How Ukraine Became a Drone Factory - and Changed Warfare Forever

0:00We all have that dream trip we've been wishing we could go on but too often life or usually price gets in the way. That's why Priceline is here to help you turn your dream trip into reality. With up to 60 % off hotels and up to 50 % off flights, you can book everything you need for your next adventure. Don't just dream about that next trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today. It's now four years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many people thought that Ukraine would not be able to withstand the might of Russia, which of course is so much bigger, so much more resources than Ukraine.

0:43But of course, Ukraine has survived, it fights on. This is now the deadliest war since World War II, but it's a different kind of war to any we've ever seen, because it's being fought by drones and often controlled by AI. Across Ukraine, tens of thousands of drones are being produced every day for use as kill vehicles in the war. On this episode of The World, the Universe and Us, we're getting into how the war is being waged, the role of AI in this war and what it means for the future of conflict globally. I'm Dr Penny Sarshe. And I'm Dr Rowan Hooper. Now to talk about this, we're joined by reporter Matt Sparks, who's recently returned from Ukraine, where you visited a drone factory and a drone pilot training centre.

1:24Welcome, Matt, to the pod. Welcome, thank you. We are also joined from Ukraine by Sergei Andreev, Deputy Company Commander of Kraken 3rd Army Corps Drone Regiment. Sergei, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Thank you. Now to start off, I wanted to play a clip from an interview, Matt, that you recorded over there. The speaker you're about to hear is Andrei Hrtsenyuk, who runs a government organisation called Brave One, which works to constantly monitor and increase the efficiency of drone warfare. More than 80 % of military hits are made by drones now, not by conventional artillery.

2:00And here he is. In December, only if you talk about Russian soldiers, the number of confirmed kills of Russian troops, it was more than 33 ,000 during the month. And this is, it's only using drones. And it's only using visual video confirmation. Serhi, I wanted to ask you first, can you describe for us what it's like being under a drone attack? If you've got some experience in shield bombardment in war, then you get some expectation that when you hear something that may kill you. But when a drone arrives, it's not like standard You just hear that annoying buzz and you know at the time that someone is looking for you.

2:54Not just flying artillery shell or rocket. It's a man with a special device and he will find you. And that's the most terrifying thing, I think, in this war. Do stay with us, Sergei. I wanted to bring Matt in here. Matt, as we've heard, the war is now dominated by drones and also by ground-based robots. Can you tell us about how Ukraine has transformed to a war footing where it produces so many drones? So Ukraine's built this whole drone industry from absolutely nothing, really. If you were to go back four or five years before the full-scale invasion, there were hardly any of these drone companies.

3:34You could count them on one hand. And now there's talk of 500 companies that just make flying drones in the country. And some of these, like General Cherry, I went to visit. It feels like an internet startup. It's full of young people. There's a PlayStation in the staff room. It's a very familiar setting. But, you know, around every corner, there's a huge pile of drones or someone soldering some drones. So it's a very unusual industry. General Cherry, they told me that two, three years ago it was just a handful of people sitting around a table making 20 or so drones every month and now this is a company that makes 80 ,000 drones every month.

4:16So this whole industry has really just been born out of the war built from nothing in just a few years. Yeah. Does it help that they're relatively easy to build? I mean, I couldn't build one, but, you know, So, and they're not Lego, but it's not super hard to make. And effectively, are they like the ones we buy commercially off the shelf here? Yeah, they're not dissimilar. They certainly look similar. But there's lots of highly specialized versions of them to do different tasks. And it's not just the drone they've had to learn how to build. It's the whole construction process. You have to learn how to make 80 ,000 drones a month.

4:54You need to sort of learn how to operate 100 3D printers at once and how to get that supply chain up and running and how to do it all in the middle of a city in secrecy because Russia looks to target these things. And then add explosives to them. Well, yeah, I mean, some of these, most of these factories, they ship them to the front line and then these armaments are added later on, but yeah. And you spoke with someone who gave her name as Trusta. She's an engineer and a drone pilot trainer. And she told you about how she works then. We've got a clip of that. We can hear that now. The instructors here, they are devoted to their work and all of them have some experience in the warfare, so they have a lot of information from the real battlefield and the instructors also share their experience.

5:44If you have the desire and if you are ready to work a lot, to train a lot, then you're going to be a good pilot. So it's mostly about practice, practice and practice. Serhi, let's bring you in again here. Can you tell us about how you and your soldiers have adapted to this new kind of warfare? A lot of my friends and my soldiers, they got experience from the beginning of this full-scale invasion and they have seen a lot of crazy stuff in this war. Almost all of them was at the beginning fighting just regular infantrymen. Then they got some artillery experience and for today, almost all of them are drone operators or some supply chain stuff for drone operators.

6:42We're just evolving. You just must be evolving or you will be dead. And do you have any sense of what's next? How can you stay ahead of what's coming next and stay one step ahead of the enemy? It's really a complicated moment, enemy evolving too. So it's just this kind of crazy competition between us and them. And Matt, it's not just about flying drones, is it? There's also a big role here for wheeled drones on the ground. Could you tell us about that? Yeah, so ground-based drones are taking a bigger and bigger role in the war. I'm told that the front lines, it's increasingly difficult to move around on foot or by vehicle.

7:31So ground-based drones make a lot of sense. You can take supplies to the front line. You can pull evacuated people, you know, wounded soldiers back from the front line. But they're also being used as weapons themselves. Kamikaze ground drones are increasingly a thing. The way that we read about this is it does sometimes feel like a video game. You know, it's the first person flying, at least certainly they train the drone pilots like that on video games effectively. But then when you're actually flying it, even though you're delivering explosive, it feels sometimes a bit like you're removed from it like a video game.

8:10And I wanted to ask you about that, Serhi. is it easier to be a drone operator than facing the enemy face to face? Yeah, it's much easier. Much easier. As you thought, it's just like a computer game. Because, Serhi, you said before the very special fear about coming under drone attack. So perhaps you can tell, you know, it's not like, you know, previous wars we've had people in you know in the us flying a drone that's flying in iraq say but this is something different you're still very in an unsafe place as an operator here of course those just commercial drones not like american military drones so they should be operated from much closer distance and that's really dangerous because drone operators is the main target for or enemy drone operators, or any kind of enemy operators.

9:15But nevertheless, there is this gamification that happens, isn't there? And I guess that's something that's being made more explicit in this conflict, because we've heard in your piece how drone operators earn points for different kinds of hits, whether it's a human or a tank. But we've had that sort of system operating throughout history in different conflicts. But is there something different about the gamification of it now, Matt? Yeah, yeah, I think so. At first glance, it can be a bit jarring. So basically, the idea is that because the war is being fought largely by drone and everything is recorded, everything is on video.

9:56There's a Ukrainian government agency called Brave One, which collects all of this footage in and essentially awards army units points for taking out different types of Russian, be they soldiers, tanks, whatever. And then those points can be used to buy more equipment, more drones. So it's sort of rewarding the most effective units, really. And at first glance, that can seem a bit jarring. But I think really it's a pragmatic reaction to the invasion. And it's a really savvy way of kind of optimizing the war effort, really. And Brave One doesn't just do this points reward system. It's also collecting all the intelligence from all that footage, using AI to analyze it, and sort of looking for problems that need to be solved.

10:44So if there's a certain type of drone that doesn't exist, they can sort of foster that and give that intelligence to the drone industry in the country and some grants and kind of make sure that that gap is replaced. I'm R.J. Decker, a private investigator, uncovering the Sunshine State's darkest secrets. Tuesdays, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. RJ freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mess. Trying to get someone back to prison today? You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. RJ Decker, series premiere, Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu.

11:28We heard earlier that more than 80 % of hits in this conflict are by drones. that goes for Russian as well as Ukrainian hits. That must be the most of any conflict. Matt, is this really the first sort of true drone war? And is this the direction that all war is going to head in? Yeah, I mean, as Ryan mentioned earlier, there's been drones in other wars, but there's a huge difference between a$50 million machine operated from the other side of the world and what's going on in Ukraine. So I think if we're talking about small, cheap, almost commercial drones, yeah this is this is the first drone war and it's being fought at enormous scale now as well so i wonder if you could tell us about um a bit about the arms race we we mentioned this a little bit before between you and the enemy between the drone attack and the defense you may develop some way of of attacking the russians and eluding russian defense and they might find some way to block you and like we we heard a lot about fiber optics flying the drones by by cable by optic cable for example can you tell us a bit about this this arms race it's like the first world war you became a bigger gun and your enemy will become a sticker armor for today and for drone operations.

12:51It's like enemy will try to jam your frequencies or will just make some creepy stuff on their infantry vehicles kind of Mad Max style tanks or vehicles. You see some of this stuff on the internet. This is not just a fixed result. When you're finding some a better frequency to use on your drones, the enemy will find another jamming system for that. What can I say about the wiring drones or optic drones? It's pretty dangerous stuff because you can't jam those drones and you almost never know where it is before you hear it. When you hear it, it can be too late for you. But it's also the weak side of those drones, they are much louder than radio drones.

13:56So if you hear it, you have some time to hide or move faster if you can. Hundreds and thousands of drones are being flown and destroyed a month. And because of this continual evolution and arms race you know those are all made quite quickly quite recently this isn't kind of stockpiled equipment um what are the sort of limits around the resourcing of this how how long can it go on what's the thing that's holding you back from making more is there one particular component that is most valuable for today this component is it's people it's qualified people. You must have qualified people on factories or drone factories.

14:44Also, you must have those people in the field. You should find a balance because people is the most valuable thing in this world. Yeah, Penny, you mentioned there something about that you can't stockpile these things, and that's because they become out of date very quickly. Either the frequencies change, something changes so this is different to um previous wars when you can stockpile artillery years in advance and we we can't stockpile drones it's constantly you're having to work on the edge of things all the time you never know if it can they can find some medical device that next weekend all of those drones can just fall off the sky and it's it and you don't have any warranties, if it will be so or not.

15:38For today, it's very difficult to stockpile those drones because we are in war. And when you are in war, you don't make stockpiles. Matt, you're a technology reporter for us. You've covered all kinds of things, commercial drones, robots. With this sort of pace of innovation, is it just about jumping between frequencies and finding new ways to jam? Or when you were out there, were the drones you were seeing significantly different from the kinds of things you've seen before the the bulk of them are fairly familiar sort of fpg fpv drones like like you would see commercial drones but there is a lot of innovation going on you know we saw um sort of rocket shaped interceptor drones which are designed to attack incoming russian drones and they take off vertically tilt horizontally and then they can reach 300 kilometers an hour so that sort of thing is is being worked on really really rapidly and also the incoming shahid drones have a certain amount of ai guidance so they can evade interceptor drones so the interceptor drones have to have similar sort of algorithms and these algorithms are always being tweaked so you've got this kind of autonomous war going on then there's other types of drones um you know smaller drones have less range can carry less payload so you have this concept of large mothership drones that have smaller drones attached so they can travel to the front line and then attack different targets so there is there's a lot going on part of it's about scale part of it's about innovation and um you mentioned the shaheed um drones are that the russians are deploying the russian army is there a similar amount of innovation are they using the same kinds of drones or is it is it different no that's much different so a shaheed is uh it's over two meters tall.

17:24It sort of looks, it's a triangular shaped, it looks more like a plane than a drone. It's very cheaply made, but then it doesn't have to be particularly fancy. And they're extremely long range. They sort of make a sound like a motorbike. They've got a small, sort of essentially a motorbike engine on the back. And these are things that kind of cruise in from Belarus or from Russia and hit targets in Ukraine. So Ukraine's deploying everything from, you know fighter planes to machine guns to interceptor drones to kind of knock those out of the sky before they reach their targets and looking to the future sir he i mean ukraine is now an expert in drone warfare you're going to be able to sell that advice sell that knowledge that you have to other nations yep we must make so because the enemy is not just near us the world is complicated for today.

18:22We'll leave it there. Many thanks to Sergei, Andrea, for your time. And thanks, Matt Sparks, for joining us too. We'll be back next week. The YouTube version of the show is now on its own dedicated YouTube channel. It's youtube.com slash at the world, the universe and us. So do subscribe, please.

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