Lviv, Ukraine: Old ideas about war are being tossed aside in an arms race to win the battle for Ukraine – and a new breed of drone may decide which side claims victory.

Young companies are forming across Ukraine in a bid to defeat Russian forces with faster and more powerful drones that can operate on land, sea and air.

And they understand that if they do not build autonomous drones that use artificial intelligence to find their targets, their enemies will get there first.

“We are very, very close to the war of drones,” says Sergii Gunko, the chief operating officer of Tank Bureau, a tech company in Lviv.

“There will be less and less direct contact for people who see each other, take their guns and shoot.

“You have a kill zone that is approximately 20 to 25 kilometres wide and is constantly increasing.”

Gunko outlines this future at a gathering of Ukrainian defence developers in Lviv, in western Ukraine, where they meet to share knowledge and attract investors.

Tank Bureau is a member of a group called Iron Cluster, which began in Lviv and now has 90 members across Ukraine. The young companies mirror the attitude of Silicon Valley start-ups, but their ultimate goal is to win a war.

The “kill zone” means the concept of a “front line” is becoming obsolete as aerial drones roam across the line of contact and limit the movements of the opposing army. The size of this zone is defined by the range of the drones.

Gunko believes the width of the zone is likely to extend to about 100 kilometres over time.

The war in Ukraine has already been transformed by first-person view, or FPV, drones, which operators fly via very long spools of fibre-optic cable that prevent them from being jammed. While they have disadvantages, such as an operating distance limited to the length of a wire, they are highly resilient and their range is increasing all the time.

Meanwhile, another company, DoD Solution, is installing software in military drones to create autonomous weapons that can complete missions using artificial intelligence.

DoD Solution co-founder Ivan Oleksii says the software will not replace the best drone pilots, given the human skill required to control the devices in battle, but will help address the scarcity of drone pilots.

Oleksii says some pilots may be very good and others may be average, which means it will be better to use AI drones in large numbers.

The DoD software is loaded onto a module, he says, which has been fitted to military drones used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to prove it works in the field. A human operator can direct a drone on some parts of its journey, then switch to AI so it completes the task on its own. This can be useful when a drone goes on a long-distance mission outside radio range.

“It totally makes sense to use it,” says Oleksii.

Drone race

“Once those AI tools can perform better than the average soldier, defence forces will start to use this human factor on something else. If they can automate it, they will automate it.”

None of these concepts is hidden from the Russians, although the technology itself is guarded carefully. Ukraine bans the export of this software and hardware, a contentious decision because it limits revenue for its own start-ups. The companies spoke to this masthead about their work but would not divulge confidential details.

‘We don’t have this time, and that’s why our innovation cycle started to be more like six months to three months.It’s a constant fight between sword and shield.’

Andrii Makhnyk, Iron Cluster co-founder

The race on the Russian side is led by groups such as Rubicon, a military unit set up in the middle of last year and credited with using drones to push Ukrainian soldiers back in the Kursk region.

The head of the Ukrainian Aerial Reconnaissance Support Centre, Maria Berlinska, said in August that Rubicon had “brilliant management” and was Russia’s best technology unit.

This means there is an open question about whether the start-up culture on the Ukrainian side will be able to match the centralised military power of the Kremlin.

While Australian companies have joined this arms race, and the Department of Defence is buying and developing drones, few countries can match the intensity of the work in Ukraine. The war is a tragedy, but also a laboratory. Lessons from the front are acted on urgently because so many in Ukraine see this as an existential challenge for their nation.

“The innovation cycle of technology that we’re used to, like in NATO or other countries, can take years to create something new,” says Iron Cluster co-founder and global project lead Andrii Makhnyk.

“We don’t have this time, and that’s why our innovation cycle started to be more like six months to three months.

“It’s a constant fight between sword and shield.”

Access to technology is a factor. Russia has built devastating drones using designs from Iran and hardware from China. So far, Ukrainian companies are still buying Chinese components, but they worry about restrictions that will hurt their ability to win the arms race.

Not all the work leads to the production of offensive weapons. Farsight Vision, another Iron Cluster member, is taking data gathered from aerial drones and feeding it into mapping software to create 3D maps of Russian positions.

“Our system is actively used by the Ukrainian military now,” says Oksana Vakshynska, the engagement manager at the company.

“The tool is used by reconnaissance units, whose task is to investigate an area, and it is also used in the planning of operations because, before you plan the operation, you need to understand the area.”

It is also used in drone schools, so the pilots-in-training are working with real examples of the enemy terrain.

Naval drones are proving their capacity in Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil tankers. Ukraine claims success in damaging two tankers in the Black Sea last week, and it has released video of its “Sea Baby” drones heading toward their targets like small automated speedboats.

Gunko, of Tank Bureau, says the future will be about using large numbers of small drones rather than a small number of large offensive weapons.

“If you look at what’s going on in the war, you see that it’s better not to invest in a big ship but in smaller drones like the Sea Baby,” he says.

In the same way, Russia has pierced Ukrainian air defences by launching hundreds of drones in a single night.

This is the logic that led Tank Bureau to develop ground drones – known as UGVs, for unmanned ground vehicles – as a way to help Ukraine on the battlefield.

While China has released video of drones that appear to walk like dogs, the Ukrainian UGVs use tracks like tanks. Tank Bureau puts its vehicles on display at defence gatherings in Kyiv and Lviv this week.

Gunko said brigade commanders would choose hundreds of UGVs as an alternative to a tank because of the greater impact of a large number of uncrewed vehicles. Western countries, he added, needed to adapt to what is happening in Ukraine and think again about the idea that large ships and aircraft can withstand attack from large numbers of smaller drones.

“This is the main trend, I think, for modern war, in the world we see now,” Gunko says.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.