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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
What is the state and arms manufacturers lacking?
"We are not winning the technological war right now," believes Mariya Berlinska, volunteer, co-founder of the Dignitas charitable foundation, and head of Victory Drones.
According to her, the country lacks engineering forecasting: the state should see threats six months to a year ahead, not react when they have already appeared on the front. "The Russians have reactive kamikaze drones, we only have reactive reaction," she said.
To understand what to do about this, on 5 November a discussion titled "What to Fight With Tomorrow. How Ukraine Can Win the Technology Race" took place at the LB.Talks venue.
Participants included:
Hanna Hvozdjar, Deputy Minister of Defense responsible for the development of the defense-industrial complex, scaling production, and export;
Hanna Hvozdjar
Maksym Vasylchenko, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Arms Council, co-founder and CEO of Tencore;
Maksym Vasylchenko
Mariya Berlinska, volunteer, head of Victory Drones, co-founder of the Dignitas charitable foundation;
Mariya Berlinska
Stanislav Khutor, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ukrainian defense-technology company F-Drones.
Stanislav Khutor
Also joining the discussion was Serhiy Sas, retired Constitutional Court judge and commander of the Kyiv Territorial Community Volunteer Formation "Mriya"; military personnel, manufacturers, and volunteers also spoke from the audience.
Serhiy Sas, commander of the Kyiv Territorial Community Volunteer Formation "Mriya"
One of the first questions in the discussion addressed the issue of the public perception of the defense-industrial complex, where there is a belief that war benefits arms manufacturers. According to Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Hvozdjar, the defense sector is "definitely not the best place" to work because of the security situation.
"At the same time, people continue to use their own working capital to develop innovations, improve weapons, and work on the front with our military. So perhaps there are those who benefit from the war continuing, but I think our industry, on the contrary, is doing everything to end this war as quickly as possible," Hvozdjar explained.
Hanna Hvozdjar, Maksym Vasylchenko, Stanislav Khutor,
Regarding the state's role in developing the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex, Maksym Vasylchenko, chairman of the Ukrainian Arms Council, said the state was open to cooperation at the start of the war, but now there are fewer people in the Ministry of Defense and higher offices, and the sector is "essentially managed by one person." Manufacturers lack transparent rules, he said: each company must understand where to go and what it will get in return. Funding for development has appeared (grants, investors), but there are no direct state contracts for development, so those who want results quickly invest their own funds.
Hvozdjar admitted that long-term contracts "for us today, sadly, are fantasy": partners allocate funds unevenly, and the budget is small. According to her, the Ministry of Defense wants to hear from the military what they plan to fight with and to invest in weapons under transparent rules, as well as to level the opportunities between private and state manufacturers.
F-Drones CEO Stanislav Khutor noted that manufacturers do feel state support and recalled that "the world decided to copy our Brave1 Market."
Maksym Vasylchenko, Stanislav Khutor, Serhiy Sas and Mariya Berlinska
An important question was also raised about how to forecast threats and for manufacturers to plan scaling when a technology lives on the battlefield for months or even weeks. Mariya Berlinska believes a group of specialized engineers with access to intelligence data should be created to report monthly to the military-political leadership on what to prepare for.
Maksym Vasylchenko agrees that the country lacks a chief designer with the authority to set development directions, and the industry deserves its own ministry. At the same time, he sees future development through joint ventures with foreign partners.
Maksym Vasylchenko, chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Arms Council, head of the association "Ukrainian Robotic Forces," co-founder and CEO of Tencore LLC
Illia Pavlenko, representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, noted from the audience that Russia is scaling up its kamikaze drones and building out its satellite constellation, and Ukraine lacks a body that would do anticipatory planning, a so-called "threat radar."
Illia Pavlenko, representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
On how Ukraine can win the technological war, answers to the main question of the discussion differed but focused on several directions:
Efficiency instead of resource equality. Thus, according to Hvozdjar, the answer lies in the quality of cooperation between the state and manufacturers.
Asymmetric solutions and scaling what works. According to Berlinska, Ukrainian miltech largely grew out of simple materials and the ingenuity of engineers and soldiers. In her view, that advantage can be replicated.
Speed of change. Stanislav Khutor compared the arms race to the battle of sword and shield, where defense and offense replace each other: "a chess game that will last until final victory." The recipe for success, he said, is constant development.
At the end, Berlinska named another direction — cognitive technologies. She said Russia is investing billions to "reprogram" Ukrainian society, so protection against that is more important than drones.
Hanna Hvozdjar, Maksym Vasylchenko, Stanislav Khutor, Serhiy Sas and Mariya Berlinska
Pavlo Yelyzarov, a former small air defense commander, was present in the audience. In his view, the Ukrainian state is inefficient, and dependence on China could one day work against Ukrainians.
Service member, former Deputy Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Pavlo Yelyzarov
On the low assessment of state effectiveness, he was disagreed with by Liubov Shypovych, volunteer and head of the Dignitas foundation: "I disagree with the state's assessment on 2 out of 10, because in our country we still have democracy, and the state is us."
Liubov Shypovych was supported by Serhiy Sas, commander of the DFTG unit. In his view, the situation is not as hopeless as it seems at first glance: "Since independence, a generation has grown up in Ukraine that does not know Russia or the Soviet Union and today fights for its state with weapons in hand. In our volunteer formation alone, since the start of the full-scale war 1400 Kyiv residents — men and women of various ages — have signed contracts. 500 of them were mobilized into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and more than 500 every night defend Kyiv's sky as part of mobile and stationary groups."
Dignitas foundation head Liuba Shypovych
The full text version of the discussion will be available soon on LB.ua.
Hanna Hvozdjar, Maksym Vasylchenko, Stanislav Khutor, Serhiy Sas and Mariya Berlinska
Serhiy Sas
Hanna Hvozdjar, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine
Mariya Berlinska, volunteer, head of the Victory Drones project, co-founder of the Dignitas charitable foundation, founder of the NGO "Center for Aerorazvidka Support"
Stanislav Khutor, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ukrainian defense-technology company F-Drones
Maksym Vasylchenko, Stanislav Khutor, Serhiy Sas and Mariya Berlinska
Vladyslav Belbas, Chief Executive Officer of Ukrainian Armored Vehicles
Andrii Lebedenko, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Ihor Lutsenko, service member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and co-founder of the Center for Aerorazvidka Support
Serhiy Vysotsky, Deputy Head of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries
Editor-in-chief of LB.ua Sonya Koshkina
Anatolii Khrapchynskyi, aviation expert, Director of Development for defense electronic warfare production.
Oleksandr Kopyl, co-founder of K&K Group, venture investor and editor-in-chief of LB.ua Sonya Koshkina
Mariya Berlinska and LB.ua journalist Anzhelika Syzenenko
Mariya Berlinska (in the center)
Oleksandr Kopyl and Mariya Berlinska
Anatolii Khrapchynskyi, Kateryna Amelina, LB.ua journalist, editor of the Defense Tech section, and Andrii Lebedenko (left)
Sonya Koshkina and Pavlo Yelyzarov
Anna Hvozdjar (in the center)
Moderator, speakers and guests after the discussion
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Чим воювати завтра: репортаж із дискусії LB.Talks про те як Україні виграти технологічну гонку (фото)". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: LB.ua.
