WSJ: China Supplied Ukraine With Tens Of Thousands of Drones…

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The Ukrainian forces massively use them at the front.

Iran has sold Russia thousands of drones to bomb Ukrainian cities, and another 6,000 drones are to be produced in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone under an Iranian license. Meanwhile, Ukraine buys drones in much larger quantities to shell the enemy’s front-line positions from another partner of Russia – China.

Ukraine has found ways to get tens of thousands of drones, as well as to establish a flow of spare parts for them from China, The Moscow Times cited The Wall Street Journal.

Purchases of finished products, primarily from SZ DJI Technology, are carried out in stores and from suppliers. In addition, Chinese components are used in drones of their own production, which is growing rapidly.

According to Giorgi Tskhakaia, the Defence Adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation, over the past year and a half, the number of drone manufacturers in the country has grown from seven to almost 300. Hundreds of thousands of simple, cheap devices that can carry explosives are produced in an artisanal and industrial way.

Every month, the Armed Forces of Ukraine use about 10,000 drones on the battlefield. DJI told the WSJ that it tries to limit the use of its products for military purposes, but cannot control their use after purchase.

The US ban on the use of DJI drones for the military, as well as Chinese components in the production of their own drones, was one of the reasons why US-made drones are too expensive. Although the US tried to supply Ukraine, many American commercial drones cost tens of thousands of dollars more than Chinese models. In Ukraine, we would like to test and use more American drones, but “we are still looking for more cost-effective solutions,” Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Giorgi Dubinsky told the WSJ.

In addition, every drone software update requires Pentagon approval. However, the situation on the battlefield is changing so quickly that programmers and engineers have to constantly make adjustments to their models. “What flies today, can’t fly tomorrow,” Dubinsky says, “We need to adapt quickly to emerging technologies. The innovation cycle in this war is very short.”

In the US, several hundred startups are developing small drones, some of them supported by the Pentagon. But devices intended for commercial use (which manufacturers are primarily engaged in) turned out to be difficult to convert for military purposes. As a result, the US has no meaningful presence in the first-ever drone war.

American drones are expensive, buggy, poorly resistant to electronic warfare, and far from always being able to complete the mission and complete the task under the declared parameters, startup leaders and former military in the United States, frontline drone operators and officials in Ukraine told the WSJ.

“The general reputation of every class of American drones in Ukraine is that they don’t work as well as other systems,” admitted Adam Bray, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Skydio, which sent hundreds of its best drones to Ukraine at the start of the war. But the drones turned out to be “not very successful on the front line,” he said.

Since then, Skydio employees have traveled to Ukraine 17 times, and the new drones are built with the opinions and needs of the Ukrainian military and security services in mind, rather than Pentagon demands, Bray says.