Ukraine is fighting a much more numerous enemy with drones

Mission accomplished, says Rostyslav Olentsjyn, about one of his drones that the Ukrainian armed forces deployed at the front. Although it ultimately ended badly with this copy. During a nighttime mission, the drone disabled two Russian military vehicles and killed ten Russian soldiers, Olentsjyn, the manufacturer of the drone, was told afterwards at a briefing. But things went wrong on the next mission.

Ukrainian soldiers shot the drone, the Saker Scout, out of the sky. They thought it was a hostile drone. Can happen, says Olentsjyn (47). He gives a tour of his drone company Twist Robotics in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Co-founder Olentsjyn prefers to look on the positive side. Because if you compare the cost of the drone, $ 23,000, with the result, which included the destruction of valuable military vehicles, you can only call it a successful mission, for which no Ukrainian soldier had to risk his life.

Army of drones

The drone war was already raging above the front in Ukraine, but really broke out over Russia last month. Six Russian regions were hit in one overnight attack in August. Four military transport aircraft were damaged near the city of Pskov, seven hundred kilometers from Ukraine. Earlier this year, drones attacked Moscow and other Russian cities. Russian oil depots are also under fire and naval drones attack Russian ships. Kyiv remains silent on whether it is behind the attacks. But President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in July that “the war is coming back to Russia.”

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An engineer from Twist Robotics, who wishes to remain anonymous, reveals something more. “Drones were probably created within the Ukrainian ecosystems,” he said of the attacks on the Russian capital.

Ukraine is focusing on its own production of the so-called Army of drones, a project in which ministries and the Ukrainian armed forces are involved, among others. About two hundred drone companies across the country are participating in this, writes Mychajlo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation and Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Education, Science and Technological Development. NRC. Twist Robotics is one of them. Olentsjyn describes the Ukrainian drone community as “a big family of manufacturers, developers, military operators and volunteers who exchange information and help each other build drones.”

The main goal of the “drone army,” Fedorov believes, is to produce enough drones to save lives. “So that technology fights, and not people. The only way to defeat the occupying forces, who are many times more numerous, is through the use of technology.”

Online parts

Twist Robotics’ drones won’t make it to Moscow. The company, hidden on the ground floor of an apartment building, looks like a workshop from the inside. Screwdrivers, zip ties, wires and pliers lie on work tables next to laptops, water bottles, motors and grand pianos. In one corner, a 3D printer makes parts for bombs. But not the explosives, an employee hastens to say. The company orders parts that it cannot make itself online from countries such as China and the United States.

A Saker Scout is already on a table and ready for a final test flight before being shipped to the front. It is a reconnaissance drone that can fly for sixty minutes at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour, transmit coordinates of enemy positions and drop three kilos of explosives over the enemy. The drone is deployed along the entire front line.

Two other copies are loaded into a van and headed to the front. The drone saves lives there because it takes over dangerous reconnaissance work from soldiers or attacks targets for which no soldier needs to be deployed. The drone is also useful above the infamous Russian minefields, and the Saker Scout saves ammunition: with the coordinates obtained by the drone, a Ukrainian tank can fire more precisely. “With drones you can control land and create air superiority,” Olentsjyn explains. “After the attack with those ten dead soldiers, the Russians withdrew five kilometers without costing us any lives.”

Since 2014

Drones are popular in Ukraine, Olentsjyn notes. Three years ago, the company switched from commercial agricultural drones to military drones. After all, Ukraine had been at war with Russia in the east of the country since 2014. Then there appeared to be little interest. Since the massive Russian invasion last year, Twist Robotics has been in the spotlight. It is easier to attract experts and money. At the start of the war, four people worked in the company, now there are 25 and they have supplied forty drones to the armed forces. The ambition, says Olentsjyn, is to produce 65 drones in the next two or three months.

Minister of Digital TransformationMychajlo Fedorov Technology must fight, not people. That is the only way to defeat the occupier, who is many times more numerous

Twist Robotics, like other drone companies, receives support from the government. Procedures have been simplified. Exemptions apply. Import duties for drone companies have been abolished. The paperwork has been reduced, Olentsjyn agrees. His company pays less tax, the authorities offer testing options and access to the armed forces is easier.

“The measures stimulate the mass production of drones,” writes Minister Fedorov. “The production of drones has increased tenfold and in some cases a hundredfold. Some manufacturers supply the military on a large scale. The more drones we have, the better.”

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Ukraine produces various drones: from kamikaze to sea drones. The latter is a unique development, Fedorov emphasizes. Throughout the war, the country has excelled in creativity and simple and cheap solutions. This month the armed forces bombed an Australian one cardboard drone a Russian airport near the city of Kursk. “A drone can be built almost from waste and still be of value,” says the anonymous engineer. “A drone can even be cheaper than a bullet.” At the end of August, Zelensky spoke about a new long-range weapon with a range of seven hundred kilometers. He may have been referring to a drone.

Danger

At Twist Robotics, Kateryna (25) sits behind a simulator, where she has simulated the front near Zaporizja using satellite images and data. She trains Ukrainian pilots to use the Saker Scout and shows how to attack a tank with it.

Twist Robotics must throw everything they have into the war, she says. So maximum effort and maximum creativity. “Compared to Russia, they have more people, money and weapons. But this is not just a war of numbers, but also of creativity,” she says. “If we make something that the Russians don’t have, we have an advantage. So we have to out-of-the-box thinking with the resources we have.”

Russia sees the danger of the development of Ukrainian drones. Apart from Olentsjyn, no one wants their first and last name in the newspaper. Too much attention can arouse the interest of the Russians. The fear arose after the Russians bombed the city theater in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv last month, where a drone conference was taking place at the time. At least seven people were killed in the attack. “It looks like they want to hit the Ukrainian drone community,” said Olentsjyn of Twist Robotics. “But I don’t care. We will continue to build drones.”

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