The Ukrainian government yesterday launched an initiative to streamline and promote innovation in the development of drones and other technologies that have been critical during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
As part of the initiative, dubbed Brave1, the government hopes to bring state, military and private-sector developers working on defense issues together into a tech cluster that would give Ukraine a battlefield advantage.
“Considering the enemy that is right next to us and its scale, we definitely need to develop the military tech so that we can defend ourselves,” Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said.
Fedorov told reporters ahead of the official announcement that the government had earmarked more than 100 million hryvnias (US$2.7 million) to fund projects that have the potential to help Ukraine win the 14-month conflict.
“There are many people on the battlefield now of the young generation that can work with technologies, and they need them,” he said.
Ukraine and Russia make frequent use of uncrewed aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and in attacks. Russia extensively uses Iran’s long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones.
The Ukrainian government last year launched a public fundraising drive asking foreign donors to help it build an “army of drones.”
The Moscow-appointed head of the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhayev, this week reported that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted to attack the harbor and another one blew up.
Ukrainian officials stopped short of openly claiming responsibility, as they had done after earlier attacks on Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Oleksandr Kviatkovskyi, a board member of combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, sees Brave1 as a platform that the military can use to communicate its electronic warfare needs and provide strategic support to the military technology industry.
“Even one year to develop a product, it’s a very short time,” Kviatkovskyi said.
However, Kviatkovskyi said he is not sure that such a platform could create a significant boost for development of war technologies.
“Even if it does, it will be minimal,” he said.
“Few things can be more effective than the boost created by the tanks near Kyiv,” he said, referring to how Ukrainian forces prevented Russian troops from storming the capital during the first weeks of the war, which began in February last year.
Fevzi Ametov, a Ukrainian soldier and cofounder of Drone.ua, said that businesses and their engineers already try to incorporate feedback from military personnel into their products.
“Any assault without drones, right now, it’s like going blind into a minefield, and you don’t know what is waiting around the corner,” Ametov said.
“Technologies help save lives,” he said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS