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Ukrainian long-range rocket costs less than $1 million, needs to be reduced – Fedorov
A long-range missile of Ukrainian production costs less than $1 million, and the next step will be to scale its production.
About it reported Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov in an interview with the Associated Press (AP), transmits Interfax-Ukraine.
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"I think it will change the rules of the game, because we will be able to strike where Russia does not expect it today," he said.
At the same time, one of the experts who participated in the project told the AP that this is a completely new development, from scratch, which began about 18 months ago.
According to him, the rocket has a solid-fuel accelerator that accelerates it, followed by a jet engine.
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FROZEN CONFLICT OR How Ukraine could become the next South Korea
>>Alex Bornyakov, Deputy Minister of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, says Ukraine War Could Last a Decade
The deputy minister of digital transformation is working to cut red tape and attract foreign investors to homegrown defense startups.
“I think when the war is over, probably a decade from now, Ukraine has the perfect chance to become one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to defense equipment,” Alex Bornyakov, deputy minister of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, said Wednesday during a panel at the Defense One Tech Summit.
Bornyakov, a 41-year-old foer entrepreneur, is practically an old man in his four-year-old ministry. His boss, Mykhailo Fedorov, is 32.The ministry was originally founded to digitize Ukraine’s government services.
Since the start of the war, it has pivoted to security, including supporting the acquisition of military drones and schools that train soldiers to use them.
“The First World War was an artillery war, the Second World War was a motor war, and this is a drone war,” said Nataliia Kushnerska, the chief operating officer of Brave1, a new government-funded incubator for defense tech.
- Bornyakov’s ministry launched Brave1 on April 26, and now works with companies developing electronic warfare, navigation, geo-location, demining, artificial intelligence, Kushnerska said.
- Already, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has certified three products for use by its forces.
“I would call it an intermediary success,” said Bornyakov.
- Among the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s priorities is radically reducing the bureaucracy needed to get weapons in the hands of the troops who needed them.
- Before the war, fielding a new technology might take three to five years. Now, their goal is to make it take as little as three months, Borynakov said.
Speeding up the process requires the Ministry of Digital Transformation to change laws, as they’ve done with drone-import regulations, as well as finding the right cadre of bureaucrats.
“There's a huge problem with people that are in a place, and for some reason they could keep paperwork for months,” Borynakov said. “Our goal is to win, and we cannot afford to lose so much time.”
Bornyakov’s ministry seeks to remove those who are unwilling, and promote more savvy managers. Among their employees are Ukrainians who have combat experience. “They have a natural motive to fight the enemy,” he said.
In addition to helping start-ups navigate the Ministry of Defense’s contracting process, Brave1 also gives grants, with 100 million hryvnias ($2.7 million) in capital so far. The first grants will be given in the next two to three weeks, Kushnerska said.
The Ministry of Digital Transformation is also seeking private investment to develop these new technologies. The Ministry has two funds funded by foreign capital worth around $50 million each, and it wants more.
- “Most of the well-known funds are out of the picture,” said Bornyakov, due to their unwillingness to invest in defense products.
- Ukraine is also in talks with NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic, or DIANA; he said he had a “good conversation” with them.
- Ukraine is also interested in working with the investment arms of major U.S. defense providers such as Lockheed Martin, but Bornyakov described little progress so far.
Russia, meanwhile, has nearly the opposite problem, said Sam Bendett, an analyst at CNA who follows the use of drones in the Russia-Ukraine war.
While Ukraine’s state has embraced start-ups as key to defense, Russia’s goliath defense industry is uninterested in ceding way to upstarts pitching cheaper platforms like the quad-copter drones that have dominated Ukraine’s battlefields.
“A lot of people in the Russian military are not interested in very cheap and expendable solutions,” Bendett said. “When a massive defense company like Almaz Antei wants to build a quad-copter, it’s going to build its own quad-copter.”
Russia’s slow-moving defense industry isn’t necessarily a battlefield liability it might seem though, Bendett cautioned, noting Russia’s widescale and effective use of Iranian suicide drones like the Shahed.
The Russian military “still is rather objective and realistic when it comes to adopting other technologies which already exist,” Bendett said.
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Ukraine’s Palianytsia missile drone costs less than US$1 million – Minister of Digital Transformation
Details: Fedorov refused to specify the new drone’s range as well as current deliveries, citing security concerns, but said he has been involved in projects to develop domestically-made missiles since late 2022.
The article notes that the new weapon was one of Ukraine's long-term goals. One of the specialists involved in the development of a long-range missile told AP that it is "a completely new development, from scratch," which began about 18 months ago.
The unnamed expert and Fedorov told the newspaper that each missile costs less than $1 million, and the military is turning to the private sector in order to lower production costs even further. "The private market generates solutions incredibly quickly," the minister said.
Fedorov added that this year, private companies became the main suppliers of drones for the Ukrainian army, including those that are now conducting strikes on Russian territory and underwater drones that have repeatedly struck vessels of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
"All types of missiles will be available in Ukraine. If we have our own weapons like this, we will feel more independent and confident," he said, adding that he believes Russia's huge size could also be its vulnerability.
Background: During the recent Independence Day celebrations, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that on 24 August, the Ukrainian army attacked the Russians with a new weapon, the Palianytsia missile drone, for the first time.
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