KYIV, UKRAINE (AP) – The Ukrainian government launched an initiative to streamline and promote innovation in the development of drones and other technologies that have been critical during Russia’s war in Ukraine yesterday.
As part of the initiative dubbed Brave1, the government hopes to bring state, military, and private sector developers working on defence issues together into a tech cluster that would give Ukraine a battlefield advantage.
“Considering the enemy that is right next to us and its scale, we definitely need to develop the military tech so that we can defend ourselves,” Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, said.
Fedorov told AP ahead of yesterday’s official announcement that the government had earmarked more than UAH100 million (about USD2.7 million) to fund projects that have the potential to help Ukraine win the 14-month conflict.
“There are many people on the battlefield now of the young generation that can work with technologies, and they need them,” he said.
Both Ukraine and Russia make frequent use of unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and in attacks. Russia extensively uses Iran’s long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones, to damage Ukrainian power plants.
The Ukrainian government launched a public fundraising drive last year asking foreign donors to help it build an “army of drones”.
The Moscow-appointed head of the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea Mikhail Razvozhayev, reported this week that Russian forces destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted to attack the harbour and another one blew up. Ukrainian officials stopped short of openly claiming responsibility, as they had done after earlier attacks on Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
A board member of combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka Oleksandr Kviatkovskyi, sees Brave1 as a platform the military can use to communicate its electronic warfare needs and providing strategic support to the military technology industry.
