Ukraine is fighting to stay ‘five steps ahead’ of the Russians in the ‘cat-and-mouse’ war tech game, top official says

“For the first time in human history, the tech war has moved at such a pace,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, said in translated remarks shared with Business Insider. He added “it’s more like a cat-and-mouse game now, with one side advancing over the other.”

Drones of all kinds have been invaluable in this war, with both sides using them to regularly to complete a variety of battlefield tasks, including carrying out attacks, conducting surveillance, monitoring enemy troop movements, laying mines, dropping bombs, delivering supplies, and evacuating casualties.

Both Ukraine and Russia have prioritized unmanned systems as a cheap but effective way to keep pace with the ever-evolving nature of this grinding conflict.

Russia has dramatically ramped up drone production, including its first-person-view drones, and trained thousands of operators, putting pressure on the Ukrainians to keep up.

“In terms of drone production, we see that Russia produces rather quickly,” explained Fedorov, who has been at the forefront of Ukraine’s war-time efforts to strengthen domestic innovation and procure unmanned systems.

“But at the same time, we do our best to be five steps ahead,” he added.

Ukrainian officials said in December that Kyiv plans to produce one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones by the end of this year. These relatively cheap systems have had a tremendous impact, but building that many would be a monumental effort that would require the country to boost its already-elevated production levels. Ukraine also aims to produce thousands of other systems.

FPV drones, specifically, have emerged as an ever-present threat on the modern battlefield. Both Ukraine and Russia have relied on these systems, oftentimes nothing more than a small quadcopter drone loaded up with explosives, as a cheap way to deliver precision strikes on enemy personnel, positions, and armor.

In February, Fedorov said Ukraine will reach its FPV production goals by the end of the year. Some officials have said that Kyiv may actually eclipse these figures because the country is capable of producing 150,000 drones a month.

Even though Ukraine has its eyes set on 1 million FPV drones, Fedorov told BI that Kyiv still plans on producing other unmanned systems like exploding naval drones and long-range attack drones.

“Different missions require different drones,” he said.

Naval drones and long-range attack drones, in particular, have emerged as innovative — and successful — solutions for Ukraine in areas where Kyiv had been lacking earlier in the war due to its essentially nonexistent navy and a shortage of missiles.

Ukraine doesn’t have any warships of its own, but it has leaned on two types of naval drones to damage Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, effectively forcing Moscow to relocate its vulnerable assets away from its long-held headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula. Initially, these naval drones were just packed with explosives, but now they also feature rocket launchers and heat-seeking missiles.

Long-range attack drones, meanwhile, emerged as a way for Ukraine to skirt restrictions on using Western weapons and conduct strikes deep inside Russian territory. Using domestically produced unmanned aircraft, Kyiv has gone after strategic military and energy facilities hundreds of miles from the front lines.

“You can track the successes of Ukraine’s long-range program by the surprising news coming from Russia,” Fedorov said.