In Kyiv (Ukraine).
They seem far from the front. Ivan, 55, is tall, skinny and wears a baseball cap. Alyosha is devoured by tics and dark circles. In appearance, more geeks than soldiers manning a trench. But there are their hands. In a workshop, the location of which must remain secret, they glue, weld and assemble. From morning to evening, a whole team designs the drones (or “cuckoos”) which will be sent to the front.
“Me, what I would have liked is to flybegin Aliocha. But in the end, no… I finished an engineer. Still, flying, that stuck in my head. So the cuckoo clocks, it was first that, a hobby. Ivan cuts it off. “Then the war broke out, the total one, that of February 24. First, mentally, we had to accept the disaster. Then choose: fight or flee? I have three young children, I could have left Ukraine. I could also have taken a Kalashnikov and gone and killed ten Russians before being shot down myself. But I chose to be able to eliminate at least one hundred of them. Help our intelligence, specify our artillery strikes… Choose the drones, therefore.
“The drone is the real revelation
of this war”
Like many other sectors, Ukraine neglected the drone sector before the war. And, as with everything else, the country was able to transform amateurs into specialists as of February 24.
“The country was dry. We didn’t have big rear production or massive training of drone pilots. So, we had to quickly adaptraconte Ivan. The army relies on us today to supply it. The drone is the real revelation of this war. A happy medium between the plane and the helicopter, with the possibility of long flight or static flight… Then, of course, comes the low cost of purchase and use. Alyosha completes: “Lower risk also for men…” The two colleagues laugh. “The difference between a salesperson and an engineer: I think of the money, he thinks of the man behind the machine”observe Ivan.
Typical of Ukraine at war is this alliance between the military and volunteers who bring their special skills to bear. An organic, sectoralized relationship, in tense flow. The military grants the organization of the two men a field dedicated to the test of the cuckoo clocks – since February 24, the use of drones is strictly prohibited throughout the country.
“We don’t really work with the high command”nevertheless nuances Ivan. “We speak directly with the pilots. They tell us about their experience, their needs at the time and for varying situations. Based on this feedback, we adapt and personalize our production.”
Supply difficulties
The drone that Ivan and Alyosha can produce is a compromise between the simple civilian drone, bought on Amazon and sent directly to the front for basic observation use, and the Bayraktar TB2 military drones –5 million dollars per unit. Alyosha proudly explains: “Don’t say that we buy our drones online! We produce them alone, from start to finish. It’s not an assembly line. We all had different jobs before the war, but each member of the team makes their own drone and must know how to manage with a knife, a welder or a computer.
“Now we only depend on the donations we manage to raise. Since the liberation of northern Kyiv, people give less. They feel less directly threatened. Several months have already passed and their savings have mostly melted… We also depend on the time taken to receive the different parts. If everything was immediately available, we could do one drone per day. When parts are missing, a guy can take a week to design a cuckoo clock”he explains.
Ivan specifies the modalities and the difficulties of supply: “China has blocked all exports to Ukraine that could, directly or indirectly, help design a military drone. So we have to prospect everywhere else… But when it’s not an exporter that’s blocking us, it can be a bank. I can even tell you about a French bank which froze all our orders when it saw the reality of our activity. Alyosha interrupts Ivan. He points out to her that it is not good to say the name of the banking establishment as long as their funds are frozen.
The magic of the 3D printer
To counter growing supply difficulties, Ivan and Alyosha mention alternatives. Alyosha confesses, half-wordly that “the 3D printer is without doubt the most strategic aspect of [leur] job»: “With it, we can make a small device that allows you to drop an explosive charge. In other words: what definitely marks the transformation of a civilian drone into a military cuckoo.”
The two men are silent immediately, then want to end the interview. They fear that access to 3D printers will harden in turn. On July 8, 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead by a man suspected of conceiving a gun with a 3D printer. A situation that would be indicative of the current troubles: what, in one part of the world, can allow an unbalanced person to commit a criminal act, contributes, elsewhere, to the survival of a nation in the face of invasion.
