Ukrainian FPV drone manufacturer Vyriy Industries, after July searches by the State Bureau of Investigation, continues to operate as usual, fulfills government contracts, and gradually restores operational processes.
Ukrainian FPV drone manufacturer Vyriy Industries, after July searches by the State Bureau of Investigation, continues to operate as usual, fulfills government contracts, and gradually restores operational processes.
This was stated by Vyriy Industries CEO Oleksiy Babenko in his first major interview after the investigative actions with the Militaryi publication.
According to Babenko, no employee of the company has been notified of the suspicion at this time. «As of today, we believe that we are in the status of witnesses, because no employee of the company has been notified of the suspicion. We independently initiated my interrogation, because I have something to say. If there are questions, we are ready to answer them,» he said.
The court also refused to seize the funds seized during the searches, after which they were returned to the company.
Despite the investigation, Vyriy Industries fulfilled all government contracts without missing deadlines. However, due to the relocation of part of the production, restructuring of internal processes and the temporary suspension of certain operations, the company was unable to implement additional production plans.
According to Babenko, during this time the company could have produced about 30,000 more FPV drones. «During this month, about 30,000 drones were underproduced. This is 10,000–15,000 destroyed targets. All our obligations were fulfilled on time, but if there were no searches, we could have produced about 30,000 more drones. We had the components, the people, and all the necessary resources,» the company’s CEO noted.
One of the biggest problems after the searches was information security.
According to Babenko, Vyriy Industries supplies drones to more than 200 military units, so internal systems contain information about field warehouses, delivery routes, and equipment transfer points.
To minimize the risks of this data being leaked, the company completely froze its databases for two weeks, after which it actually began to rebuild part of its internal IT infrastructure. «Our bases have all the points where we ship drones to the military. If this information were to simply leak, the scale of the consequences for the front is hard to imagine. This is what stopped the company the most — a significant part of the processes had to be actually rebuilt,» he explained.
According to the company’s head, the restoration of information systems is still ongoing.
Despite the consequences of the July events, Vyriy Industries has already returned to developing new products. The company reported:
As is known, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv previously postponed consideration of a motion to seize property and funds seized during searches at the drone manufacturer Vyriy Industries and its partners.
According to representatives of the Ukrainian defense industry, the Vyriy Industries case may become a point of no return for Ukrainian DefenseTech.
Vyriy Industries is one of the largest Ukrainian manufacturers of FPV drones for the Defense Forces. The company regularly reports on the scaling of production and supplies drones to military units along the entire front line.
