Magnus Freyr (2:05)

We're building a system that every soldier can use to defend themselves. A small system that you can have a couple of in your vest to shoot down the drone when it's coming in.

Gideon Long (2:14)

Drones encounter drones here on Business Daily from the BBC World Service. In a clearing in a forest in Ukraine, a soldier sends a drone high into the air. It's a small device, maybe 30cm across with rotor blades on each corner. A standard commercial drone, the kind of thing you might use to take aerial footage at your wedding, but strap a bomb to it and it becomes a deadly weapon. The Russians and Ukrainians have used them to devastating effect.

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We begin in Ukraine, where the capital Kiev has experienced one of its worst nights of the war with Russia so far. Hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles rained down on the city, with damage reported right across the capital. Ukraine says Moscow fired 550 drones and 11 missiles overnight.

Gideon Long (3:12)

Tonight, President Zelensky said his forces used 117 drones in strikes on Russian air bases. From deep inside Russia itself, the wine of Russian drones changes before they dive, and then we watch them come in swarms to Sloviansk as they do across the front. Drones have transformed modern warfare, as the BBC's Quentin Somerville found out on a trip to eastern Ukraine last year.

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It's a new deadly threat that keeps.

Gideon Long (3:46)

Kharkiv awake at night. Swarms of Russian drones drove Svetlana from.

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Her village, Liptsi, near the Russian border. Things were flying over you, right over.

Ksenia Kalmus (3:57)

You and near you.

Oleg Vornik (3:58)

Everything was shooting all around.

Gideon Long (4:01)

It's just drones everywhere, Armed drones, modified drones. It's like a drone workshop. The war has been fought in places like this as much as on the battlefield now. Still a war of infantry, of artillery, but now it's also a drone war. Before 2022, there were fewer than 10 companies in Ukraine making drones. Now there are hundreds. The government says that around three quarters of Russian losses on the battlefield are caused not by bullets or conventional artillery, but by drones. Stacey Pettijohn is director of the Defence Program at the center for a New American Security in Washington and the author of several reports on drone warfare.

Stacey Pettijohn (4:46)

There's definitely been a surge since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. This has been the first full blown drone war. And drones have been involved in all aspects of operations, and their utility has really driven up the demand. Where you see European states talking about building drone walls and other countries seeking to acquire drones because they provide them with a cheap form of air power. In Ukraine, you found that there are a million small startups. There are a ton of mom and pop shops where people are making drones and assembling them in their apartments, in their garages, and donating them to the forces in addition to established industries between them.

Gideon Long (5:31)

These various companies, collectives, and individuals in Ukraine are churning out well over a million drones every year.

Stacey Pettijohn (5:37)

When you're hearing the production of a million drones, that is largely the first person view. Small quadcopter kamikaze drones that are being used as a key weapon on the Front line due to the lack of availability of cannons and artillery shells. At various points, they've become the go to weapon for the Ukrainians.

Gideon Long (6:00)

Ksenia Kalmus is one of those mom and pop drone producers. Before the war, she was a floral artist with a flower shop in Kyiv. But after Russia's full scale invasion in 2022, she company called Klin Drones.

Ksenia Kalmus (6:15)

It was just obvious decision for me. I just wanted to help my country, help my people and military. I helped them with different stuff. And at that moment I realized that all the requests were for drones.

Gideon Long (6:30)

And what kind of drones are you producing?

Ksenia Kalmus (6:32)

So we produce in our workshop 8 inch drone, 10 inch drone and 13 inch drones. The payload that they can lift, it's also different from 1.5 kilos to 8 kilos. The big drones can be also used as humanitarian drones. So they can deliver supplies to the unit, for example, so the drone can lift like medicine, water, food, tourniquets for the soldiers and deliver them.

Gideon Long (7:00)

And where do you get the parts for the drones from? Do you have to buy them in the frames or are you producing them yourselves using 3D printers? Where do you get the parts?

Ksenia Kalmus (7:09)

We are focused on Ukrainian components mostly. We don't want to give money to China. It's crazy to give them. So we buy components in Ukraine, for example, frames made in Ukraine, engines made in Ukraine, chips, propellers and so on. Some of the parts, like cameras, unfortunately we have to buy from China, but most of them are bought in Ukraine and produced in Ukraine.

Gideon Long (7:38)

And have you had any problems in Kyiv producing these drones? Because obviously Kyiv itself comes under attack.

Ksenia Kalmus (7:46)

Yes, now we have lot of attacks with drones and with ballistic missiles. We have problems with energy at the moment, but nothing is impossible, you know, when you want to survive.

Gideon Long (8:00)

And I have to ask you, Ksenia, before the war you were working with things of supreme natural beauty, with flowers, and now you're making devices that can maim and kill people. How difficult has it been for you to make that transition?

Ksenia Kalmus (8:15)

You know, actually it wasn't difficult. Yes, I miss flowers very much. And I miss that previous life. Of course it's sad that we all have this reality now. And a lot of my friends, me as well, changed totally from flower artists or from dancers to drone producers. But this is a question of existence. We just fight for our country, for our existence, for our culture. It's not hard, it's sad.

Gideon Long (8:42)

I would say this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

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Oleg Vornik (9:49)

I didn't submit an expense report.

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Magnus Freyr (10:10)

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Stacey Pettijohn (10:10)

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Gideon Long (10:19)

I'm Gideon Long, and today I'm looking at the business of military drones. It's not just Ukrainians who are being killed by drones. Moscow says its civilians and soldiers are being hit by Ukrainian drones in sometimes audacious attacks deep inside Russia. And it's not just in this conflict that drones have become the weapon of choice.

Ad Voice / Narrator (10:41)

At least 75 people have been killed in a drone strike on a mosque in the Sudanese city of El Fha, according to aid agencies operating in the area. Across Myanmar, the military is carrying out increasingly deadly airstrikes.

Gideon Long (10:57)

This is a fast expanding global industry. So which companies are making drones and benefiting from this huge demand? You might think it would be the big defense contractors, the likes of Lockheed Martin or Boeing. But in many cases it's smaller defence companies and technology startups. Companies like US drone maker AeroVironment, which is listed on the Nasdaq. Its share price has soared over 500% since Russia's war with Ukraine. In Europe, Portugal's Tecever became what's known as a unicorn company this year, valued at over a billion dollars. British manufacturer Flyby and Germany Stark are also expanding their operations. Occasionally, these startups are swallowed up by the big beasts of the defence sector. In 2023, Swedish defence giant Saab bought a British drone company called Bluebear. And last year, BAE Systems bought Molloy, another British drone company. If you can't beat them, it seems you can always buy them. German defence technology company Starc is due to open a new drone plant in southern England this month. I spoke to Mike Armstrong, the firm's managing director. For the uk, we are a new.

Mike Armstrong (12:07)

Style of autonomy defence company. So we've been around for about 18 months now and we major in scalable, mass producible autonomous weapon systems. So that's covering off both maritime unmanned surface vessels through to autonomous aerial vehicles.

Gideon Long (12:25)

And tell me about this new plant that you're opening in the south of England.

Mike Armstrong (12:29)

So we've opened a factory in Swindon. We are in the process of fitting that out and launching it very shortly. And the objective of that is to be able to achieve high rate production of our medium range loitering munition called Virtus, which is a 100 kilometre range weapon system, which is something the British army are keen to employ.

Gideon Long (12:49)

And how fast is this sector expanding, Mike, and what are the projections for its future growth?

Mike Armstrong (12:55)

The sector's growing really quickly. I think we're all seeing an uptick in demand off the back of the Ukraine conflict. But I think more, more pressingly, the NATO militaries themselves are responding to this new demand for autonomous weapon systems.

Gideon Long (13:11)

So it sounds like this is kind of the future of warfare in many ways.

Mike Armstrong (13:14)

I think it's the future of warfare. I think legacy systems, artillery, tanks, they all have a place in warfare. But I think what we have seen is a major innovation which is not going to go away anytime soon.

Gideon Long (13:27)

The growth in drone technology has also spawned its antithesis, a counter drone industry. For every drone launched in anger on the battlefield, there's usually someone trying to jam its radio signal or shoot it down. DroneShield is an Australian company that specialises in anti drone technology. Since Russia's invasion, its share price has soared 2,600% on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Oleg Vornik (13:51)

We are the only public listed counter drone company around the world which has helped as investors are realizing that it's a signal significant opportunity in today's environment.

Gideon Long (14:02)

That's Oleg Vornik, DroneShield's CEO. He's Russian, but left his homeland as a teenager and these days he provides the Ukrainians with technology to defend themselves from Russian drones. He spoke to me from DroneShield's headquarters in Sydney.

Oleg Vornik (14:17)

We moved from 250 to 400 people just in the last 10 months. By this time next year will be probably somewhere between 5 and 600 people. We're scaling our operational capacity from $100 million a year, 2.4 billion, so about 5x increase. We're getting new facility, about 10 times the production floor space. So it's really exciting. A lot of it is just scaling at a incredibly large pace.

Gideon Long (14:45)

Explain for me what the company does.

Oleg Vornik (14:47)

We make hardware and software that you can carry in your hands, you can put on the vehicle or around the base to detect and safely take down small drones. Detection is done through radio frequency. So listening for the connection, two way traffic, traffic between the drones and the controllers and also by cameras that can provide a visual track. Defeat is done primarily through jamming, so blocking the connection between the drone and the outside world. The drone respond by saying, hey, I'm lost, don't know where I am, how to reconnect to my pilot, so I'm just going to land or crash.

Gideon Long (15:20)

And can you give me some examples of where drone shield technology has been used around the world?

Oleg Vornik (15:26)

So today we have about 4,000 counter drone systems deployed in about 50 countries around the world. Europe is probably our single largest driver today. And we have hundreds of systems deployed in Ukraine against the Russian drones. Ukraine is probably what we're most well known for, but otherwise Asia Pacific has been quite an extensive market for us. So countries concerned about the rise of Chinese drones. We have quite a bit of business in South America, so gangs taking drones and attacking government facilities. So we sell to Colombia, Mexico for example. In the US we sell to all branches of the military intelligence community. And while today most of our sales are to military and military like customers, civilian will really become as much as 50% of our sales. Because if you think about the need of airports, data centers or energy infrastructure or venues, all of that is a significant future market for us.

Gideon Long (16:24)

And to be clear, we're talking here about jamming drones to bring them down rather than shooting them down.

Oleg Vornik (16:29)

Shooting drones down doesn't work. Why? Because the damn thing moves at 100km an hour. It's blending like white drone against white clouds. So it's really blending in. And by the time you shoot one or two of those, the other five would have done their job. What drones often do, tactics wise now, is they fly super high and then they dive vertically down towards the target. So shooting them with bullets is insanely difficult.

Gideon Long (16:54)

Moonin Dynamics, a much smaller startup working in the same counter drone space, is taking a different approach. Its founder is Magnus Freyr, who's Seen how the industry has changed since he was a paratrooper in the Norwegian army less than a decade ago.

Magnus Freyr (17:10)

The drones were pretty expensive. It was all fixed wings, larger surveillance drones. Nothing like what's happening in Ukraine now and what NATO is starting to turn to.

Gideon Long (17:21)

And after leaving the military, you went to the US to study, right?

Magnus Freyr (17:25)

Yeah, I went to Stanford to pursue the dream of starting a startup in Silicon Valley while learning some robotics. But the whole time I was looking at news about Ukraine morning and evening, and it got to a point where I. I just felt like I had to do something, whether that was training soldiers or building technology or whatever that path might be. So I went down to Ukraine to just find my role in the whole thing. We're building a system that every soldier, whether they are a newly mobilized Ukrainian or an experienced NATO soldier, can use to defend themselves from drones. Basically, a small system that you can have a couple of in your vest to shoot down the drone when it's coming in.

Gideon Long (18:11)

It will be literally shooting it down rather than jamming it.

Magnus Freyr (18:14)

Yeah, it's kinetic.

Gideon Long (18:15)

Magnus tells me he hopes to have that technology ready for deployment within a year. So what are the likely next developments in drone warfare? At the moment, many drones have to be guided to their targets by an operator, an actual human being with a remote control panel standing within range of the drone and therefore often in danger. And usually they can only operate one drone at a time. But Stacey Pettijohn at the center for a New American Security says that will evolve.

Stacey Pettijohn (18:42)

I do think there are going to be further changes in the future as autonomy advances. That's going to be the next real shift. Most of the drones in Ukraine are remotely piloted or they're pre programmed like a cruise missile. So they're not truly smart, intelligent machines. But you're going to just start seeing drones where groups are controlled, maybe by one operator. So one person flies five or six and gives them some general guidance. And then eventually fully autonomous drones that can collaborate and sort of collectively decide what is the best way for all of them to act.

Gideon Long (19:20)

Imagine that swarms of drones collaborating with one another and deciding in real time on the best way to hit a target.

Stacey Pettijohn (19:27)

Right now, really smart artificial intelligence is not very extensive, but I think given the fact that one of the greatest vulnerabilities of drones is they're still controlled by a human. And severing that command link is one of the most effective ways of neutralizing them, means that there's going to be a operational imperative for more autonomy going forward.

Gideon Long (19:53)

That's all for the future. For now. That's it from Business Daily with me, Gideon Lofty. If you want to hear more, listen to the next episode, in which my colleague Rob Young talks to a former member of the UK's elite army unit, the SAS. He set up a company building AI systems for the defence industry. Thanks for listening.

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