Since February 24, 2022, millions of Ukrainians have put their pre-war skills to use as part of their country's collective effort to first halt, then to push back Russia's full scale invasion. Among them, of course, are the tens of thousands of Donbas War veterans and ordinary citizens who have volunteered for duty on the frontlines.
But the group also includes entrepreneurs who raise money to buy basic kit for soldiers, volunteers who deliver such supplies to the troops doing the fighting, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enthusiasts whose former hobby is now playing a crucial role on the battlefield.
"Ukraine has become a huge testing ground for drone warfare, and our lab is just a part of it," Maxim Sheremet, leader of Dronarnia, a Kyiv-based group that engineers a wide range of pilotless aircraft for military use, told Newsweek.
"Every day we get feedback from the frontline," Sheremet explained, "and we continue to modify our products to improve performance based on the direct experience of pilots and operators."
Sheremet's group, which went to work on March 8, 2022 with 10 volunteers and now boasts a crew of over 200, produces everything from the relatively inexpensive first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones that are used to attack Russian armor behind the front lines to the larger, more expensive octocopter versions that can drop a munition on a target before returning back to base.
Dronarnia also equips unmanned aircraft with cameras used for intelligence gathering, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, and can even outfit them with sensors that help detect and map the locations of Russian landmines.
"The difference between the drones we were making in early 2022 and today is amazing," Sheremet said. "Soldiers come to me and say 'Maxim, we need a drone that can perform this specific task.' Then we find the funding and engineer something that can do the job they need to get done."
Dronarnia 's efforts haven't gone unnoticed—the Russian side is watching closely and has adapted accordingly. A recent report from the Royal United Services Institute estimated Ukraine's drone losses at approximately 10,000 per month, a figure that presumably includes the untold number of kamikaze FPV craft making one-way trips behind Russian lines in search of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, troop concentrations, or any other militarily relevant target worth of a payload.
Russia has also manufactured a substantial drone fleet of its own.
"For the most part, large manufacturers produce the drones the Russians use," Sheremet said. "We build better drones than the Russians do, but they build more of them."
Sheremet estimates that Ukraine can only produce between 3 percent and 5 percent of the drones it needs on the front.
"It would cost millions of dollars to create the types of facilities capable of building drones in the numbers that are needed, and we can't do it without investment," he explained. "But it's difficult to attract investment to a country that is at war."
