The ongoing trend of developing military technologies will continue to develop. In particular, some of the biggest requests will be for developing drones, electronic warfare systems, and analytics systems, Sergey Tokarev, the Founding Partner of the tech company Roosh, said in an interview with the Ukrainian tech media Speka.
According to the businessman, Ukrainians are now widely using new technologies, even when it comes to upgrading weapons made in USSR. As an example, he mentions the modernization of old drones, which are now able to fly over 1,200 km without being noticed by Russian air defense systems. Another successful case in Ukraine is a cheap and advanced air defense system capable of detecting Russian Shahed drones at an early stage by sound.
Sergey Tokarev believes that the development of drones will be the most rapid in the tech military. After all, the advantage of using a UAV is that one can hit any object without risking the lives of people. Tokarev provides an example of the Ukrainian project Army of Drones, in which the state allocated 20 million hryvnias for purchasing professional unmanned drones made in Ukraine.
Another of Ukraine’s big achievements in developing military technologies is the launch of the military tech cluster, which was announced by the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov. According to Sergey Tokarev, the war with Russia can be long, so Ukrainians need to be always prepared for further actions of the aggressor state and develop their own military technologies.
“We should realize that the war is for long, that the aggressive neighbor is not going to disappear. As I understand it, the worst thing will happen not today, but in the following 5-10 years. It is clear that now Russia will lose, the Russians will not accept this humiliation and will try to revenge. The question is what we will do to prevent it,” says Sergey Tokarev.
Therefore, the Ukrainian IT sector is actively involved in developing military tech already now. Some experts are developing unmanned drone control systems, electronic warfare systems, and are engaged in analyzing satellite images. According to Tokarev, his company Roosh is not involved in any military tech projects, yet he personally is involved in related areas – both from financial and organizational sides.
In particular, the businessman mentions the importance of using analytical tools for better security. “The future belongs to analytics,” believes Tokarev.
Among other potential trends, Tokarev names the development of remote-control technologies: for example, unmanned tanks and small jet UAVs. Such tanks can be significantly more expensive, but they can save the lives of qualified specialists. Another modern technology that is now under development will allow one to hide a box with a “swarm” of drones on the battlefield under the ground, so it opens only under certain conditions and, if necessary, attacks and destroys the enemy with the help of small charges. At the same time, there is no place for robots on the battlefield yet – they are not effective enough for this.
Sergey Tokarev adds that the progressive world has not seen a war on such a scale as the Russian aggression in Ukraine for almost a hundred years, especially when it comes to using technology. He assumes that any future potential large military conflict in the world will be completely “unmanned,” which will allow losing less of manpower on the front line.