Today, more than 90% of all Russian personnel loses on the battlefield – are caused by drones; and in the other 10% of Kremlin soldiers lost, drones almost always play at least a supporting role.
Unmanned systems are doing a lot of job – striking infantry, striking deep industrial objects, evacuating wounded, carrying bombs, mines, shells, replacing not only infantry but also the artillery, tanks, etc.
Some days ago the CEO of Rheinmetall said that Ukrainians produce drones like “housewives.” But the truth is, a drone that costs $300-400 are not even made in a factory that could be taken out by a tank or armored vehicle made by a big manufacturer, costing millions of dollars.
This is a new reality – war has to be not only effective, but efficient: cheap, and scaled to a huge mass. And Ukrainian drone producers are doing this.
Three years ago nobody would have believed that Ukraine could produce 1 million drones per year.
Today, 4 million is not a problem for producers; some of them became big factories.
Volodymyr Cherniuk is a CEO of one of them – big cluster “Iron” – a community of more than 100 manufacturers, who produce all the modern warfare systems – air drones, land and sea drones, electronic warfare, components and parts.
He is quite a young man, but ruling a cluster that produces death for thousands of Russian soldiers every month. And he knows how to improve it. And he’s making them more effective day by day.
When he spoke with Kyiv Post, we talked about how warfare has changed in recent years, what the role of Ukraine is in this, and what experience the West can gain from it?
Kyiv Post: Why is the Ukrainian armory unique What makes Ukrainian military production and manufacturing unique? What can we offer to the West?
Volodymyr Cherniuk: Unfortunately, in the last 12 years, and especially in the last 4 years, we have been in a war with Russia, and this is a war for our existence.
And this requires a lot of effort from citizens – this is why our industry grew so much and why the involvement of our citizens is so huge!
Right now, many specialists from different fields of industry have come to the miltech area to protect our country with their expertise.
Before 2022, we had fewer capabilities, so it was easier to develop new products than to scale existing ones.
The countries that have a lot of heritage and large military industries – it’s hard for them to adopt new technologies, but it was easier for us, because it was new warfare, and Russia has more people, a larger amount of resources, so we have to think asymmetrically, so we started making drones for $500 to shut down Russian tanks and helicopters, and that’s why we are still in this war and still fighting.
Yes, we had a big boost from European allies with tanks, armory, fighter aircraft, etc., other stuff we cannot produce yet, but this unique new warfare was produced and tested in Ukraine.
Actually, now only two military forces in the world – Ukrainian and Russian – have such experience.
What exact kinds of weapons and miltech production can you point to?
We categorized as unmanned systems warfare. Three domains – first is aerial domain, all in the air. Second is a ground, UGV, turrets, etc., and the third is the sea domain, the water domain: sea surface drones and underwater drones that can damage big ships – a new type of warfare.
Also, all this needs to be countered somehow, so we have the domain of electronic warfare and anti-drone systems for different types of weapons.
What efforts have had the biggest effect?
More and more types of operations can by done by the drones. Of course, there are a lot of people who believe that you cannot defend the land without standing there, like boots on the ground, with infantry soldiers.
But we see the opposite tendency, we see a lot of units like Khartia of Azov, who is fully in this field, and can counter the Russian advantage on some territory. We started from consumer hobby drones and came to the famous FPVs. And now we can to the full cycle of production of cost-efficient military drone. We don’t use consumer electronics inside them, we have all the components, PCBs [printed circuit boards], and so forth, made by Ukrainian companies.
We see the 5-km range when you can hit a Russian infantry soldier and 1000-km range where you can execute a deep strike on an oil refineries or on a production facilities.
So can we say that most drone parts and components are made in Ukraine, not in China?
This is not completely true, I want to be optimistic. We have some dependence on imports, not only Chinese.
But we have made huge developments on components, and some of them we produce are not the same, they are even better. Like flight controllers, some of the imports had some functions we don’t need. And now one of our companies produces motors for FPV drones, and no other country produces these in the world.
And, I’m very positive about this continuing in the future.
How many are we producing right now?
We were targeting production of 4.5 millions drones last year – and we could now make more than 5 million, mostly in tactical drones, like the FPV.
So, all together, I think we will produce up to 6 million.
For example, just one Ukrainian manufacturer produces almost 20,000 FPV [drones] with fiber optics per month, and the length of optic cable is enough go around the Earth 10 times – and it’s only one month of production by one manufacturer in Ukraine.
Are we standing on the edge of new type of war?
The average losses of Russian soldiers in recent months have been from 30,000 to 50,000, with 50k being the goal. But we don’t have all of our drones dealing only with the Russian infantry soldiers. We also have to intercept Russian reconnaissance drones to prevent our own losses and save our soldiers – by denying them the ability to observe our defenders’ positions, etc.
What about the interceptors: Why are they so popular now? Why are they called “pisun”?
Great naming!
It shows our Ukrainian mentality – we always trying find something positive.
The name “P1-Sun” can be written as “PIsun” – and in Ukrainian this actually means “a dick.” And if you look at it like that – seeing the 1 as an I – you’ll get the humor.
The cost of interceptor drones are from $1,000 to $1,500 – and it is a very efficient solution: Every Shahed costs from $50,000 to $150,000, so if you shoot it down with a Patriot missile you will lose economically.
P1Sun is solving the problem. But the P1Sun and other interceptors – yes they work perfectly from the box but they are not enough. You need tactics, qualified personnel. You need knowledge, how to use data from radio locative systems, how to work with data from drone’s camera in the short period of time. We have this skills and knowledge we gained through the time and pain and this experience more powerful than drone itself.
Are we talking not only about drones but about the entire system?
Exactly. In Ukraine we have a few layers of air defense.
First, different systems detecting drones and calculating their routes. We have one input, different suppression – interceptors, electronic warfare, machine gun groups, army aviation, Patriots, etc. – all this have to work together. And look at the result! We have 500 Shaheds every night and striking down 95% of them – its a precedent of effectiveness!
Another point – land drones. Better than the Boston dynamics dog?
We need to think about durability, about operational success, and the cost the operation – you can’t spend millions for planting just a few mines.
And it has to be effective and be able to multi-task. Land drones need to do a variety of different tasks – evacuation of wounded; logistics – bringing ammo; mining and de-mining; detection of enemy infantry; and even fighting the enemy.
Sometimes Russians don’t even know what killed them – they’re looking for soldiers, but our soldiers are sitting kilometers away from the site while controlling the land drone.
Why should the West be interested in these new technologies?
I think it’s stupid of them if they’re not interested.
As I said you can watch a lot of videos, or try reverse engineering; but you can’t copy tactics and the experience of how it should be used.
We, Ukrainians, are fighting for our existence and we are glad for the help and we can share the experience.
We don’t want to lose our companies and have our investments moved away. We don’t want our companies to become French, German of Brazilian in a few weeks.
We need to be partners and allies – and work together.
We can help in what our democratic world is fighting right now; but we want to be equal in these relations.
And I think we can and should be treated as equals and take our rightful part in the world safely.