War

Since September, China has once again tightened sanctions and made changes to exports of drones and their parts. And this cannot but affect drone manufacturers in Ukraine, some of the components for which come from the country of the «center of the universe.» Four representatives of Ukrainian drone manufacturers shared with dev.ua their observations on whether they face restrictions, how they overcome the situation, and what sanctions threaten Ukraine.

Vyacheslav Yezhov, the brother of «STALKER Clear Sky» developer Volodymyr «Fresh» Yezhov, who died in 2022 near Bakhmut while defending Ukraine from a Russian invasion, said that he would appreciate how STALKER 2 promotes Ukrainian culture.

Last month, tech entrepreneur Yaroslav Azhnyuk raised an interesting topic, comparing venture capital investments in his startup Petcube and in Ukrainian defense-tech during 2.5 years of full-scale war. It turned out that the startup "won". That is, investors believe more in a laser for playing with cats than, say, in a fiber-optic drone that destroys invaders. It would seem that Western investors should now be fiercely interested in Ukrainian miltech, which is developing rapidly due to the challenges of war and is able to test the product practically on the battlefield. However, the desired "boom" is not observed. Therefore, together with investors, specialized experts, participants of the Ukrainian venture market and the public sector, we decided to find out why this is happening and what Ukrainian companies should do to attract more investors.

16-year-old Tymofiy Meshkov studies in an ordinary school in Kharkiv, and no one in his family has anything to do with energy. However, the young man says that he gradually came to the research life. He has always liked programming, mathematics and physics and now he has already developed a project of the possibility of placing a transformer underground with compliance with the thermal regime to protect the power system from rocket attacks and Shaheds. This was Tymofiy’s first global project, with which he won a gold award at the International Warsaw Invention Show (IWIS) in October, where he participated as a resident of the Small Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He told dev.ua how it can work, how much money will be needed to move the transformers underground and what difficulties will have to be faced.

In August, the Russians began using improved versions of fiber-optic drones at the front. Oleksiy Zhulinskyi and his company 3DTech are one of those Ukrainian manufacturers working on a response to the occupiers. His fiber-optic drone "Predator REBOFF" is currently undergoing codification, but military units are already able to purchase it and use it in combat. We contacted Oleksiy and talked about the fashion for fiber-optic drones, the features of their use and how we can win the technological race with the Russians in this segment.