Ukraine is amping up drone production to get an edge in the war against Russia

Anton, who doesn't want his name used for security concerns, builds drones with the company Social Drone in his kitchen in Kyiv, Ukraine. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

KYIV, Ukraine — Whenever Anton has free time after work, he sits at his kitchen table and spends a few hours assembling drones that will be sent to the front line.

“Our army needs a lot of them,” says Anton, a 35-year-old software developer, who declined to give his last name to avoid being targeted by Russia for his kitchen-top weapon-making. “People need to use factories in their own kitchens to assemble more and more drones.”

Ukraine has dramatically amped up domestic production of both attack and reconnaissance drones since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. This year, the Ukrainian government allocated $2 billion to produce at least 1 million first-person-view, or FPV, drones, which are equipped with cameras that transmit video to remote pilots. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told foreign arms manufacturers earlier this month that the country had already surpassed that, contracting 1.5 million drones in the first three quarters of this year. He added that Ukraine is now capable of producing 4 million drones annually. The government, military, private companies and regular citizens are all involved.

A drone is built at Skyassist, a company that started making drones in Ukraine during the war. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

“When we started doing this, it was only three people. We were doing everything ourselves,” said Serhiy Pirohov, who in the summer of 2022 co-founded the volunteer drone-assembly network Social Drone UA, though he now works independently. “It was the goal from day zero to bring in more people and educate them so the goal is that everyone in the country should be able to assemble some kind of drone.”

Ukraine even opened a new armed forces' branch dedicated to drone warfare, which the Ukrainian Defense Ministry says is the first of its kind. Vadym Sukharevsky, the commander of this branch, known officially as the Unmanned Systems Forces, compared it to the creation of an air force. Russia may have more drones, he told the Economist magazine in July, “but qualitatively we are keeping them at parity.” Sukharevsky told a recent military tech conference in Kyiv that when the branch is fully structured, “we will be operating at sea, we will be operating on land and air ... plus we will be working on research and development.”

Plastic ties used in building drones hang from the wall over a workbench at Skyassist in Ukraine. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

Completed drone bodies rest on shelves in the back of the workroom at Skyassist in Ukraine. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

Ihor Lutsenko, a former Ukrainian lawmaker now in the Ukrainian military, is also pushing for the creation of an all-female drone unit because “we do not have enough soldiers at the front, and it’s time to include women,” he told NPR.

Meanwhile, more than 200 drone-producing companies have opened in Ukraine since 2022, including Skyassist, which has its offices in a no-frills neighborhood of Kyiv. Co-founder Ihor Krynychko points to a reconnaissance drone.

“This is the prototype,” he says. “Literally made in the kitchen.”

Skyassist produces hundreds of drones every month. Krynychko, a jolly engineer from Kharkiv, says Ukrainians are producing state-of-the-art drones because “we paid for this knowledge in blood, with our soldiers’ lives.”

Ihor Krynychko, a co-founder of Skyassist, a drone making company. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

“I remember being at a military exhibition in Poland last year and seeing beautiful-looking weapons by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others and thinking ‘they’re beautiful but none of them would work in war for various reasons,’ ” he says. “It’s not because our engineers are necessarily smarter. We are at war and we know better than anyone else what’s needed at the front.”

Ukraine’s navy has used sea drones to drive Russian warships out of the Black Sea. More recently, last month, the government unveiled the Palianytsia, which has been described as both a missile drone and a rocket drone which can be used against targets far into Russian territory. The Ukrainian military is already using domestically produced long-range attack drones to hit ammunition depots deep inside Russia.

The biggest barrier to expansion, though, is money. Ukraine’s government and private sector are producing more drones than the state can afford to acquire. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and former Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin have urged other countries to help by buying Ukrainian drones.

Employees work on drones at the company Skyassist in Ukraine. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

Keeping up drone production helps Ukraine defend itself, says Krynychko, the co-founder of the drone-manufacturing company Skyassist.

“We have so many ideas for new drones,” he said. “We need time and resources to bring them to life.”

Hanna Palamarenko and Polina Lytvynova contributed reporting from Kyiv.