State should become key driver of technological potential development

The document is available on the official website of the Defense Innovation Board.

According to the advisory board, which works on behalf of the US Department of Defense, Ukraine's recent successes on the battlefield have been largely due to its technological superiority over its enemy, which was gained through the integration of readily available commercial technologies into the army and their rapid development.

The rapidly growing technological capabilities of the Ukrainian Defense Forces are currently based on a model of direct interaction between programmers, engineers, project managers, and soldiers on the front lines. This interaction is supported by volunteers and startups and funded by private sources.

"However, this grassroots approach, while effective due to the lack of government control and bureaucratic red tape, remains poorly suited to scaling up at the national level and interacting with foreign partners."

According to analysts, the state should become the key manager of the development of Ukraine's technological potential.

Unfortunately, the government of Ukraine does not profess a consistent approach to the rapid development of capabilities. In particular, the Council points to the lack of departmental coordination between developers and the military, and the government's inability to properly formulate and communicate the military's requirements and requests to industry or foreign partners.

For all these 2.5 years of war, I sincerely do not understand why the Ukrainian government has not been able to put anything that is widely used by the Armed Forces into mass production. So that every time a soldier receives “something”, he doesn't have to wonder how it works, what the damage will be and at what distance.

By the way, this applies not only to weapons, but also to all other things in the war: from cars and armor to sapper blades, wheels and uniforms.

We can endlessly blame the West for why Ukraine is not in NATO and where the F-16 is, but it is no longer possible to hide the fact that the Ukrainian industry is not mass-producing much-needed items for the front.

And the money for this, by the way, could be easily found if the “special equipment exporters on Lamborghinis” were engaged in war, and not in the business of blood in the interests of yet unidentified persons...

Source

About the author. Volodymyr Omelian, Ukrainian diplomat, Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine in 2016-2019, political expert.

The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.