Ihor Fedirko: "We are at least two years late with exports. Europe is already mass-producing similar systems"
The executive director of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry discusses why the Baltic states and Scandinavia are "fighting tooth and nail" to tap into Ukraine’s experience, how the experimental resolution on exports turned into a "damp squib," why the military is responding to jet-powered Shaheds reactively rather than proactively, and what it was like working with the Ai-Petri system.
The interview was recorded at the MSPO International Defence Industry Exhibition in Kielce, Poland.
- What really stands out at this exhibition is how the stands of Eastern European countries are beginning to resemble those of Ukraine: various drone configurations, UGVs, and radars. Lithuania and Estonia seem to be taking this most seriously; they have a lot right now. Their representatives are also very active at the Ukrainian stands: they speak with manufacturers and ask about technologies and the latest developments in the war. Why is that?
- There is a reason we constantly hear about the "eastern flank". These countries, especially the Baltic states, as well as some Nordic countries, genuinely feel that they could become a testing ground for an attack on NATO or the European Union. And this is not merely a source of concern for them; in these countries, it is on the front pages and in the news every day. "We must prepare, draw up evacuation plans or at least think about how to fight for enough time to evacuate, in other words, how to defend our borders."
They conduct simulations of how the Russians would act. That is precisely why they are so active in our market. Some of them already allocate 5% or more of GDP to defence spending, including armaments, rearmament and equipping shelters. That is also why we see so many products at their stands that closely resemble ours.
And it is not just them. We can walk through the pavilions now and see that every country is recreating our systems on a large scale. So, "kudos" to our government, which has still not properly opened up exports. I will be frank: we are late. Very late. Of course, one could argue that European manufacturers have not tested anything and do not know how to adapt it to real-world conditions. That is not true. Every country with a presence in Ukraine takes this knowledge home. It demonstrates how these systems operate in Ukraine, trains its personnel, assembles its own drones, and learns how to collect, transmit, and use information. Believe me, they are very well informed. It is only a matter of time before their drones are on par with ours. Yes, we adapt our products to reality more quickly. But even if war comes to them, they will already have a baseline capability.
I think we are at least two years late.
- Specifically with exports?
- Yes. For me, exports encompass everything. It is not merely about selling. It is about systems, setting them up and integrating our systems and subsystems into their overall defence architecture. It is about joint production, joint products and joint R&D, about how we should integrate.
But now, when we approach them and talk about integration, they respond: "Of your full range of drones, we are interested specifically in this one and this one; we do not know how you made them. We already have everything else." And this is clearly visible at the stands: they really do have it.
Again, let us be honest: we helped make this happen ourselves. There is the Test in Ukraine project: we essentially test their products under our conditions, give them a report, and they draw conclusions and upgrade their weapons. It is a good initiative, a way of thanking them for their support. But we must understand that it comes at a price. This is the other side of the coin: unfortunately, we are losing markets and forfeiting our own opportunities and capabilities.
"IN ONE MONTH, IT WILL BE THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE "OPENING OF EXPORTS". THE RESULTS ARE VERY, VERY POOR"
- What is holding things up? You speak extensively with manufacturers and the government, and everyone has been raising the alarm about this. Where is the process getting stuck?
- We are trying to create a streamlined, simple, and quick solution in an area governed directly by Ukrainian law. There is a law that fully governs the work of the State Service of Export Control of Ukraine, the Interagency Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation and Export Control Policy, and arms and military equipment exports in general.
Unfortunately, the classification of a large number of products remains unpredictable. Take drones, for example. Can an FPV drone kill someone without a warhead? It cannot. It can injure someone, but it cannot kill them. Yet we see children racing identical drones at competitions in Europe. So is this military technology or a dual-use item? The same applies to components. Platforms and components based on similar technologies can be subject to different control regimes depending on their specifications, configuration, and end use. The industry needs these rules to be applied clearly and consistently.
Many issues remain unclear. And, as always, we are stuck somewhere in the middle. The political will exists: the president announced it himself in October last year and tasked all competent authorities and institutions with implementing it. Businesses had been ready to go for a long time. In one month, we will be "celebrating" the anniversary of the political decision to resume controlled exports. The results are very, very poor. Quite frankly, they are very poor.
It is extremely difficult to create a fast track through an experimental resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers in an area governed by such a law. I do not want to place all the blame on the state and those in power, but the attempt to create this experimental resolution without consulting the market turned into yet another "damp squib". A month and a half ago, we got a resolution under which not a single permit has yet been issued. It was drafted without any dialogue with the market, and none of the proposed amendments were taken into account.
They have now approached us and said: "Let us have your proposals after all; how should this work?" We submitted all our proposed amendments. But again, there have been changes at the NSDC and changes at the Ministry of Defence. We will see how quickly the process moves. I promise everyone: God willing, we will finally push the update through by the end of October. But it will still require amendments to the Tax Code and the Customs Code, as well as the establishment of a special fund. I have no idea when that will be done. So the process will definitely drag on, probably until the end of the year.
- How will the opening of Ukrainian exports affect the European defence market as a whole?
- If you walk around the stands of different countries here, one thing becomes obvious: they are pursuing only their own interests. They tell us explicitly what they need from us, making no secret of it: only our experience, our technologies, and our people with their knowledge, know-how, and skills. We must think the same way - about ourselves.
Without integration with European manufacturers and into their defence industrial architecture, however, we face a very uncertain future. We will become isolated. Let us be honest: the amount of money in the country is not increasing, so the number of companies will also decline. We are like that "good mother" who smothered her child in her embrace.
Yes, the state awards substantial contracts and has done a great deal to create this market. There is dedicated financing and lending, and several other instruments are being developed. But where is there to grow within the domestic market? Our companies already have very little room. We are already seeing tenders challenged in court, and this is only the beginning; it will become increasingly difficult.
If we want the industry to develop and want to become not a source of raw materials, as we were before, but suppliers of actual systems, we must invest both domestically and internationally. At present, 80% of enquiries from companies to the association concern international cooperation exclusively. The market is sending a clear signal: this process simply is not moving.
"AI-PETRI" IS A SYSTEM WE USED TO TRAIN ELECTRONIC WARFARE SPECIALISTS
- This year, the Ai-Petri counter-technical reconnaissance system was displayed for the first time at the Ukrainian Zbroya stand. It attracted considerable attention from foreign partners. One of the project’s founders, Petro Poroshenko, also attended. You once worked with this system. Can you tell us about that experience, if it is not classified?
- Ai-Petri was and remains a very good system. I remember when it first appeared: we tested it at training ranges and used it to protect bridges and military formations. It was also used in the first successful jamming of Shaheds. We used it at a training range in Zhytomyr to understand how our Shark and Leleka drones and other systems would behave under its effects. Essentially, we used it as a platform for training electronic warfare specialists.
I remember the constant arguments. The EW Directorate said: "This is not ours. We do not understand what they have come up with, and we will not adopt it for service until it has gone through us." Pure bureaucracy. But I know the original engineers, remember the history of its development, who split off from whom, and how it was created. We helped in every way we could. At the time, I worked at the Ministry of Strategic Industries and was responsible for electronic warfare. I worked with every system available at the time.
It was the era when electronic warfare as such was just emerging. I remember that even the Lithuanians offered us their systems at the time, and we compared them. Incidentally, their systems were of very high quality then and had effective jamming capabilities. Meanwhile, we had relatively few tactical-level systems. There were individual systems for trench-level use, or systems designed to protect critical infrastructure. But there were few tactical systems such as Bukovel, Ai-Petri, and Tritel. Then another system appeared. It was good and very high-quality, with a technical team whose approach was clear to me. I had hands-on experience with it and worked with it; I remember it well.
"DIDN’T WE KNOW A YEAR AGO THAT THERE WOULD BE JET-POWERED SHAHEDS? WE DID"
- From the perspective of what we are all striving for, winning the war, which of the things you have seen on the Ukrainian, European, or any other market could become a game changer? Where should we be looking now?
- That is a fundamental question, frankly. I regret that the lessons learned function formally exists within the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence, but has not yet become a fully fledged mechanism for collecting, consolidating, processing and implementing best practices. Unfortunately, the competence centres that were supposed to be established have not been created. Whether the new leadership will get them established remains unknown. But they must exist. Everything we will have left after the war is our experience, nothing else. Therefore, this function MUST exist.
And this experience should at least be used to try to forecast the war one year ahead and set technical requirements for manufacturers. Didn’t we know a year ago that there would be jet-powered Shaheds? Frankly, we did. There should be an institution that would say: "We are entering into forward contracts." What does that mean? Ladies and gentlemen, we can see that one in every hundred Shaheds launched is already jet-powered. We understand that Russia will most likely switch to jet-powered models within a year. Here is a forward contract: we are providing five companies with R&D funding. If you actually develop an effective system, we will be obligated to purchase, for example, six months of your production capacity." And our companies say: "We will even invest in R&D ourselves if you genuinely guarantee an order." Brave1 already covers part of this cycle, from grant funding to testing. But that is not enough, because forward procurement commitments are needed from the contracting authorities.
And this entails responsibility; you are shaping the future of the war. The right to make mistakes must be built into that funding: people should not be prosecuted for allocating money to a development that did not work.
What do we have now? For the past month and a half or two months, jet-powered Shaheds have, forgive me, been terrorising us. And, let us be frank, there is still no solution. There are four main directions we can pursue to improve existing systems. But these systems will soon reach their development ceiling, and we will still be forced to create a completely new product to destroy these Shaheds. This creates one problem after another.
Unfortunately, we do not have a body willing to take responsibility and, based on all the information received from the military and the Ministry of Defence, forecast at least one year ahead what the war will look like and how it will change.
- Does it have to be a state body?
- No, of course it could also be a private organisation. But we have an enormous problem with public-private partnerships. In that case, it would have to be an organisation with special authorisation from the SSU to conduct activities involving state secrets, because it would receive an enormous volume of data. This is what is known as a data lake — a lake of unprocessed information. It needs to be processed and systematised, reports need to be produced, and the future needs to be forecast.
I am convinced that a private organisation would do this far more quickly and efficiently. But given the nature of the information, I do not believe our state is prepared to hand this over. At the same time, unfortunately, it is also incapable of creating such an organisation effectively itself.
Therefore, when discussing victory and the war of the future, we can currently do little more than speculate. We can suggest where the state should be looking. But the state always responds: "We have the Armed Forces. They should tell us what the future will look like, not some private individuals."
- And the Armed Forces are busy actually fighting the war…
- Exactly. So we have a snake biting its own tail.
But when criticising, criticism is good; one must also offer solutions. I know that two or three years ago, the Ministry of Defence attempted to create a dedicated portal where military personnel could record and share their combat experience. Research groups were established that travelled along the front and collected information. Unfortunately, their work was never scaled up. Yet I have read two studies produced by these groups and consider them the most professional work carried out in Ukraine during the war.
Among other things, they produced a very high-quality report on the use of foreign weapons. That was when we learned that HIMARS is not a panacea, while Excalibur loses its precision under certain conditions and when affected by electronic warfare. And this had to be explained: under certain conditions, a shell costing $150,000 proves ineffective. This had to be shown and demonstrated. And that is extremely important, both for our partners and for us.
In other words, useful structures exist, but for some reason they are not being scaled up within the Armed Forces. As a result, we respond reactively rather than proactively. Jet-powered Shaheds appeared, and we rushed to look for a solution. The same thing happened earlier with fibre-optic drones and many other systems.
Olena Sokolan for Censor.NET
