Two young men in their thirties, sporting hipster looks and with phones in hand, appear in a cafe in Pechersk, the capital of Ukraine. The arranged meeting is a prelude to a trip to a location this publication is barred from naming for safety reasons. After an hour on the road from Kyiv, the team reaches the agreed place. It is an old airfield abandoned since Russia’s large-scale invasion. Today it serves to test and calibrate new drone models before they are deployed to the front. All units are of Ukrainian manufacture.
War with Russia has wiped out many sectors of Ukraine’s economy in a single stroke. Yet two years of ongoing hardship, with Western arms shortages and a constant need for rearmament, have sparked private sector initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on foreign suppliers. These efforts are also welcomed by Ukraine’s allies. Because the factories must stay secure from bombardment, their locations remain confidential. A strategy is also employed: production is divided among several sites so that if one is attacked, the others can continue operating.
Airlogix, the company that agreed to speak with this journalist, epitomizes the trend. From a staff of twenty in 2020 focused on commercial drone production, the company has grown to about one hundred employees who now mostly manufacture military drones. Viktor Lokotkov, the spokesperson, notes that the time to produce a surveillance drone is currently around two months, and roughly 25 drones of this type leave their plants each month.
“We are one of about twenty companies producing the 64 drone models certified as Ukrainian-made”, Lokotkov states. These drones are suitable for use along Ukraine’s borders and across the roughly 1,000 kilometers of active front where such weapons help lower soldier casualties. Dmytro Piatrin, the commercial representative, adds that the Russians have larger manpower, which makes the deployment of reliable unmanned systems even more critical.
In the old airfield near Kyiv, Commander Lev, who shares only a battle name, explains that his unit has already worked with these drones. A key advantage lies in the frequencies used to transmit the captured data. He emphasizes that the systems are useful because Russians already know the frequencies used by European and American drones and can jam them, but they do not have the same level of familiarity with the new models’ frequencies.
The model currently being tested can fly up to about 3,000 meters and cover a range of up to 80 kilometers without a connection, using autopilot. The training for soldiers in the drone unit lasts one to three weeks, including several days of initial calibration to set all parameters. Lev notes that calibration is the most demanding part. Once in the field, the unit can activate the drones within seven to ten minutes, with as little as 30 seconds for takeoff, while teammates receive live footage in a truck.
In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated that Ukraine would produce one million drones this year. Piatrin challenges that figure, estimating the need at three million. A year-old report from the British center RUSI suggests Ukraine loses around 10,000 drones each month. At present, production runs at roughly 55,000 drones per month, or about 660,000 per year. Lokotkov, however, remains optimistic, noting that a month earlier production stood at 40,000.
Beyond drones, Ukraine has pursued other industrial victories in these two war years. Metinvest, the steel group controlled by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, manufactures anti-mine rollers. Kyiv has also developed a new long-range missile based on the Neptune naval missiles and is producing 155-millimeter artillery ammunition, though at insufficient quantities according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s push to expand domestic armament has drawn NATO interest as well. NATO has called for increased production within Ukraine and urged alliances to forge new partnerships with Ukrainian industry. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking with Zelenskiy, said that as Ukraine grows stronger, it will become even stronger, signaling stronger resistance to Russian aggression. Whether these plans will hold under pressure remains uncertain, especially as Kyiv reports shortages of ammunition. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an American think tank, has questioned Kyiv’s ability to shield weapon-producing facilities on Ukrainian soil from Russian attacks.
Nevertheless, in October Rheinmetall, the German arms giant, partnered with Ukroboronprom, a Ukrainian state enterprise, to manufacture armored vehicles and tanks within Ukraine and to repair arms sent by Western allies. At the end of August, British firm BAE Systems announced a deal to start producing 105-millimeter artillery in Ukraine. While these partnerships promise progress, the path to broad, reliable domestic military production still faces looming challenges, and the question remains how effective such a strategy will be under ongoing pressure from the front lines.