Tried and tested in war: For European drone manufacturers, Ukraine is the place to be

Le Bourget, France – About once a month, the manufacturer of French drones Henri Seydoux does what has become a pilgrimage necessary for many in his business – he goes to Ukraine.

Because for drone technology, there is no more difficult place to survive than the fronts of war against the invasion of Russia, where the two parties use unmanned air machines of all shapes and sizes to kill and observe, reshape modern war.

And because the battlefields are also bristling with electronic countermeasures and weapons to confuse, blur and shoot drones, Ukraine has also become an extremely real test field for progress in drone technology, some of which have started to relax in non-military sectors.

For manufacturers, being able to say that their related drones and equipment have been transformed and tested by Ukrainian forces become a sales argument when they market their goods not only for national defense departments, but also for police forces, border authorities, rescue services and civil users.

“When we say:” It is a good machine, it works “, people can believe or not. But when it is guys in Ukraine and others who say they are happy, it has a greater value,” said Bastien Mancini, president and co-founder of French Drone manufacturer Delair, who teams up with European defense knds to provide Ukrainian forces with 100 drones. KNDS sales literature notes that they are “proven in combat”.

Mancini says that civilian users of other non -military drones of Delair “see things that work in Ukraine and say to themselves:” It resists a jamming, it resists the loss of a radio connection and so on and therefore it will be good for civil use, such as the inspection of electric cables or anything “.

“It really helped us gain markets. It gives people confidence,” he told the Associated Press at the Paris Air Show, a large window for the aviation and defense industries.

Henri Seydoux, the founder and chief of the French drone manufacturer Parrot, says that Ukraine is “fascinating” from the point of view of drone technology because “it changes so quickly, there are new ideas constantly”. He has made regular trips since the start of the Russian large -scale invasion in February 2022 to meet manufacturers of Ukrainian drones, drone software developers and military authorities.

“Each quarter, the situation is completely changing,” he said in an interview. “Each company, say, which makes military equipment or each army is very interested in drones. But those who really use them and understand how to use them are the Ukrainians.”

For Ukraine, trying to defend oneself against the swarms of Russian drones which target the cities and the waves of Russian troops supported by drones is a matter of survival. The same goes to find bypass solutions to counter the electronic war systems that Russia deploys to blur and deactivate Ukrainian drones, triggering what has become a drone technology arms race between the two parties and for manufacturers outside Ukraine.

Small drones that deposit bombs and explode against targets – mass produced at a fraction of the cost of other more complex weapons systems than its allies have provided – have become more and more vital for the resistance of Ukraine. His Ministry of Defense said that he planned to buy 4.5 million drones this year, all of Ukrainian manufacturing, which allow their operators to see what machines see, so that they can guide flights in real time – exploding in a Russian trench, for example, or even against a single enemy soldier. It is three times more drones that the ministry bought last year, he said.

“Drones have saved Ukraine,” said Alex Vorobei, Ukrainian sales representative of Ailand Systems, a Ukrainian start-up developing a drone that detects land mines.

Vorobei and others in the drone sector say that manufacturers not involved in Ukraine may be left behind.

“If you are in the defense field and you are still not in Ukraine, it means that you are nowhere,” Vorobei told Paris Show.

A micro -surveillance drone unveiled by Parrot at Paris Show has a nod to Ukraine in its name – the UKR AAFI – and was also tested in the field in what Seydoux describes as “a very hard environment” on the front line. It is equipped with artificial intelligence technology to allow it to find its way when radio and navigation signals are blocked.

Parrot says that the resilience and the ready -made features of the drone war also make it a good choice for law application operations, such as crowd monitoring, monitoring of suspects or border surveillance, and for rescue services in remote areas or during fires and accidents when navigation signals could decrease.

Ukraine was “a real laboratory or a test for us, to see if our products worked,” said Mancini de Delair. His exploding drone of Oskar, which has polystyrene wings, transports a half-Kilogram (a book) to explode against troops and slightly armored vehicles.

Delair has developed it in less than a year, reusing one of its civil drones which was already used in France to map and inspect power cables, and harden it for Ukraine with technology to resist Russian jamming.

“Five or 10 years ago, many people wondered:” Are drones really useful for something? “No one asks this question today,” he said.

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The writer Associated Press James Brooks in Odense, Denmark contributed to this report.