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.
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