I posted on the Corner the other day about the increasing sophistication of Ukrainian defense tech, the investment it is attracting, and the prospect that Ukraine could become a useful contributor to European rearmament, as well as to European (and not just European) defense.
The Wall Street Journal has more:
European nations are snapping up Ukrainian front-line know-how, helping NATO militaries rewire themselves for a transformed battlefield that is dominated by drones and electronic warfare, and where even new weapons can become obsolete in a few months.
For countries like Germany, the “Build With Ukraine” initiative allows them to couple state subsidies with Ukrainian innovation, revitalizing sluggish economies and retooling ailing factories. For Ukraine, it means more weapons to its troops—paid for by its allies. . . .
On the same day as opening the factory, Zelensky also announced another partnership in Germany between the drone-software company Auterion, based in Germany and the U.S., and the Ukrainian drone maker Airlogix, a project that is slated to receive hundreds of millions of euros in German subsidies.
Drones have been around for a long time (arguably, the first was the “doodlebug,” Germany’s V-1), but technological advance and battlefield experience in the Russo-Ukrainian war are, as so often is the case, sparking a technological, tactical, and strategic revolution.
Thus:
In the recently opened factory near Munich, the venture between Quantum Systems, a German drone maker, and Frontline Robotics, a Ukrainian military technology company, is the first Build With Ukraine project to go into production. The plan is to make 10,000 Linza drones every year in the first instance.
When the full-scale war began in 2022, Quantum Systems supplied the Ukrainian military with its own winged observation drone, called Vector. It enabled one of the most spectacular tactical setbacks for Russia—the destruction of a large Russian armored force as it attempted to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in the Luhansk region in May 2022.
But within a few months, the rapid development of Russia’s electronic-warfare capability rendered the Vector drones obsolete.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is deploying Lucas (FLM-136) kamikaze drones in Iran, using a technology reportedly based on reverse engineering the Iranian Shahed136s used by Moscow against Ukraine, often under license as a Geran-2.
Peter Caddick-Adams, writing in Engelsberg Ideas:
Drones have been equipped to carry cameras, thermal imaging, machine-guns, grenades and flame-throwers, whilst lasers are being trialed. Other unmanned drones haul logistics about combat terrain. The first battle casualties have been retrieved from behind enemy lines by unmanned land vehicles. Ukraine currently deploys about 9,000 of all types of drones daily, with both antagonists producing around four million each a year, and China capable of building more than double that number. These figures will only increase. All troops have to be trained in their use, but the slower-procuring military forces of the West have yet to react to the scale of these lightning-speed technological developments. The collective drone output of all the NATO nations is tiny by comparison, a gap which should terrify western planners.
Drones are, of course, not invincible, not least because they tend to be fairly slow. The Shahed 136’s maximum speed is a little over 100 mph, but if the weapon that brings one down is a Patriot air-defense missile (as has not infrequently been the case), the economics are tough, especially in the event of a prolonged conflict. The cost of the Patriot is about $14 million, the Shahed $20,000.
Fortunately, the Patriot is far from the only way of downing drones. Among other expedients, the Ukrainians use heavy machine guns mounted on rooftops. Incredibly these include an updated presence from the past.
Caddick-Adams:
The mainstay Ukrainian heavy machine-gun remains the water-cooled, belt-fed 7.62mm Maxim, first issued on little wheels to the soldiers of Tsar Nicholas II in 1910. Mounted singly, in double, triple or quadruple configurations, with modern optics it is still highly regarded as the preferred slayer of infantry — and drones. Sometimes there is no point to reinventing the wheel.
But they still have to be manufactured.