I demand that looters be brought to justice and competition be brought back to drone market
Drone Industry
For a whole year, we have been fighting against the enemy and our deaf military bureaucrats, finding money, opportunities, equipment, and drones ourselves. We developed and built drones and radio-electronic reconnaissance stations ourselves, and bought, equipped, and repaired vehicles at our own expense.
Dear Andrii Borysovych,
It's been three weeks since I broke my vow of silence (I didn't give interviews and was very careful about writing about technical topics), hoping that such a demonstration of loyalty would solve the day-to-day issues of our unit - unblock appointments to positions, the awarding of ranks, and the purchase of drones for our work.
Let me remind you that this story began a year ago, when the President announced that we had developed the Palianytsia "drone missiles", and I dared to say in an interview with journalists that there are no "drone missiles" in the generally accepted classification of weapons, that drones with jet engines are cruise missiles.
The top brass were offended. Yermak set a task for the commander-in-chief to investigate, the commander-in-chief set a task for our general to punish, our unit was going to be dispersed, but then they just sent us to the ban, put us on the blacklist, and prevented us from fighting in every way possible.
But we fought. For a whole year, we have been fighting against the enemy and our deaf military bureaucrats, finding money, opportunities, equipment, and drones ourselves. We developed and built drones and radio-electronic reconnaissance stations ourselves, and bought, equipped, and repaired vehicles at our own expense, and inflicted more than $100 million in damage on the enemy over the year, with a cost per company of about $1.5 million. We kept our men, recruited more men, and lost no one.
A year has passed and the situation has not changed. I spat on all the possible consequences, came out of internal exile, remembered that I was not only a professional military man, journalist, businessman, drone designer, engineer, but also a participant in all the Maidans and revolutions since the late eighties. I started a war with fools.
If it is war, then war. If it is a stadium, then a stadium.
Three weeks later, the bosses finally remembered about us and suddenly requested a report on combat work for the year, which had been submitted long ago, but no one had read it; the looters who "earn" extraordinary money from the war harboured a grudge against me; the SSU opened another case against me. Everything is going according to plan.
Three weeks ago, I publicly asked Andrii Borysovych to give the command to unblock our unit, to make long-overdue appointments and award long-deserved titles to our people, and to allow the purchase of drones for our work. But nothing has changed.
Now I want more. I demand that looters be brought to justice, that competition be brought back to the drone market, which is monopolised by companies close to the government, that open tenders and comparative tests of UAVs be held, that a state body be created responsible for the development, production and use of drones in war, and that a person who is absolutely professional and independent of amateurs and populists be put in charge of this body.
If it is war, then war. If it is a stadium, then a stadium.
