On the menu today: I was ready to report that Wednesday had been quiet for the city of Kyiv, with just one air-raid siren as I was visiting the Cathedral of Saint Sophia. But then, in the early morning hours, Russia launched a large-scale air attack on the city — one that thankfully was intercepted by the Ukrainian air-defense systems, leaving only ten injured and no fatalities, at least as of this writing.
Yesterday I went . . . somewhere in Ukraine, to get a tour of a still largely secret drone-production and research-and-development facility. It’s something of an engineer’s dream, where all previous barriers to cooperation and collaboration in the Ukrainian defense industry have disappeared, and workers from all kinds of different firms put their heads together to come up with the best, most effective, least costly, and fastest solutions.
Kyiv under Attack
Kyiv, Ukraine — In the early morning hours, Russia launched its largest air attack on the city of Kyiv in weeks. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that “the enemy attacked with two Iskander-M ballistic/aeroballistic missiles (KN-23) / Kh-47M2 Kinjal, as well as 29 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles from 11 strategic bombers Tu-95MS. . . . The rockets came from the north, the main direction of the attack — Kyiv. Anti-aircraft missile units of the Air Force and mobile fire units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine were involved in repelling the air attack. As a result of successful combat work, all enemy missiles were shot down in the Kyiv region!”
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the social-media app Telegram, “The number of victims increased to ten. Two of them were hospitalized. Others were treated by medics on the spot. In particular, six people were injured in the Shevchenkiv district of the capital. Four — in Svyatoshynsk.”
I am in Podil, and Mayor Klitschko said debris fell in this neighborhood. It apparently wasn’t in the streets near me.
President Biden’s national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is in town for meetings with the Ukrainians; it is extremely unlikely that Russia was unaware of the presence of a high-level U.S. official in the city.
I wish I had some dramatic story to tell you, but I heard a bang a little after 5 a.m., and that was about it. The all-clear chimes sounded around 6:10 a.m. local time.
The Drone Facility Russia Wants to Destroy
Somewhere in Ukraine — I am not allowed to tell you where this drone-production facility is.
Picture Tony Stark’s high-tech workshop constructed out of an old factory or warehouses, with the distinct, pungent scent of soldering hanging in the air. The facility specializes in two products: high-tech portable power stations and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).
This is part of Brave1, a “united co-ordinational platform created by the government of Ukraine to promote collaboration between all stakeholders of the defense tech industry by providing them with organizational, informational, and financial support for defense tech projects in Ukraine.” In other words, everyone in the defense-technology industry, from all sorts of companies, now works on the same team, freely trading information, data, and innovations.
Greg Pavlov, the UGV project manager, showed me around. He was a whirling dervish of energy, walking quickly, talking quickly — he’s a man with a million things to do on a list that is always growing, and the deadline is always, “as soon as possible.” Lives depend upon what comes out of this facility, how well it works, and how quickly it can be refined and deployed.
Pavlov told me Brave1 aims “to help different engineers, researchers, manufacturers to speed up the process, to scale and to give real feedback about the devices.” He described a meeting at a shooting range a few weeks ago: “Fifty different ground drones, with different types of missions. And we’ve been testing all of them together. And we’ve been talking with different engineers, trying to collaborate — some teams will have progress in the network and communication, and another team will have progress with controllers, and all of us are ready to share. We’re not hiding some progress on our projects from each other.”
Before the war, this facility was used for the research and development and manufacture of much more mundane products for the civilian market. The first need Pavlov’s team identified was getting portable electrical power — giant batteries, basically — to the troops.
“There was nothing on the market — people started buying these civilian sh**-boxes,” Pavlov explained. “Producers expected that you would use them, once a week, for a picnic to charge your mobile phone.” Out in the field, Ukrainian soldiers would use them much more frequently, “in very tough conditions, and they would last for two or three months, maximum. Sometimes, they catch on fire.”
The Ukrainians needed a light, reliable, durable battery or power station — one that wouldn’t catch fire, and, ideally, would be small enough to carry around in a backpack. And within weeks, thanks to the bright engineering minds putting their heads together, they had one.
The ground drones can carry loads, deploy mines, or, for one model, carry a wounded individual. Pavlov described how the Russians consider a group of four Ukrainian soldiers carrying a fifth injured soldier on a stretcher a worthwhile target for a drone attack, but usually don’t bother with one or two soldiers.
The future of warfare is being designed, tested, and deployed on the battlefields of Ukraine — and with increasing frequency, across the border in Russia. The Russians and Ukrainians are in a constant game of cat and mouse, developing new measures and countermeasures; drones in the air and on the ground are now irreplaceable tools in each army’s arsenal. This has made signals-jamming and countermeasures an area of furiously intense research. Engineers are constantly attempting to devise new antennas to expand the range of a jammer.
Pavlov described how a new measure or tool that was groundbreaking and innovative when deployed on the battlefield just three months ago can be useless today.
Everyone who is working at the facility is making what is called the “volunteers’ salary,” which is about $4,000 to $5,000 per year — “enough to cover your petrol bills and lunch,” as Pavlov puts it. He says that the people working here have some other source of income or savings. “We cannot afford even average salaries in the market. People who work here have the motivation to win the war. They’re not motivated with money.”
About 30 percent of the staff working at this facility are currently enlisted. “Some of them arrive here to train, to understand how it works, the technologies, because we expect them to open service centers close to the front line, to repair their own drones. The ones that we are building in our own factory, we are trying to make easy to assemble for those who are not professionals.”
The Russians may well have an idea that this particular drone-production facility is important. They sent a very large rocket to destroy it some time in the past (not part of this morning’s attacks, as far as I know) and thankfully, it was intercepted and destroyed a few hundred meters away from its target.
Members of the military, and high-value sites like this one, have access to special information about incoming rockets, Shahib drones, and other threats; I was told to envision a system similar to FlightRadar.
“When you see where they are flying, you don’t have enough time, it is two minutes, so you don’t have enough time to get everyone to the bomb shelter,” Pavlov told me. “They are moving so fast, you have one minute. . . . So, all the people who are working here, they understand that this could be their last day.”
But the operations cope with more than just the risk of a Russian bombing attack. “Every week we send part of our team to the front line,” Pavlov says, describing a team of mechanical, electrical, and other skilled engineers heading east, most often for tank repairs.
Pavlov calls the need for tank repairs “a huge problem” for the Ukrainian army, because they don’t have any spares sitting around to replace a broken one.
“Sometimes intercoms, sometimes some electrical problems. Sometimes the gun is not moving. If you take away these tanks for repair, probably we will lose this brigade and this position. That’s why we have to go there, with our engineers, to the front line.”
ADDENDUM: Thanks to everyone who read this newsletter over the past two weeks or so. In case you’ve missed a day, I have discussed the outlook for the war with David Knowles of the Daily Telegraph and national-security researcher and analyst Kyle Orton; examined the expanding role of the Poles and the folly of attempting good-faith negotiations with Vladimir Putin; heard Halyna Melnyk’s description of 36 refugees staying in her parents’ house at one time, and Anastasiya Gren’s discussing what it’s like to run a restaurant during a war; contemplated former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst’s case for optimism about the Ukrainian cause; examined the constitutional, logistical, and safety issues hindering the holding of an election in Ukraine until the war is over or martial law ends; enjoyed Maryan Zablotskiy’s succinct summary that “when you get to shoot back, the morale is higher”; reviewed the new European efforts to arm the Ukrainians; contemplated the importance of the Kerch Bridge and the Crimean peninsula; and heard Kyiv Post editor Bohdan Nahaylo wonder whether Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will even want to stay in office if the war ends on terms favorable to his country.
I thank you for reading; it makes trips like these — and the modest and manageable, but not nonexistent risks that go with them — worthwhile.