As tempers flared during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous Oval Office standoff with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance last month, Trump offered a stark assessment of Ukraine’s limited options in any future negotiations with Russia. “You don’t have the cards,” he told Zelensky, a message the American leader has repeated repeatedly as he seeks to broker a peace deal and end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump’s logic is easy enough to understand. After all, Ukraine is currently locked in a brutal war of attrition against a much larger and wealthier foe. For more than a year now, the Russian military has been making slow but steady advances, while Ukraine has struggled with a growing troop shortage and has faced regular problems with the flow of military aid from the country’s Western allies. If this continues, most observers believe that Moscow’s overwhelming advantage in manpower, firepower, and funding makes an eventual Russian victory all but inevitable.
Ukrainians are acutely aware that the odds are against them. But they also understand that Russia’s invasion represents an existential threat to their nation. This helps explain the remarkable resilience shown by the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian society as a whole. Faced with a fight for survival against a military superpower, Ukrainians recognize that they cannot realistically expect to match Russia in terms of conventional military might. Instead, their country’s trump card in this unequal struggle is its innovative and rapidly expanding defense technology sector.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion just over three years ago, a makeshift defense tech startup industry has sprouted up in garages, workshops, and warehouses across Ukraine. The trend has benefited from the country’s vibrant pre-war IT industry, with many existing IT companies and tech entrepreneurs turning their attention to supporting the Ukrainian military in 2022.
This has led to a sharp increase in domestic production of key items such as reconnaissance and attack drones, with Ukrainian developers in a relentless daily race to stay ahead of their Russian adversaries. Hundreds of Ukrainian companies are now making drones, up from just a handful in 2021. The Ukrainian government recently unveiled plans to buy some 4.5 million first-person-view drones by 2025, more than double last year’s total. It’s bolstering Ukraine’s reputation as a global hub for defense technology and spurring the country’s efforts to reduce its reliance on Western military aid.
Ukrainian drones are playing a key role in transforming the modern battlefield and are currently responsible for about two-thirds of Russian casualties, according to a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute. Ukraine’s progress has been so innovative that leading Western defense companies are increasingly seeking to learn from the country. For example, Silicon Valley companies are using the know-how of Ukrainian drone makers, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The impact of Ukraine’s defense technical prowess is perhaps most evident in the Black Sea. At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian navy was virtually nonexistent, while the dominance of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was taken for granted. Three years later, Ukraine has successfully used low-cost, highly effective naval drones to offset Russia’s initial advantages and break the blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports.
Ukrainian naval drones have proven their effectiveness on numerous occasions, sinking or damaging numerous Russian warships and forcing Putin to withdraw much of his fleet from Crimea to the safety of Russia. Despite the long range, Ukrainian naval drones are capable of posing a threat to Russian shipping far from Crimea. In the summer of 2023, Ukraine carried out a long-range drone attack that reportedly damaged a warship near the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, some 400 miles from the nearest Ukrainian naval bases in the Odessa region.
The Ukrainian Navy’s fleet of drones continues to evolve rapidly. In recent months, a new model armed with missiles reportedly shot down a Russian helicopter over the Black Sea. Maritime drones have also been developed as launchers for aerial drones. Ukrainian officials claim that these “miniature aircraft carriers” have already been used to strike Russian military targets in occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine. Looking ahead, using maritime drones as air attack platforms could give Ukraine the ability to bypass Russian defenses and strike from unexpected angles.
As Ukraine enters the fourth year of a full-scale war against one of the world’s leading military powers, the need for continued innovation on the battlefield and at sea remains critical. Ukraine’s remarkable success in the Battle of the Black Sea is an indication of what can be achieved when the Ukrainian military leverages the country’s innovative defense technology industry. Kyiv’s partners should recognize the key role that Ukrainian innovators play in the defense technology industry and maximize their support for this strategically important sector.
David Kirichenko is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.
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