Ukraine Defense Ministry Builds New Community to Facilitate Military Tech Development

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense announced the creation of a new defense tech community to gain a “10:1 technological advantage over the enemy.”

According to the ministry’s announcement, members of the community will receive “mentoring support from leading industry experts” and “feedback from the military as end users of [their] solutions.”

In addition, it also aimed to facilitate “cooperation and exchange of knowledge with like-minded people.”

It said participants of the “Onslaught of Machines” hackathon – a recent coding contest that brought tech specialists together to create solutions for unmanned systems – are automatically members of the community.

The hackathon was announced in January and received more than 2,000 applications, and the ministry selected 450 developers and engineers for participation.

According to a recent press release, 12 winners, each receiving $10,000 in reward, were chosen based on the following criteria:

Creating algorithms for accurate recognition and capture of targets for further destruction
Development of advanced navigation systems
Creation of stable and secure communication systems
Development of solutions for high-speed transmission (in real-time) of intelligence data
Development of algorithms for the coordination of unmanned systems
Creation of network solutions for integration between different types of unmanned systems

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has spent considerable resources on technological innovations to offset the challenges posed by Russia’s manpower and resources.

This has also led to a range of new defense tech products, some of which have already been deployed on the front line.

Similar initiatives from Kyiv included the creation of Brave1, a defense tech cluster that aims to consolidate support for domestic defense tech projects.

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Leo Chiu

Leo Chiu is a news reporter residing in Eastern Europe since 2015 with a profound interest in geopolitics, having witnessed two presidential elections in Belarus and visited numerous contested regions worldwide. He believes in the human side of journalism and that there's a story to be told behind every number and statistic.