The ground shook in Russia on September 17. That day, a hundred Ukrainian bomb drones destroyed one of the largest Russian weapons depots, in the province of Tver. The explosions were so large that they caused a magnitude 2.7 earthquake that was felt within a 92-kilometer radius. The drones took off from Ukraine more than 400 kilometers away from the target. Three days later, two attacks of similar dimensions occurred again. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will return this week from his trip to the United States, most likely without Joe Biden’s authorization for Ukraine to use missiles from NATO countries in long-range missions over Russia. Aware of the weakness of depending on his partners, Zelensky’s plan is to develop his own arsenal in record time.
Next week, two conferences will be held in kyiv that will bring together the 500 Ukrainian arms companies with multinationals from the defense industry. The mantra that Zelensky’s office repeats is that Ukraine can not only be autonomous in its military needs, it can also be the largest arms manufacturer in Europe. But for this to be possible they need investments from abroad. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov stated last Tuesday that 80% of his country’s war capacity depends on deliveries from allies. Umerov also said he had “a verbal commitment” from the main powers in his supporting coalition to finance a Ukrainian missile development program.
Oleksandr Kamishin, Zelensky’s advisor, specified a figure on September 15: for the Ukrainian military industry to function at full capacity it needs 18 billion euros and in the government budget there is only 6.2 billion for this. The paradigm of what Ukraine can achieve with this foreign collaboration is the domestic production of its Bogdan self-propelled howitzers. 18 of these cannons were delivered to the Army this September, two months after the Danish Government financed their manufacture.
For weapons manufactured in Ukraine to take flight, the 35 billion loan that the European Commission announced last week that it will grant to kyiv will be key, and which will be paid with frozen Russian assets in the EU. The president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed that the Ukrainian Government can use this money as it sees fit, and Zelensky has already confirmed that it will largely serve to develop the national defense industry.
Ukraine has already demonstrated its ability to innovate with attack drones that can travel more than 1,000 kilometers. Models like the beaverthe UJ-22, the AQ-400 and the Liutii are being used daily against targets throughout much of Russian territory. But as Zelensky himself has admitted, these unmanned vehicles cannot replace the destruction capacity and speed of a missile.
New missile-drone
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Last August, the president announced the entry into service of the Palianitsia, a missile-drone that the Institute for the Study of War, a Western reference center for conflict analysis, has considered “the Ukrainian response to the Western blockade” in use. of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia. The Palianitsia can travel 600 kilometers and there have been rumors that it was used in the September attacks, without either side confirming it.
Ukraine’s biggest bet is the development of its first ballistic missile. Zelensky announced last August that this new weapon had been successfully tested, without specifying more. Ukrainian defense analysts assume that it is the Grim-2, a medium-range rocket (280 kilometers) in development for a decade. Russian media already claimed in 2023 that the Grim-2 had been used in Crimea.
Weaker is Ukraine’s ability to create its own air defense missiles, technologically much more complex systems. Kamishin revealed in April that progress is being made in creating two anti-aircraft missiles. American Patriot batteries will remain the backbone of defenses against Russian missiles and aircraft, but ingenuity has given the Ukrainian air forces reinforcements of their own. The Ukrainian army has recovered an old Soviet long-range anti-aircraft system, the S-200, which has reformed it and allowed it to shoot down Russian aircraft in the Black Sea. Ukrainian drones also destroyed two enemy helicopters in the Russian province of Kursk in August. They intercepted them in flight, detonating cluster munitions in the tail. Defense ExpressIt does not identify which drones were used but assures that they can reach a speed of 260 kilometers per hour.
Defense Expresshighlights that helicopters, due to their vibration, make it difficult to incorporate radio-electronic defense equipment that interferes with the signal of the drone and its pilot. But experience in this war shows that although Russia often lags behind Ukrainian innovation, it quickly adapts and even surpasses it. A good example has been the arrival at the front of a new weapon, the so-called “dragon drones”, unmanned devices that sweep enemy positions armed with flamethrowers. Ukraine incorporated them this summer and this September they are already being used by the Russian army.
The big question is how Ukraine can produce weapons during war that require large infrastructure, such as missiles. With the Bogdan it has achieved this, or with smaller ammunition such as artillery projectiles or grenades, but this has not been the case with the version of its Neptune naval missile to attack ground targets. The threat of Russian bombing makes it difficult to open factories and the Government wants to allocate greater budget allocations to the construction of underground factories. Zelensky has repeated this September that Ukrainian weapons are already being produced underground, but the truth is that the vast majority are small drone facilities.
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