The commander of the unmanned systems battalion of the 58th motorized infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Varakin, commented on the information about the shortage of drones.
The commander of the unmanned systems battalion of the 58th motorized infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Varakin, commented on the information about the shortage of drones.
«Last year, we could easily allow ourselves to destroy 11-17 pieces of equipment per day. We could afford to use, if there were active hostilities, 100 FPV shocks per day, and their quality was more or less normal, that is, 7-8 out of 10 hit the target. What do we have now? Now, our brigade can receive only 200-300 FPV shocks per month on a monthly basis,» he explains in a comment to BBC Ukraine.
According to the battalion commander, the unit’s current monthly need is 2,200-2,500 drones, but he receives «a very small amount» from the state.
In turn, Captain Yuriy Fedorenko (call sign «Achilles»), commander of the 429th separate UAV regiment, notes that approximately a third of drones come from the state, and it is with this third that the greatest «sag» is currently observed.
«Of the total number of drones, those that we received centrally from the state are ⅓. Another third are purchased with money that went to the unit’s account, and a third are drones received through the support of the Ukrainian people,» he says in a comment to the publication.
According to Achilles, there are both objective reasons for the delay in delivery and subjective ones.
At the same time, the objective reasons include bureaucratic red tape with financing and contracting UAVs this year.
«It looks like this: today we have money because our partners gave it, we ordered it, but what we ordered will be in the troops in two months,» he says.
At the same time, as for subjective reasons, the regiment commander points to the «unprofessionalism» of individual officials at some levels of this process.
As dev.ua wrote the day before, the new head of the Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert «Magyar» Brovdy, spoke about how he will develop the branch of the armed forces entrusted to him.
