The production of drones requires constant changes and rapid adaptation to battlefield conditions, so mass production of such devices on classic automotive lines is inefficient, said Eisaku Ito, CEO of the Japanese corporation Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
The production of drones requires constant changes and rapid adaptation to battlefield conditions, so mass production of such devices on classic automotive lines is inefficient, said Eisaku Ito, CEO of the Japanese corporation Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the head of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries explained that the organizational structure of UAV creation is fundamentally different from the automotive industry. According to him, the technical characteristics of drones are constantly changing depending on the situation, while car factories are designed to produce tens of thousands or millions of exactly the same units.
Transferring drone production to automobile factories carries a significant risk of creating equipment that will instantly become obsolete due to the rapid development of technology and rapidly changing military requirements.
"If we go down this path, it will be a huge waste of taxpayers' money," Ito stressed.
The statement came amid a massive expansion of Japan's drone procurement program. In the current fiscal year, the local Defense Ministry almost doubled its budget for UAV purchases to 250 billion yen (about $1.7 billion). According to journalists, this has already attracted considerable attention to the Japanese market from foreign drone manufacturers and local technology startups.
Recently, the Japanese corporation Terra Drone officially announced a strategic partnership and investment in the Ukrainian company Amazing Drones . Terra Drone CEO Toru Tokushige and Amazing Drones CEO Maksym Klymenko spoke in an interview with dev.ua about the emergence of Japanese-Ukrainian defense cooperation and current challenges in the interceptor drone market.
