Drones, cannons… kyiv relaunches its arms production after nearly two years of war in Ukraine

To compensate for declining Western aid, Ukrainian engineers and industrialists have stepped up their pace. Nearly 50,000 kamikaze drones are now produced each month.

The signal of rebirth for the Ukrainian defense industry was given already last March, when Oleksandr Kamishin, the young but very efficient head of Ukrainian railways, was appointed minister in charge of strategic industries. And for good reason: Western aid to Ukraine is parsimonious.

Politically, supporters of a limitation are making their voice heard, both within the European Union and in the American Congress. Europeans and Americans are also having difficulty keeping up with the pace of production of the arms and munitions that they cede or sell to the Ukrainians… For all these reasons, Kiev has decided to take matters into its own hands and produce it itself, in Ukraine, the materials necessary for its war effort.

Ukraine was, in the past, an arms producer country but they are now obsolete, recalled Oleksandr Kamishin in an interview with the American channel PBS: “We had a strong tradition of defense industry, but to be honest it had been neglected for decades, he explained. As a result, we start almost from scratch. You see we produce drones. This production is only six months old and we are starting to see the results. Ukrainian defense factories run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s never enough, of course, but from now on we can talk about a functioning industry.”

Ukrainian engineers and industrialists therefore got to work. As for kamikaze drones with immersive piloting (with a head-mounted video), Ukraine is already producing 50,000 every month, and promises to double the rate within a year.

Drones produced on an industrial scale

There are also naval drones, these floating bombs controlled by satellite. Here too, the Ukrainians have moved to a stage of industrial production. These drones have made it possible to keep the Russian navy in check in the Black Sea.

For conventional weapons such as cannons, tanks and rifles, here too, Ukrainian industry has accelerated the pace, at least on certain equipment. The Bodhana, for example, a long-range self-propelled gun, of the same type as the French Caesar: at the beginning of December, President Zelensky announced that Ukraine was now producing six per month; that is to say as much as Nexter’s French factories for the Caesar. Quite an industrial performance for a machine that only existed as a prototype a year and a half ago.