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Facing manpower shortages, overwhelming odds, and uneven international assistance, Ukraine is looking to an unlikely source for a strategic edge against Russia: abandoned warehouses and factory basements. Here, in hundreds of secret workshops, an ecosystem of laboratories is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.
Defense startups across Ukraine—about 250 according to industry estimates—are developing these killing machines at secret locations that typically resemble rural car repair shops. One such startup, run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko, can assemble an unmanned ground vehicle called the Odyssey in just four days. The most remarkable feature of this vehicle is its price tag: $35,000, or roughly 10% of the cost of an imported model.
Denysenko requested that The Associated Press not disclose the location to protect both the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is divided into small rooms for welding and bodywork, which includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green, and fitting them with basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras, and thermal sensors.
The Ukrainian military is currently assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground, and marine vehicles produced by these no-frills startups, whose production methods are a stark contrast to those of giant Western defense companies. In May, Ukraine’s military added a fourth branch—the Unmanned Systems Forces—to its army, navy, and air force.
Engineers take inspiration from defense magazines and online videos to produce cost-effective platforms that can later be fitted with weapons or smart components. "We are fighting a huge country with unlimited resources. We understand that we cannot afford to lose many lives," said Denysenko, who leads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics."
One of the company’s drones, the car-sized Odyssey, demonstrated its capabilities in a cornfield in northern Ukraine last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype, which resembles a small, turretless tank on wheels, can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on a single battery charge. It currently acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or deploy mine-clearing charges.
"Squads of robots will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers, deminers, and self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page stated after the launch of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield."
Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He envisions Ukrainians producing a million flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page noted. "Many more."
Denysenko’s company is also working on a motorized exoskeleton to boost a soldier’s strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier’s equipment and even help them up inclines. "We will do everything to accelerate the development of unmanned technologies. Russia’s murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post.
Ukraine has already deployed semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI, raising concerns among experts who fear that low-cost drones will proliferate and escalate conflicts. Technology leaders from the United Nations and the Vatican have voiced concerns that drones and AI in weapons could lower the barrier to killing.
Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision-making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk, and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[Information sourced from AP]
