Ukraine relies on land robots for next phase of war

Ukraine is banking on land robots and is seeking billions more in investments to boost its domestic weapons production, the top Ukrainian official in charge of arms production said on Tuesday during a press conference on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

“This year will be the year of (unmanned) land systems,” said Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries. “You will see more of them on the front lines in the next 12 months,” he said.

Land systems would be used for medical evacuations, logistics, mine clearance and mining, as well as other combat tasks, Kamyshin said.

As Ukraine seeks to deploy increasingly sophisticated weapons to counter Russia, it must first raise the necessary investments to boost production, Kamyshin added.

At the opening of the US office of the state-owned arms company Ukrainian Defense Industry, Kamyshin said he was seeking additional investments of $10 to $15 billion in the Ukrainian arms industry.

The US State Department announced in May a $2 billion subsidy for Ukraine, part of which will go to Ukrainian industry. And this investment is helpful, said Kamyshin, noting that the country has received similar aid from Denmark.

The money could lead to significant improvements in Ukraine’s defense industry, Kamyishin said. For example, if a manufacturer can currently make dozens of drones, it could scale up to hundreds with enough money, he said. “Ukrainian manufacturers work pretty hard,” he said.

According to a presentation in the company’s office, the Ukrainian defense company is already working with a number of US companies on joint production.

The presentation slides named a number of companies involved in current or potential projects. Northop Grumman was listed as a company working on joint production of ammunition and “development of a specialty chemicals plant.” Day and Zimmerman were also listed as partners in joint production of ammunition, while D&M Holdings was listed as a collaborator in the production of propellants and primers.

Other partners include Leonardo, which is working on “integrating laser technology into Ukrainian air defense systems,” and Amentum, which is working on a joint venture and maintenance of armored vehicles.

Kamyshin declined to answer questions about Ukraine’s current or planned production capacity of £155 million. However, he pointed to a lack of investment and energy that limits production. Russian attacks are also a problem, Kamyshin said. Russia carries out about two attacks a week on Ukrainian arms producers.

Ukraine’s efforts to produce more drones domestically have been successful, Kamyshin added. Ukraine can now produce millions of FPV drones, tens of thousands of medium-range drones and thousands of long-range drones, he said.

Now it’s about refining drone production, Kamyshin said. “This year is the year of coordination,” he said, adding that the Ukrainians have used artificial intelligence for targeting and are likely to increase their use of AI even further in the next 12 months.

Ukraine’s move to produce more weapons domestically comes against a backdrop of mixed results in increasing ammunition production among its allies. While the US is on track to produce 1.2 million rounds of 155mm shells annually from next summer, capacity across the EU is around 500,000 rounds per year.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said in a speech at the Estonian embassy on Tuesday that he was “mostly satisfied” with the increase in production, although there was still room for improvement. One limiting factor, Pevkur said, is that it could take a year or more to build new ammunition factories due to local regulations.

At a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, a group of defense industry executives highlighted another problem facing European manufacturers – a problem that Ukrainian manufacturers probably don’t have, since they have already been defending themselves against Russia’s full-scale invasion for two years.

“What we have so far lacked – at least in part – is long-term predictability” or contracts with NATO member states, says Thomas Gottschild, CEO of MBDA Germany. “We still have to work on that.”