. In Ukraine,
unmanned aerial vehicles drones have become a critical
part of the country's defence.
They have come to epitomize the David versus Goliath battle. Ukraine has
found itself in a battle which has seen the country develop a host of cheap
and disruptive technologies that has, until recently,
kept Russia at bay. A simple fpv drone is like a K 47.
Today. It's working. It's very cheap.
Then, in January 2024, Ukraine's military released
remarkable footage. The sinking of a russian warship by a naval
drone worth a tiny fraction of its target,
as well as technological drones, also indicate an economic
shift in how wars are now being fought.
When you have drone for like $500 versus tank
for $3 million and drone wins,
it just doesn't make sense to buy more tanks.
Ukraine's war has spawned an industry of startup defense companies
and grassroots volunteers, many of whom are not just making a
difference, but taking the fight to Russia itself.
We have been doing great work so far, hitting targets across
the border, and I think we're going to continue to increase
the scale and volume of those strikes.
On Ukraine's front line near Bakhmut, the Achilles drone squadron
of the 92nd Assault Brigade are seeking out russian positions
just a few hundred meters away.
The Achilles squadron's main task is aerial reconnaissance.
Save a few software adjustments. They use a pretty standard fpv,
a first person view drone invented
for hobbyists and racing. It has four propellers and
a camera that streams live footage back to a pilot on the ground.
These types of drone are readily available to buy in electronics stores all over
the world for just a few hundred dollars.
Not long after Russia's full scale invasion in 2022,
Ukrainians started taping grenades and other explosives to fpvs,
a cheap and lethal solution that has proven extremely effective in defending
against russian offensives. Flying at speeds
of up to 100 mph on Ukraine's front line, they're now
known as kamikazes.
For Ukraine's defense, it's become a numbers game,
how we think about it, not in drone
price, but in one dead Russian per
$1.01. If we can
destroy the armor vehicle. If you talk
about two or three drones, you can destroy
the tank. Alexei Bobenko runs one of the more than 100
underground drone manufacturers in Ukraine. They're part
of a complex network of volunteers and entrepreneurs, as well
as soldiers who provide real time feedback. From the front,
technicians bolt and solder motors, cameras and motherboards.
3d printers make new frames. When a
drone is completed, it's brought upstairs for a quick test,
then its set aside for packaging and delivery to the front.
The keel chain from manufacture to Kilin can
be less than one week. Thats despite
issues around sourcing parts. Because so many
of the worlds commercial and civilian drones are made in China, Russias ally
producers like Babenko still depend on some chinese made
parts. While they manage to mostly bypass Beijing's
embargo, shipping through other countries in Europe, they're finding ways
to become more independent. Yeah, before now
it was all chinese components. Now we have good
ukrainian frame that costs not so much.
If you talk about propellers in Ukraine, it costs less
than chinese propellers and I think it's better
propellers than chinese. Of course Chinese
make more electronics, so it's cheaper to make it in China.
But I hope soon we will make it cheaper, cheaper and cheaper.
Babenko let us film in his warehouse because he's about to move to
a larger facility to keep up with demand. They currently make
6000 kamikaze drones a month.
President Zelenskyy has called on drone makers to churn out a million
machines this year. But Benko is bullish.
Our country will produce more than 2 million,
or maybe up to 3 million drones for this
year. As the war has progressed,
so have the drones. It's rare to see grenades with
duct tape these days. Every week, Maxim Cheramet
and his team from Dronania, a self described UAV lab,
travel to a secret location outside of Kyiv.
You must test all of this stuff. When you fly on a drone, you must
understand, for example, low batteries,
low altitude, wind velocity,
ammi weapon problems with some electronic
stuff.
Now the drones are full of advanced technology as
well as fpvs used as kamikazes. They test other
types of drone, such as the vampire.
While slower, it is much bigger and capable of carrying
a larger payload. Crucially, it's equipped with thermal imaging
to see in the dark. Russian soldiers liken it to a mythical
witch who eats children in the night. Baba yaga
is a nightmare of Russia.
But with any change in warfare, the enemy usually adapts too.
At Dronania's lab, volunteers dissect russian drones
recovered from the battlefield to better understand their technology.
And they have to. Since drones became an integral part of this war,
Russia now produces more than Ukraine. It also imports
iranian developed Shaheed models. And we are losing in
numbers. In numbers. Russians start to
manufacture a lot of kamikazes. It's places like
Dronania where Ukraine finds an edge in the drone war,
from advanced wireless chips to reusable drones and extending flight
range with new antenna technology. For example,
in Mavics. Mavic is a DJI drone.
Video transmitter is 100 milliwatt. This is
3000 milliwatts. So the power of
video transmitter of this drone is more
than ten x powerful.
We teach our military guy, actually in
this classroom how to be a UAv
engineer, not how to fly, but how to create their
own drone. I told my students, our rifles
is our brain. They still find plenty of ways to
innovate with whatever they can get their hands on too. We use
these batteries from the wave in this dropping mechanism.
When you turn on the flashlight on a
drone, the dropping system
activates and the granite are falling down.
A common theme among Ukraine's new class of arms dealers is that
nobody ever thought they'd be making weapons. Software engineer Luboszipovic
left the US, where she ran a successful IT outsourcing company.
To return to Ukraine, she co founded Dignitas,
one of the biggest volunteer organizations funding drone
makers development of IT sector. It was
the fourth biggest sector in Ukraine before
the full scale invasion, naturally, that all these
engineers, software engineers, hardware engineers, some of them
joined the army, others started to work for
defense sector to come up with some solutions.
Francisco Sarah Martins, an australian venture capitalist,
used to serve on the board of a non profit that made drones delivering emergency
supplies in Africa. Now he makes drones that
blow up russian infrastructure. If you have a patient that's been shot,
you need to stop it at the source. And for us, it's providing
medical aid is definitely an important goal, but we need to stop Russians
from sending missiles and armor and infantry across
the border. Terminal autonomy's drones are guided by a system similar
to that of an american Tomahawk cruise missile. The weapons
have been used to devastating effect in strikes on russian oil refineries.
But unlike a tomahawk, which costs about $2 million,
Terminal autonomy's AQ 400 scythe sells for about
30,000. How? Not only
are these drones powered by the type of chips you could find in a dishwasher,
they're not demanding excessive profit margins.
Cyberlux is one of the largest oil transmission contracts from
the US, if not the largest. They're selling a dollar 500 drone for
$50,000, whereas we sell that for
10% profit. It's basically cutting that fat off the top
and then producing on a massive scale. That's what we're doing. We're not
doing any broader innovation in other defence companies. We just price
strategically quite differently. What companies like Terminal
autonomy do reveal is how much the industry has evolved since Russia's invasion,
and how conflicts might look in the future.
There's no pilot. The long range strategic effects basically fire and
forget. They can visually identify targets
and then navigate through a camera.
There is no pilot, no crew. If they get shot down economically,
it's a win, because they're cheaper than anything the Russians can use to shoot it
down. It's basically a new form of attrition warfare,
where these systems can be deployed in massive volumes against
strategic. Raising the cost of Russia's invasion is
part of Kyiv's strategy. But whether it can compete with a substantially
better resourced russian army employing similar tactics remains
to be seen. Arguably more important, though, is keeping
up the supply of drones. During the many months Republicans in the US
Congress blocked military aid to Ukraine, UAV's played
a crucial role in halting russian advances and kept many more
Ukrainians.
But drones, even with their technological advances, can only
go so far in keeping Ukraine in this war.
Though the Biden administration finally freed up substantial
military aid, these are still desperate times for Ukraine's military.
Their soldiers will need much more from the west if they're to turn the tide
against Russia.