Life-or-death pressure to innovate has produced a weird fusion of Silicon Valley and trench warfare.
KYIV — On the computer screen, you can see the thicket of Russian jammers and antiaircraft missiles that obstructs a simulated Ukrainian drone attack from “Launch Site Alpha,” near Kherson, to “Target Site Oscar” in Russian-occupied Crimea.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has pledged that Ukraine will build 1 million drones this year to supplement its dwindling supply of weapons and artillery from the West. On any given day, each side has nearly 3,000 drones in the air, Tskhakaia says. The front line has become a digital shooting gallery.Ukrainian officials tell me that electronic jammers are everywhere at the front, blocking GPS and other signals. But some drones get through.
Ukrainian technology has evolved from simple quadcopters that can travel a few miles to big fixed-wing drones that can reach deep inside Russia. The next step is to equip these drones with virtual mapping and artificial intelligence so that they can get to their targets even through a blizzard of Russian jamming. A half-dozen companies here are already perfecting that AI technology — and making it cheap enough to power thousands of smart drones.
Each month, Terminal Autonomy is now building 3,000 Bayonets and 100 Scythes, which Serra-Martins says he could ramp up to 500 or more. In competition with other start-ups, Serra-Martins says he’s learning to cut costs. He builds the drones with cheap wood in converted furniture factories. He hopes to slash the price of a Bayonet drone from about $2,000 to $1,000 later this year.
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