Everyone wants the battlefield data of Ukraine -TGN

Instead, Ukraine wants to use the collected data for its own defense sector. “After the war is over, Ukrainian companies will go to the market and offer solutions that probably no one else has,” says Bornyakov.

In recent months, Ukraine has expressed its ambitions to use its battlefield innovations to build its own military technology industry.

“We want to build a very strong defense technology industry,” said Nataliia Kushnerska, project leader of Brave1, a state-owned Ukrainian platform designed to make it easier for defense technology companies to pitch their products to the military. The country still wants to work with international companies, she says, but there is an increasing emphasis on home-grown solutions.

Building a domestic industry would help protect the country from future Russian aggression, Kushnerska says. And Ukrainians have a better understanding of battlefield dynamics than their international counterparts. “Technologies that cost a lot of money, made in (overseas) labs, are coming to the front lines and they don’t work,” she says.

Open exclusively to Ukrainian companies for the first two months of its existence, Brave1 isn’t the country’s only attempt to build its own industry. Kushnerska describes secret technology conferences, attended by Ukrainian technical staffers and Defense Ministry officials, where discussions can take place about what the military needs and how companies can help. In May, the Ukrainian parliament voted in favor of a series of tax breaks for drone makers in a bid to encourage the industry. Those government efforts, combined with the huge demand for drones and the motivation to win the war, are creating whole new industries, Bornyakov says. He claims the country now has more than 300 companies making drones.

One of those 300 companies is AeroDrone, which started as a crop spraying system in Germany. By the time of the large-scale invasion, the company’s Ukrainian founder Yuri Pederi had already returned to his homeland. But the war inspired him to keep the business running. Now the drones, which can carry heavy loads of up to 300 kilograms, are being used by the Ukrainian army.

“We don’t know what the army is carrying,” said Dmytro Shymkiv, a partner at the company who was deputy chief of staff to Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president who preceded Zelensky. He could plead ignorant of what AeroDrone drones carry, but the company collects massive amounts of data — up to 3,000 parameters — during each flight. “We’re very aware of what’s going on with every piece of equipment on board,” he says, adding that information about flying while trapped or in different weather conditions could be reused in other industries or even other conflicts.

Aerodrone offers a glimpse of the future companies Bornyakov describes. Armed with that data, the company sees a wide variety of options for its future once the war is over, both military and civilian. If you can fly in a war zone, says Shymkiv, you can fly anywhere.