Can Ukraine manufacture its own weapons?

Faisal Azam
14 Nov, 2024

 

Ukraine can and does make its own weapons: Russia-Ukraine war of 2022–2024 is the first war in history where drones became the weapons that dominate the terrain.

Within the last 2 years, drone production in Ukraine grew 100-fold.

Since February 2022, Ukraine created and developed the UAV market from the ground up.

  • In 2022, only 7 Ukrainian manufacturers were producing drones for the Ukrainian army.
  • By mid-2024, there are 87 drone manufacturers that are delivering drones on government contracts.

One of such manufacturers are making drones called “Hornets”.

There are smaller and larger FPV drones — “Wild Hornets”, “Queen Hornets”, as well as other models. All of them are Ukrainian-made.

The Ukrainian drone operators have learned to use the same drone for many missions — a drone drops explosives and returns to the base, to get munitions.

Drones are even used to retrieve weapons from the battlefield.

Here you can see “Hornet Queen” picking weapons on the battlefield using a magnet.

In December 2023, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy set the task of producing a million drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has announced a remarkable achievement in drone production.


Contracts are already in place to produce a staggering one million drones for the Ukrainian military. This impressive fleet includes standard FPV drones, long-range models, reconnaissance drones, and others, all actively deployed by Ukrainian defenders on the front lines.


To put this into perspective: one million drones—equivalent to two drones for every Russian soldier on Ukrainian soil.


A significant portion of these drones goes

So, if a certain unit requires more drones, they place a request with a manufacturer they know, and get a delivery within days, without the need for ministerial approvals.

This is why the Ukrainian army is so much more efficient, and why the Russian soldiers say that it feels like the Ukrainians have 50:1 advantage in drones.

This also saves thousands of Ukrainian lives.