How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war

The grinding, attritional war between Russia and Ukraine is now entirely dominated by drones. Russia pummels Ukraine with long-range kamikaze aircraft and Ukraine knocks them out of the sky with specialised interceptors. The front line has transitioned from an artillery battle to a first-person-view drone fight, while ground-based robots are increasingly used to deliver ammunition and supplies, launch attacks and evacuate the wounded.

As a result, in the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has created from nothing an entire industry and ecosystem capable of designing, manufacturing and operating a variety of ingenious drones. New Scientist was granted access to the pilot schools, labs and factories that are the engine room of this new industry – one that Kyiv hopes to make beneficial and profitable, selling expertise and devices to Western states, once the war is over.

Taras Ostapchuk’s sudden transition from civilian life to the military is a common story in Ukraine today. Before the war, he ran a company making streetlights. He enrolled in the army in 2022 and ended up as an aerial drone pilot. An injury ended his military career in 2024, but he wanted to keep contributing to the war effort, so he started a new company to make drones, turning to YouTube and internet forums to find out how to do it. That company, Ratel Robotics, now employs more than 300 people and sells a range of ground drones designed for everything from placing and clearing landmines to evacuating injured troops and delivering supplies and ammunition.

I travelled to a nondescript and empty field some way outside Kyiv, where machine gunfire from a nearby army training ground echoed in the morning fog, to see some of Ratel’s current line-up in testing. Soon, a van towing a trailer arrived and three men emerged. Within minutes, a pair of machines, each around the size of a ride-on lawnmower, were zipping around under remote control.

The four-wheeled Ratel M and its six-wheeled big brother Ratel X are surprisingly nimble, given their bulk, and can spin 360 degrees on the spot. The larger of the two can carry a 600-kilogram load at 12 kilometres per hour over more than 100 kilometres. With its flat top, it can ferry any kind of supplies and ammunition to where they are needed while keeping humans and expensive vehicles out of harm’s way. Many parts of the front line are now so vulnerable to drone attacks that a petrol or diesel truck – with a hot engine glaringly easy to spot on infrared cameras – is a sitting duck.

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Ratel’s drones are fully electric and virtually silent when moving slowly, winding up into a whir as they pick up speed. I watch them climb steep slopes, splash through mud and chase each other around the field. I am invited to hop on board with two Ratel engineers and the robot zooms around the training ground, seemingly unaware of our extra weight. It is easy to imagine the relief you would feel as one of these arrived with vital supplies, or if you were a wounded soldier being picked up and evacuated. And operators can be kilometres behind the front line, or even on the other side of the world, working in safety from a laptop via a Starlink connection. To my surprise, I am handed the controls and find it instantly familiar – like driving a remote-controlled car.

Already, 100 of these particular models are in use on the front line – and while most of the missions they are used for are secret, I’m told that one was still able to operate recently with two wheels blown off. Ostapchuk tells me of another mission where one of his devices, laden with 400 kilograms of explosive, silently crawled up to a building full of Russian soldiers before detonating. “I enjoy what I do,” he says.

The damage one device can do is staggering, but the cost is surprisingly low. The six-wheeled Ratel H costs just $55,000, complete with a trailer, a Starlink dish, a laptop and a controller. Ostapchuk says that a comparable machine from a European supplier costs €350,000 and wasn’t nearly as capable when tested. It also relied heavily on Chinese components, a security risk that Ratel is working hard to get away from by developing its own motors. “China is a big problem, in my mind, for all the world. Europe should decide who will build weapons and robots for the next war,” says Ostapchuk.

The difference between defence firms in Ukraine versus the rest of Europe is, of course, that Ukraine is already at war, with drone developers testing their equipment daily in battle and receiving constant feedback, says Ostapchuk. I get the impression that there is no greater incentive for speedy R&D than Russian soldiers fighting their way towards your city.

Warfare moves skywards

While ground drones like those produced by Ratel are increasingly important for Ukraine’s military, aerial drones are how the bulk of the war is being fought. A military source in Kyiv tells me that at least 60 per cent of all casualties – on both sides – are killed by first-person-view (FPV) drones, controlled by a human operator watching through an on-board camera.

Among Russia’s most-feared weapons are the Iranian-made Shahed drones, which look like a cross between a missile and a small plane. I saw an undetonated one propped upright in a military hanger, looming over me at 2.6 metres long. Up close, the drones are intimidating, but Ukrainians have become accustomed to the constant risk that a wave of them might make it past air defences – they are launched in great numbers designed to overwhelm countermeasures – and strike their homes, workplaces or schools with 15-kilogram payloads.

On the train to Kyiv, a woman tells me of the constant struggle over whether to seek shelter during these nightly drone raids. “Do I want to sleep, or do I want to live?” she says. She says the answer is different each night, but social media channels offer advice on what type of bombardment is going on and which regions are being targeted. Later, from my hotel bed in the capital, I hear several Shaheds being taken out by Ukrainian defences, but also some making their way through to damage nearby homes. Mindful of her advice, I decide the strikes sound far enough away for me to stay in bed.

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A scientist I meet in the north of Ukraine describes the sight when machine guns near the border intercept a wave of Shaheds. “It looks like Star Wars because they use tracer bullets: green, red, different colours,” he says. Any Shaheds that make it past the guns face a final line of Ukrainian interceptor drones. To learn more about these, I meet Marko Kushnir from aerial drone-maker General Cherry at a cafe in Kyiv. He leads me to an outwardly unremarkable office building nearby that houses a research, manufacturing and testing plant. The location of these factories is closely guarded: General Cherry has multiple similar sites around Ukraine, and Kushnir says that one was recently struck by a Russian Shahed drone, whether by chance or design.

The company makes more than two dozen types of drone, each specialised for a different task, but several are designed purely to intercept Shaheds en route to Ukrainian cities. One that Kushnir is particularly proud of is the Bullet. Shaped like a spaceship from a 1950s sci-fi film, it takes off vertically like a normal drone then pivots to the horizontal to reach as much as 310 kilometres per hour. “It’s like a drone missile. You use it like a little rocket,” says Kushnir.

General Cherry’s factory isn’t what I expect from a defence company – it feels more like an internet start-up. The workforce is young, occupying colourful offices where the break room has a pool table, table football, a games console and a huge television. But the people here aren’t tapping away at keyboards. Instead, workers solder components, fit propellers or install batteries, shipping thousands of lethal drones every day to supply fighters across Ukraine.

One sealed room hums with the sound of 90 busy 3D printers, all running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These make propellers, chassis and various other components, consuming 500 kilograms of plastic filament each week. Staff are currently trying to fit another 10 printers in this room, but it’s hard to see where they will go. Making parts like this not only reduces reliance on foreign suppliers, but also lets General Cherry iterate rapidly on feedback from the front line.

Every spare inch of the factory is stacked high with drones of varying models, easily numbering into the thousands, and Kushnir says these are built, tested and shipped out every day. Exact production numbers are sensitive secrets, but Kushnir happily reveals that hundreds of thousands of FPV drones are used up – crashed into the enemy and detonated – every month. He knows of one group of 15 pilots that gets through 25,000 each month.

“Two years ago, this was like science fiction,” says Kushnir. “Three years ago, we had only three tables and we produced 20 FPVs per month; now we make more than 80,000.” General Cherry now has hundreds of employees around Ukraine, none of whom knew anything about drones before the war.

In a final room at General Cherry is a netted enclosure where each and every drone is tested. Two teenage boys sit at a gap in the net. One switches on each drone in turn, establishing a connection with a controller and throwing it inside. The other puts the drone through its paces for 20 seconds, noisily zipping from the top to the bottom of the enclosure, edge to edge, spinning in every direction and landing back at the same spot. This is the first of only two flights that these drones will ever make. Each is turned to shrapnel within days of making it to battle.

Inside Ukraine’s drone schools

And all these machines require human operators. Many of them graduate at the country’s leading drone pilot school: the 3rd Assault Brigade’s “Killhouse Academy”. I’ve arranged to meet a contact who will give me a rare look inside this academy, and I am taken to an abandoned factory. One member of the brigade, who gives his name only as Radio, tells me that it was opened less than two years ago as a simple flying drone pilot school, but has ballooned into a one-stop shop that takes fresh recruits – either military or civilian – and turns them into skilled pilots, ground drone operators or engineers in just a couple of weeks.

Several courses are on offer, and within each discipline there are various levels. Student pilots start in familiar-looking classrooms learning how to fly virtual drones on a laptop or through goggles, taking around a week to master the controls. More advanced courses take place in a vast warehouse housing assault courses complete with mocked-up Russian tanks, mannequins dressed as soldiers and various tyres and hoops hanging from the rafters designed to mimic the sort of tiny, vulnerable gaps and doors in bunkers or tanks that drones need to aim for.

After this, students progress to realistic mocked-up bunkers of the type drone operators use on the front lines, flying real drones outside the building via video screens that are deliberately subjected to noise to mimic the effects of Russian electronic jamming.

If you have ever seen commercial drones drifting around taking footage of tourist attractions, then you will be surprised at the speed and agility of these high-performance devices. They take off, bank towards their direction of travel and disappear towards the horizon at a startling pace, gone before you know it. And an experienced pilot can weave through obstacles at bewildering speeds.

The head of Killhouse Academy’s research and development lab, known only as Shark, explains that pilots need good reflexes and a strong memory so that they can remember enemy positions, areas where signals are regularly jammed and how to navigate the front lines successfully.

Shark says the technology changes fast, with a new innovation coming every few months that completely upends the nature of the drone war. One of those was fibre-optic cables to prevent electronic jamming, another the use of relay drones to bounce radio control signals over greater distances. The latest is large mothership drones that transport several smaller, more agile drones near to the front line and then deploy them – extending range and effectiveness.

It was in this room that Shark realised that cheap commercial video broadcast screens could be used as rudimentary drone detectors – they work on common frequencies, so soldiers could carry one and if they saw a video feed appear, it would alert them that Russian FPV drones were nearby. If they saw themselves on the screen, they would know it was time to run.

One of the engineers making repairs at Killhouse Academy is a 25-year-old diplomacy graduate known as Trusta. She has decided that diplomacy isn’t the right solution to the war anymore and now intends to learn to fly drones, join the army and head to the front. She tells me that she has passed virtually every course this outfit offers, and is now waiting for the right paperwork to ship out. “If you’re ready to work a lot, to train a lot, then you’re going to be a good pilot. It’s mostly about practice, practice, practice,” she says.

Previous wars have been fought by large, homogeneous armies with the same kit. But Ukraine is taking a very different approach. The various brigades and corps of the army compete for funding and recruits like commercial companies might, and they are free to procure and use whatever equipment they see fit.

Not only is drone warfare a matter of life and death, but also one of simple economics. If launching a Shahed at Kyiv costs Russia $50,000, then it needs to cost Ukraine far less to shoot it out of the sky with an interceptor drone, otherwise there is an incentive for Russia to continue the pummelling. If they can use technology to make attacks ineffective or unsustainable, then they can earn a period of respite.

In an effort to ensure that the kit the military needs exists, the Ukrainian government created an unusual organisation called Brave1. It is a programme that collects data from the front lines on what equipment is working, what isn’t and where gaps are. It then provides companies with intelligence, guidance and grants.

Brave1 even operates an online marketplace where machine guns, drones, electronic jammers and body armour are reviewed and can be purchased. Potential customers can chat – via Ukraine’s “situation awareness” software called Delta, which is used to share intelligence among the army, security agency, foreign spy agencies and politicians – about how Brave1 equipment is best used and what it is capable of.

Somewhat jarringly, army units earn “e-points” for verified destruction of Russian equipment or soldiers, and are ranked in league tables, which can then be cashed in for new equipment. The points awarded for different targets change regularly and Brave1 says it doesn’t like to publicly disclose the current list, but recent social media posts suggest that 20 points can be won right now for taking out an enemy tank and 12 for an enemy soldier.

This gamification of war can seem, at first glance, to trivialise the brutal conflict, but it is a deeply pragmatic approach to optimising Ukraine’s limited resources in the face of overwhelming numbers. Gamers make good drone pilots, and gamification motivates gamers. “One-hundred per cent, it’s easier for gamers,” says Shark. “For people who used to spend their evenings playing video games, it’s much, much easier.”

Andrii Hrytseniuk, who runs Brave1, tells me that at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, there were just seven companies making aerial drones in Ukraine, but the department now deals with more than 500. He says Brave1 wants to make sure that the military’s needs are met, but isn’t concerned about standardisation – it prefers a wide diversity of products to hit the marketplace, then soldiers can find out what works best. “Our strong opinion is that we don’t need to coordinate. The army units themselves decide what they really need,” he says.

Brave1 collects footage of drone attacks from across the war, then analyses it with AI – virtually every drone carries cameras, so this is probably the most documented conflict ever, even if most of the footage remains secret. “We’re analysing why, asking the questions, challenging previous decisions and taking new decisions to increase the effectiveness (of attacks),” says Hrytseniuk. “You can buy 155-millimetre artillery and it will be valid for decades. But for drones, this is absolutely not the story. If you design the best drone for today, in half a year the effectiveness will be very low. The innovation cycle right now is measured in months, sometimes even in weeks, not in years.”

Ukraine is responding to a war it didn’t start by creating an entire industry it doesn’t want. But there are signs that once the conflict is over, Ukraine will end up as a world leader in a new type of warfare, which Western governments are all scrabbling to understand. Every company I talk to tells of being in contact and negotiation with foreign states, and some mention European companies testing their devices in Ukraine also.

There is a clear feeling that Western nations are watching what happens in Ukraine closely, knowing that future warfare is going to look very different from anything they have ever seen before. One think tank analyst hints to me that a European spy agency is paying attention to the type of software and hardware being used by both sides, hoping to garner insight and experience.

“Europe and the civilised world is not ready,” says Hrytseniuk. “Only Ukraine and Ukrainian companies understand how it works and what needs to be done.”

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He sees an opportunity for Ukraine to help Western governments with experience, technology and processes. In March, Brave1 will tour the US for two weeks, showing off domestic drone companies to potential investors – the hope being that cash injections can ramp up production yet further.

Ostapchuk had always planned to shut Ratel down once Ukraine won the war. Now, it’s a major employer and the company is in talks with firms in Europe and the US, as well as European states, about sharing manufacturing and knowledge. “I don’t know what will be after we win,” says Ostapchuk. “Now, Ukraine is the only country in the world who knows how to kill Russians, and we’ll teach European countries how to do this.”

Kushnir tells me that General Cherry has no plans to shut down come peacetime either. “These products give us some kind of hope for a good future. Not only for us, for every country in Europe,” he says. “We know how it works, we know how to do it fast, we know how to build factories very fast – like maybe less than one month and you will have a factory with different lines of production. Nobody in the world – maybe except Russia – can do this like us.”