From 10 Drones a Month to Nearly 100,000 — Inside Ukraine's Largest Drone Manufacturer | Marko Kushnir, General Cherry

0:00If we will have some kind of fully autonomic systems, it will be very scary. Because you don't need other humans to kill the humans. So it's very scary. Because you just need a robot, you just need a drone. You started manufacturing in 2023. Today, is the majority of drones on the battlefield, are they manufactured in Ukraine? And where are you in that group of manufacturers? I think that Ukraine is better in constructing something new, something new technologies but Russia of course is better than us in scaling of these technologies. Thrones is not only about targeting, we understand drones and know how to operate it and we know how to destroy it so we are opening different collaborations in different ways.

0:45Introduce yourself and explain the company you work for and the drone you produce and how how important than it is in the current battle with Russia. My name is Marko. I'm the director of communications of one of the biggest drone producers in Ukraine. Our company called General Cherry. We produce different types of drones. We have different products, like from ordinary kamikaze FPV from 7 to 15 inches. 7 to 15 inches. Inches, yeah. And we, but of course we have a flagrant products, flagship products, products like interceptors. So here's one of our flagship, this interceptor General Cherry Bullet.

1:38It's a strategic level interceptor for anti-Shakhet work. So we destroy the Russian Shakhets or so-called Geran. Geran is drawn by this drone. But we have different types of interceptors. we have tactical interceptors. It's like General Cherry Air. It's an interceptor for different drones who work on Frontline, like ZALA, Orlans, Lancets, Mounia and other Russian drones. And of course, we make drones with fiber optics, and we have different type of fiber optics from from 10 kilometers to 40 kilometers distance. 40 kilometer distance. Yeah, and we think that we can make more than 40 kilometers, and we will make it.

2:33So, because our modern front line, not front line, now we call it kill zone, you should know about it. So we haven't any front line and we haven't any gray zone in our moverse. We have only kill zone. It's like different parts of frontline. The kill zone can be from 1km to 20km. So it's an area where only drones rule everything. So you can use your vehicles, you can use any type of big cars or any type of armored vehicles. you can use only your feet if you will be lucky or you can use different unmanaged systems, air and managed systems, ground and managed systems. And of course, this is a zone of big work of reps and different often technologies.

3:38And that's the answer to the question why we really needs different drones on fiber optics. So we have it too. Our company was made in 2023, and we started from 10 drones per month, and now we produce more than... I can give you the correct number because it's not security information, but we made thousands, 10 of thousands drones drones per month, nearly 100 ,000 drones per month. Let me just unpack some of that because it's General Cherry is the name of the drone. General Cherry is the name of the company. The company and also the family of drones. Also the family of drones, yeah. Cherry, you were telling me it's a symbol because the town...

4:37Yeah, it's a symbol. Well, originally our company came from Zaporizhia region, it's a south and central south part of Ukraine. And the Zaporizhia region has different symbols and one of the symbols of Zaporizhia is cherry gardens, different cherry gardens. So for us it's a very important story because we want to remember about our roots and we to remember about one of the biggest cities of the Parisian region, the city of Melitopol. The cherry is a general symbol of the city of Melitopol. And the city of Melitopol is now a temporary occupied territory. So we want to remember that we came from the Svens, and of course we will come back to the Svens.

5:29how many drone companies are there now manufacturers in Ukraine? And what percentage of the drones on the battlefield? I mean, originally they were Mavic, they were DJI. And you said you started manufacturing in 2023. Today, is the majority of drones on the battlefield, are they manufactured in Ukraine? And where are you in that group of manufacturers? I think hundreds of companies. I don't know the correct number, but I think that it's maybe hundreds or thousands of different drone companies in Ukraine. Oh, really? And I can tell you only about the air drones. I don't know the situation on the ground system or the water system, but in the air drones, we have maybe hundreds and hundreds of companies in Ukraine.

6:28Of course, we have like maybe 10, 15 big companies who can produce more than 10 ,000 drones per month. But I don't know how many garage factories we have in different garage and in different small rooms. And these guys can make the drones too. So, thousand companies maybe. And where do you stand in that? Different locations. No, but are you the largest or a mid-middle? We are in maybe in the top five in general. In 2023, I would imagine if you're building them yourselves, very simple drones, you now have AI connected or AI powered and also the fiber optic drones. Are you using off-the-shelf technology?

7:29Who's producing the navigation systems? Who's producing the fiber optic? Is that stuff you buy off the shelf? And most importantly, where are you getting the AI models and what are you using them for? Just our own development development because we have very strong and big R &D department and we try to make every technology by our own power. So every technology that we have, every technology that we use, the technology that's made by us. But with very close and very deep collaboration with our militaries from different units, from different regimes. So it's always about collaboration with our military because we make products for these units.

8:33And of course we need this feedback, of course we need this understanding of front-end situation and of course we should know what works better, what works worth. So, everyone that we met, we made by our R &D, and of course, by our, not only about hard technologies, and it's about the soft technologies too, like AI targeting, but we always made it only with military units. It's a very important part of our work because we, of course, in Ukraine, we have very easy access to the battle proof status, and we can test our product every day, and it's very easy to us to do it. And so we have different mobile groups who came to our military in different parts of the front every day, and we take this feedback, and we know that what we should do next.

9:39Not only for a weekend or for a month, we can see in the near future and we can understand what we need, the next step in this technology war and what we should do and what the product should be next because our soldiers give us this information. Yeah. And when did you develop this form factor, I mean, as a rocket shape, as opposed to a flat quadcopter? It's not a general Ukrainian technology, this form factor, because I saw the information that first it was like a sport type FPV from Red Bull. and they launched it maybe in 2021 or 2022. You can check this information later. So the Red Bull team was the first one who made this form factor.

10:48And after, different Ukrainian companies and our two saws it's working because this form factor can reach higher speeds an ordinary quadrocopter, an ordinary FPV drone. And we understand that it's working. And we try different form factors, but now we think that this one is the best one for us. Yeah. And so it, I mean, I'll... It starts like ordinary FPV, because after start, they put down like a rocket and we fly like a literal rocket. I see, yeah, like a cruise missile. Cruise missile. And is the payload or the warhead inside the rocket? It's not, I mean this... Yeah, inside here. Right, so it's a kamikaze drone, it's not a release.

11:40Is this the most common product or do you also make the drones that release munitions? We have a project with the so-called middle bomber, because it's very important for our military to... when you can come with this drone and make some mining, or make some goods... I don't remember... Not delivery, like delivery of mines on the Russian heads. We have the project, but we... now it's like in deeply producing stage, so it's not yet released. Right. But 90 % of our drones are Kamikaze drones. Right. And so you're producing tens of thousands, if not 100 ,000 a month. Nearby 100 ,000 a month. Once again, I can give you the correct number.

12:49but it's a big amount and we know that our we have capabilities to make more than 100 thousands per month because because we have this capability yeah and what is the con the demand I mean how many are you is are the military units consuming a hundred thousand a month? So we're working with more than 110 military brigades. It's like I think 300 units and of course they use more than 100 drones per month. I don't know the correct number, but I think that one of our best units can use more than 5 ,000 drones per month easily. And that's because missed targets or missed malfunctions? Different reasons, different reasons.

13:50Human factor, weather factors, spoofing, not likely. Different reasons. Yeah. So, and that was, I mean, getting to the AI part, is the AI that you're using, what model are you using? How do you communicate with the drone? Is it for navigation? Is it for stability? Is it for, well, I'm not sure what else it would be for, but yeah. I should tell that for me it's like one of the first steps of AI integration process in drones because our AI technology is like half autonomous. So of course you need the operator, of course you need to control the drone in the fly, but when you detect the air target like a shacket our drone can understand that it's a shacket and our drone can control itself and can go to this shacket without any operator control and it's like it's a good one, it's first steps, but it's not about fully autonomic system, it's not about some kind of great wall of swarm technology, blah blah blah blah, because to tell the truth we saw that nobody in this world for now have a good AI technology in drones, because it's very very hard technologies and we don't know how it will be worked in on the battlefield and don't know how it will be worked on the ground too so it's very hard but we have some kind of half ai so our ai model can it can detect the drone can it can can aim this drone and you don't need you you shouldn't do more if you're a pilot, so you can only detect and you can fly to this drone on cruise control and shut down.

16:16Okay, and you were talking about the Shadid drones that the Russians are using. Can you explain what that drone is? Is that the primary attack from the Russians? Yeah, so once again we have two different types of interceptors. This one is this interceptor drone for Russian shakets. Shakhets or Geran, it's originally Iranian drone, but now Russia produces thousands and thousands of drones in Russia. So it's like a big deep strike drone cost like maybe different type can be different but it costs from 50 ,000 to 100 100 and more thousand dollars so it's big big kamikaze drone, big deep strike drone who came to and it's who came to and Russian use it for different terrorist attack to our cities.

17:23It's not like a frontline drone, because you keep other drones from frontline. It's only a drone for deep strikes for our cities. They use shackets for different reasons, because by shackets they can overdose our air defense system. We should use very high-priced rockets from different Western air defense systems for the shackles, and it's not okay for us. So we find a solution. We find the solution that we can make small, faster, very dangerous interceptor drone. This drone costs like$2 ,000, and you can destroy this big deep strike machine with this little drone. I should have made that clear at the beginning.

18:19These are primarily anti-drone, counter-drone weapons. They're intended to attack other drones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are they also for attacking, are they also anti-personnel? It's not for the personnels, of course it's not for the personnels. It's like a drone with a drone. first, maybe you can kill somebody from this drone too. If you will have some kind of half a kill of C4 here, of course you can kill somebody, but it's not the general goal of this drone. So the general goal is to destroy Russian drones. All of the drones in your line are anti-drone drones? No, no, no. We have just ordinary FPV, of Camigazia and this ordinary FPV and fiber optic at 3 of course used by different for for different targets like persons, vehicles, artillery and other other other so we we have products for maybe for every target on the battlefield yeah i mean you were saying earlier that there's no longer a clear front line, that there's a kill zone.

19:44So you were saying that there's no longer a clear front line, that because of the drones, it's broadened into a zone, a kill zone. And within that kill zone, there are drones on the other side that are hunting men or soldiers in that zone. So are the lines, is that why the lines are fairly fixed? Because it's very difficult to advance because of the drones? Of course, it's not about some kind of fixed lines. So it's like, I think that it's about different, different, different, so many, many little zones with, and it can be like for one kilometer and it can be like for 20 kilometers. So it's one big kill zone, who consists from different zones with different tactical and operational situations.

20:48And this zone consists only from personals in its trancheues, in some kind of small trancheues, and a lot of different drones, air drones, ground drones. So it's like a kingdom of different drones. And so this, the interceptor, when did you start manufacturing interceptors? Because in 2023 you were manufacturing them. So our tactical interceptor, General Cherry Ear, first was produced, massively produced, in February 2025. And since February 2025, we have more than 5 ,000 confirmed Russian drone strikes. So more than 5 ,000 is a very big number. So only in December, we shot down more than 1 ,000 Russian Mounia, only one type of drone.

21:47I think you know about the Mounia drones. It's very cheap and very dangerous Russian drones. And we shot down more than 1 ,000 by our tactical interceptor General Chireri. So this one we started to produce in October 2025. Massively we started to produce it maybe in December 2025. And now we have more than...

22:2110s of 10s confirmate shaket strikes. I don't know, maybe near be this confirmate shaket strike, maybe more, maybe near be 100. I don't want to tell you the correct number, but it's worked. It's worked well. Okay. And so you have AI for the targeting. When you launch this, how do you know what direction to send it? How do you know there's an incoming drone? It's like complex work with radars, with different radars, different systems that our military knows that all. We know that we have three shakets in our sector. with the see and rudders, we know that these shackles came to us close. So you launch this drone, you need like 30 seconds to launch it.

23:24Take it and launch it. And after this, you, by your ass, you should find this drone with your rudder and understand that, oh, I see it. and after this you can use AI targeting. Okay, so you're watching the radar, you know there are three of these drones in your sector, you launch this in the general direction of those drones, and then there's a signal sent that, Or is the AI in the cloud and communicating with the drone or is it on device? On device. It's on the device. Yes, on device. And it's a small model on a chip? Yes, just a little model in our cameras. So you can see it's like on device, little process.

24:25Right. And is there a camera in this? Yeah, you can see this camera. I see. Maybe point it at the camera there.

24:38And then, and the and once the AI targeting, what do you call that model? Does it have a name? It's just our own, so I don't want to It's our own software and I don't think that I should tell some... Okay, but you developed it or you buy it from overseas? Firstly, we bought a small team who started to make this software. And we bought it and we gave them money, support, technologies for very fast scaling. And now it's like part of our R &D team. Okay. And so you send a signal to turn on the AI, the model is on the drone, and it takes over navigation. Yeah. And what's the metric to measure accuracy?

25:55Is it 90 % accurate, 50 % accurate, 20 % accurate? Depends. Depends on the different situation. I think it's more than 70 % for now. 70-18 % of workers. Will find their target. Yeah. And it's carrying a warhead that's strong enough to destroy the warhead. Yeah, yeah. Of course. You just need 400 grams of explosive and you can destroy the shacket. And what kind of explosive? Is it C4? It depends on the situation what you have. Yeah. But it's manufactured with the charge in it. No, no, no. We just made all of the drones. Maybe somebody want to use it on the wedding. I don't know. We don't produce the weapon.

26:50I see. So when you ship it to the military, they pop the... Can you pop the top off that?

27:01Because it's fully constructed and it takes a full construct, but it's very easy. You just need to take off. You pop it off. You put the charge in. Yeah. And the trigger is already there? or yeah you can do different type of triggers like for a kinetic power and the water is the first one and the like a button on your controller you can you can choose what what you what do you want how has the addition of ai changed uh drone warfare where is carrying question that is true very scary question. Because if we will have some kind of fully autonomic systems, it will be very scary. Because you don't need other human to kill the human.

27:56So it's very scary. Because you just need a robot, you just need a drone. And if it will be fully automatic, Okay, if it will be like a semi-automatic, like in our interceptors, it will be crazy. But for now, why we don't use the semi-automatic AI in our ordinary drones? Because it gives us more high price for these drones. You don't need it. If you can, for our military battery, if you can buy like five ordinary FPV without AI, it will be better than you can buy one FPV with AI. But we'll see, because we are talking about the technologies, and I think that the technologies will be, we will see very fast scaling of these technologies, and we will see that the price will be lower, lower, and lower, and it will be very, very scary.

28:58for everybody in the front line, where is it? So we'll see, but I think that for us, the general point is the most important point for us now, is to make the fully autonomous interceptor system. So when you can take this drone in some kind of box, go carry it on the board or maybe on the deep ground and just use it only for one button, so it will be great for us. We will see. But I don't want to think about the AI technologies in the ordinary battlefield, because it will be very, very bad for both sides. Of course, we want to...

29:50the best side for our enemies, but we know that we take some technologies from enemies. the techniques and technologies from us so if we will have this technology they will will they will have this technologies maybe in a week too yeah well that was one of the questions and about this widening kill zone uh and the blurring of the front line as these weapons become more effective and can operate at a greater distance. Are you seeing the Russians keep up with the technology as fast as you? And do they have interceptor drones that are as effective? I think that we should talk about two different systems, two different types of understanding of the technologies, because I think that Ukraine is better and faster in constructing something new, something new technologies.

30:57But Russia, of course, is more better than us in scaling of these technologies. And that's just a matter of their industrial... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about different because we live in capitalistic Ukraine. We have different companies. We have different markets, relationships, and other hazards. In Russia, you have strong classic tyranny, vertical, and you can scale everything very fast. Yeah, yeah. So this hasn't prevented... You're not winning the war because you have interceptor drones or FPV drones. You're just maintaining the line or the zone. or not? We call it asymmetrical solutions. Of course, we haven't so much soldiers like Russia.

32:05Of course, we haven't so much bloody oil money like Russia. Of course, we haven't so much vehicles rather rather rather like Russia. Of course, we destroyed a lot of Russian techniques, so they used horses. But anyway, we haven't. But we have our smart and we have our understanding that we need something asymmetrical. And we made it. We made these drones, FPV drones in 2022. No, not made, but re-understand the obvious of these drones in 2022. And we showed to the world that in modern war, it's not important how big and how many people you have. If you have technologies, very cheap technologies, you can take this war and you can win this war.

33:05We still believe that we can win this war and I think that it's not about the land. It's about our understanding. We truly understand that Ukraine is not a part of Russia. We showed it during this four years. And we showed that if they will have some questions to us in the future, we will have the good answers to these questions. And I know you have to go. but my last question is uh the future uh the war will end we all hope uh i mean certainly it will end someday um ukraine has developed this drone industry what happens to that industry after we're actively working now for our international expansion so we really yeah we wanna uh we wanna do this not only because of money, but because we think about our partners, about our Western partners, and we want to help our Western partners to make big and very good defense system, because only we and Russia know how to operate in this modern world.

34:29And of course, we want to export our drones of course we wanna make some maybe joint factory on joint ventures with different companies from USA or from Europe and we actively work on this way because we have a lot of conversation with from from Riga to Los Angeles and we're trying to find good partners because Because we don't need the money. Of course, we are open for investments, we're open for different types of ventures. It's not a problem. But first of all, we need good R &D and technologies. We need good engineers from the West who can help us to make this product better. because we have a lot of our expertise from the front, from the battlefield.

35:30And if we will have this accept to the Western, maybe institutes or maybe the Western best engineers, we can combine it and make something really... Yeah. I mean, are you looking beyond defense? Are there commercial non-defense applications? Non-defense? Like a dual use? I think that we should start to think about drones not only during the war, we should start thinking about the drones during like in our civil life because if we can make some kind of uh because we will see of we will see that drones will be used by different different maybe different terrorist group maybe different difference uh for different murders assassination as other as other We will see it.

36:29So we opened to work not only with militars, but with different security services, different police, national guard from different countries. And of course, we opened it for work with big corporations who want to make their own security from drones, because drones is not only about kamikaze drones, it's not only about targeting. drones is about intelligence, drones is about blackmailing, drones is about not legal cargo deliverance and other others. So we understand drones and we know how to operate it and we know how to destroy it. So we are opening to different collaborations in different ways.

37:20Like example, when the era of internet came to us, every company, every government structure started to make some kind of cybersecurity services. Now, I think that we started the era of drones, and every department, in every government, in every big company, not in not big company and every company will make some kind of drone security department and this drone security department should write these rules of security because it's very important for us yeah and we open to show our expertise in it we open for it yeah okay well let's leave it there

38:13you