_This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on March 13, 2025._ [_Watch the full video here._](https://www.csis.org/events/defense-industrial-base-lessons-russia-ukraine-conflict-focus)
Captain Luke Slivinski: The war between Russia and Ukraine is highly dependent on industrial base outputs in a dynamic and rapidly evolving conflict environment, driving the acquisition cycle. Welcome to the Defense Industrial Base Panel of our series Conflict in Focus: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine.
(Music Plays.)
Good morning. Thank you for joining me today. I’m Captain Luke Slivinski, Coast Guard military fellow here at CSIS, and I’m leading today’s panel on the defense industrial base, lessons learned for the U.S. from the Russia-Ukraine war.
Joining me today is Dr. Phillip Karber. You have a very long and storied career. You’re currently a professor of military strategy and warfighting at the Eisenhower School. You’ve been involved with Ukraine and the government of Ukraine in conflicts with Russia dating all the way back to 2013, and have in fact been injured two times, I understand, on the frontline, and are the recipient of six medals from Ukraine defense. So thank you for joining me.
Also, Mark Valentine, thank you for joining. Mark is president of global government for Skydio drones. They’ve been heavily involved in providing drones and new technologies to the government of Ukraine in the war with Russia.
And finally, Kateryna Bondar, thank you for joining us. She is with CSIS’s Wadhwani AI Center. She also has quite a bit of experience working with the Ukrainian government in their defense innovation and finance sectors. So thank you for joining me today.
I might start off, Dr. Karber, with you and your history with Ukraine, and again being a student of warfighting and strategy. Can you explain to us where – you know, how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine kind of started, how the industrial base in Ukraine responded in kind to changing threats, and perhaps the importance of innovation?
Phillip Karber: So I think one thing for most people to start with is Putin. Putin has identified that he wants to basically reconstitute the old Russian empire, which includes Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, eastern Poland, Ukraine Belarus – (coughs) – excuse me – Georgia, and so forth. (Just ?) want to occupy them. And they’re allowed to have their own culture and their own language, but not their own foreign policy, not their own military alliances or independent security. And that was his attitude towards Ukraine. And they’ve been forced with the – by helping, and then getting elected, and then securing Yanukovych, the previous president who, when things went south with Maidan, the people protesting being forced to be part of the Russian economy, the pro-Russians left. Yanukovych fled. The defense minister fled. The admiral of the fleet fled back to Russia.
It’s interesting, given our topic, to realize that approximately 43 percent of Russian weapons components came from Ukraine. So, in 2014, I was in Dnipro at the Yuzhmash, the missile facility, and there was a Russian ICBM, and they were putting on the guidance components of it sitting there. And I go, wait a minute; there’s a conflict going on next door, what are you going to do with this ICBM? They said, oh, we got to send it back because we want to get paid.
I used to call in the early days – ’14-’15 – Ukraine’s defense industry was all controlled by a conglomerate. And I got so frustrated with that I started calling it instead of Ukroboron(prom) I called it Ukroboronporn – (laughs) – because I thought it was pornographic that guys are dying at the front and their number-one priority was foreign military sales, their second priority was employment, and the third was to use the money from foreign sales to pay government taxes. Providing defense of their own – their own – for their own defenses was fourth in that – in that list, and I thought that was disgusting and so forth.
Over time, that’s changed. So to contrast it now, once the ’22 invasion occurred and just before that, Ukraine was – they called it reforming the industry. They tried to break it apart and privatize it, which was not all that successful. But there’s a lot of talent there. And so that talent has sort of risen to the – to the occasion now since the major invasion started and the government’s now changed its attitude.
But approximately 43 percent of the facilities have already been struck by Russian missiles, so some of the key areas are not functioning. For example, one of the design bureaus – which was an excellent design bureau – they had the air raid alarm and the guys decided to stay and keep working, and I think 40 of them lost their lives in the strike and basically wiped out that design bureau.
Capt. Slivinski: Wow.
Mr. Karber: So there’s – one function that their defense industry is now doing is maintaining Western equipment. So of – for example, we sent Bradleys, but many of the Bradleys arrived without reactive armor. The batteries were dead in the TOW launcher. They needed, basically, to be overhauled. NATO and us have sent 300 M109 howitzers. Half of them are sitting in a yard and just being used for spare parts because NATO sent – we sent pretty good ones, unlike the Bradleys, but many of the NATO artillery pieces were – basically hadn’t been used or even driven for 10 years. And so one of the things that the Ukrainian defense industry – one of its biggest missions is to maintain their own assets based on old Soviet designs, but also now this flood of Western equipment. So that’s one function.
The other thing that’s arisen is a bunch of entrepreneurs and small groups. One of the challenges they have – and U.S. industry has tried to link up with them – but one of the challenges they have is our industry’s happy to talk to them, but we really can’t give them – it’s very hard to provide Ukrainians secure help because of all the ITAR rules. And it’s just a nightmare of trying to – so you can say, OK, yeah, we’ll take your technology and mix it with ours.
One last comment, I think, is – that has struck me, and that is from comments – I know a bunch of the designers both in the formal defense industry and the entrepreneurs. For example, in the area of drones, there is a major change in this competition every six months, so the lifecycle is very short. And in all honesty, we in the West, including the United States, are just not keeping up. We don’t have that – it takes us six years to get it designed and –
Capt. Slivinski: Or more.
Mr. Karber: And moreover, in that six-month cycle they’re field-testing it. (Laughs.) So they’re not really going into OT; they’re actually using it combat experience. So there’s an enormous wealth of information that we need from them, and there’s things that we can help them with, but right now if there was a – if there was a mission that Tusk (sp) ought to have, it ought to be to cut through the bureaucracy of that and make sure that we can and they can work closer together.
Capt. Slivinski: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I might turn to Kateryna. I know that you had experience working with Ukroboronprom when you were in Ukraine, and I thought it was pretty fascinating how you explained the change in how the Ukrainian domestic defense industry was forced to change. Are you able to speak to that?
Kateryna Bondar: Yeah. Sure. So Ukroboronprom is a big conglomerate. Basically, it’s like an umbrella organization which unites former Soviet enterprises. And it went through multiple cycles of reforms, and Ukrainians were trying to modernize it, but to be honest with you before the full-scale invasion there was not much motivation behind it.
And even before 2014, I would say – and from my observation – there was a targeted activity to basically kind of destroy this industry. Yes, it was supplying to Russia and supplying components to Russia, but to keep Ukraine from becoming independent in its own defense industry. And we all know that Yanukovych was pro-Russian president, and he was spreading pro-Russian narratives, and it was moving toward Russia. And destroying self-sufficient defense industry was kind of part of this plan, I would say. So it wasn’t probably a formal strategy or something, but we don’t know what’s happening inside Russia, right? But from the actions that were taken, we can come to a conclusion that Ukrainian defense industry – state-owned defense industry, which was united under this Ukroboronprom umbrella, was basically being destroyed.
Another factor that, like, I see a big obstacle on developing self-sufficient Ukrainian defense industry at that time was the outflow of human capital. Basically, a lot of really talented engineers from those construction bureaus and design bureaus, they migrated abroad because the industry was underfunded. There was not enough investment. All the new systems, new developments were not, again, funded, and they were not needed. There was no demand for that. And that was partially one of the reasons we saw a huge outflow of human capital and talent. And that’s why later, when we were trying to get support from our foreign allies, it was really hard to combine Western cutting-edge technology with Soviet legacy systems and Soviet legacy industry that we had in state-owned enterprises.
Of course, everything changed with the big-scale invasion. And I think the main factor for Ukrainian success with drones and innovative technology is this, I would say, civil-military fusion in Ukrainian way – (laughs) – basically, because a lot of civilians who work in IT industry, high-tech industry, they either joined the armed forces directly or indirectly, so they started to help Ukrainian army, basically, to maintain this technology level and to maintain this technology race with the enemy.
And yes, the iteration cycle is really fast. I would say for software-based weapons systems it’s even faster than half a year. It’s like it can happen one week, two weeks. And, yes, they immediately test on the battlefield because Ukrainian entrepreneurs and developers have direct access to the military. Basically, everyone has a relative or a friend or someone to call to and say: Hey, we have a new strat; could you please go and test it? It’s the easiest way, but this is what is called here in U.S. forward-deployed engineers – basically, when you send your engineers to the frontline and they can immediately test, get feedback, go back, improve. And this cycle repeats on and on, on and on, so it’s even faster.
With hardware systems, yes, it’s slower, but again, the pace is really high. And Ukraine is probably really unique and one example in the world where this happens right now. And of course, with the United States, I think it’s precious knowledge hub and, you know, knowledge which should be transferred here as well, not only U.S. technology to Ukraine but there should be exchange, and – for the good of the both parties. (Laughs.)
Capt. Slivinski: Yes. And that’s kind of why we’re here today, to try and help capture some of that for the U.S.
Kateryna, you had – you had mentioned the – you know, how, you know, Western/U.S., you know, tech companies, innovation became part of the conflict. And, Mark from Skydio, I know Skydio was involved with the Ukrainian government. And can you explain more on how Skydio drones and just innovative technology has played a role? And again, you know, I’m sure you have some maybe key highlights on how quickly, you know, the fight has changed.
Mark Valentine: Oh yeah.
Capt. Slivinski: Yeah.
Mr. Valentine: Well, to echo Kateryna’s comments and Dr. Karber’s comments, the speed of iteration is the defining feature, at least from my view, for that conflict.
Thanks for the opportunity to be here and for CSIS hosting us.
Skydio’s story starts in 2014. We were founded by Adam Bry with the basic thesis that if you could create a drone that was really incredibly easy to fly more people would use them. So to do that, though, is harder than it sounds, and it really started with a nexus of computer vision capabilities to create an obstacle-avoidance capability for the drones so that you couldn’t crash the drone. You could run it full speed at a tree, it would recognize that your intention was to go on the other side of the tree, but would not run into it. So it would either go over, around, under, through, find some way of achieving that goal. And that works very well. And then we added more and more capabilities to find X, track Y, scan Z, and those are the capabilities that exist in the drone.
And our story in Ukraine actually starts roughly around 2018, which is four years before the full-scale invasion. And the reason I bring that up is because in 2018 Skydio won a U.S. Army contract called short-range reconnaissance, or SRR. And if you think about how the United States government buys things – this is not a pejorative; this is just how the system works – you start with a set of requirements. Well, those requirements in 2018, it took a few years to gather them. It took a few years to research before that. So if you think about the timeframe when those requirements were built, they were built when the United States was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Capt. Slivinksi: Right. And the technology has changed greatly. Right.
Mr. Valentine: The technology has changed, but also in those environments we owned the airspace, we owned the spectrum, and we could pretty much do whatever we want. So adhering to those requirements, Skydio developed a drone that was called the X2. That X2 was built with a single-band radio operating at a very limited frequency range.
So now fast-forward to 2022 during the full-scale invasion. There were many folks from governments, the donor class, et cetera that were reaching out to tech companies around the world, saying: Send us whatever you have. Obviously, Ukraine started with creating the army of drones at the time, so there was this mindset that there was a gravity around drones. And so send everything you have.
So we looked at the electronic environment in the area and we knew how our radio was built, and we’re like, mmm, we’re not sure this is actually going to work. We think the single-band radio is going to operate very closely to the cellphone band in that region, and we think you’re going to have some significant issues, which is going to affect the range of the drone, et cetera. People said: Doesn’t matter. Send them. We did. As predicted, those drones did not work very well in that electronic environment. Furthermore, the Russians then started to use electronic warfare techniques to jam. And so those drones didn’t work very well.
Now, we at Skydio took a real punch to the gut and brand reputation suffered significantly because now the narrative was not only Skydio but U.S. systems don’t work. And so we didn’t quit. We kept sending teams over. And this gets to the iterative speed.
So we would send multidisciplinary teams of engineers, subject-matter experts. We have several folks from the special operations community. We were working directly with many of the special operators in Ukraine to iterate on this capability. Well, the nice thing is we were able, because most of the drone is software-defined, to make some relatively rapid changes to make the radio a multiband radio that had a frequency-hopping capability, and that allowed us to counter the electronic warfare RF jamming. And then the capabilities that the drone had for obstacle avoidance, use a technique called visual inertial odometry, and we were able to use that to counter the GPS or GNSS jamming, as well as the GPS spoofing. So it took us about a year to correct all those things, but roughly nine months ago we passed the electronic warfare test for both the minister of defense and the minister of internal affairs. And we’ve been working with governments since then, both the U.S. government and allied governments, to basically action letters of request that we’ve received from several Ukrainian government entities for thousands of these drones.
So the story ends pretty well. But again, I think the major lesson that I have is the way our requirements system operates in the United States military for the most part we are almost forced to fight the last war because those are the requirements that come down, and if you want to win the contract you have to adhere to those requirements. And oftentimes those requirements are not informed by what is happening in today’s world.
And the speed and the iteration, Kateryna mentioned, you know, six months and software stuff happening a lot faster. That is true. So we were sending teams over – roughly 20 to 30 people, multidisciplinary teams – about once every other month and then once a month, and we realized that wasn’t fast enough. So we invested in creating a permanent party presence in Ukraine, to include hiring Ukrainian engineers and support personnel. And we had to do that just to keep up with the pace of the change.
Capt. Slivinksi: That is – that is absolutely fascinating from both Kateryna and Mark, your comments about the importance of having the technicians, you know, very, very close to the frontline. Can you all speak to, you know, how that relationship has worked? You know, in the United States, perhaps our, you know, warfighters, you know, junior or mid-grade, are not necessarily ever speaking to industry. How has – how has Ukraine achieved that?
Ms. Bondar: Well, I would say it’s organic, like natural process. It wasn’t –
Capt. Slivinksi: It forced itself –
Ms. Bondar: Yeah. It wasn’t, like, a decision made by someone and, you know, this strategy developed, approved on paper. No, of course not; it’s war, full-scale invasion, so that’s probably the only way it could work out. And as I said, it was massive drafting and a lot of men from, basically, every city, every family was on the frontline – not every, of course, but a lot of people who know each other. So that’s how people started to communicate.
And we should not forget that the war actually started in 2014. So before the full-scale invasion, we already had some workable and working mechanisms how this might happen, because if we are talking about warfare like physical systems, it’s only one part of the story. But after the war started in 2014, there were a lot of engineers – software engineers who realized that on the frontline warfighters don’t have sophisticated situational awareness systems. So, basically, they don’t see. They don’t know what’s happening on the frontline, behind the frontlines. So they started developing the systems providing situational awareness, fire control, fire correction systems.
Capt. Slivinksi: And there’s different needs, right, depending upon where they’re fighting.
Ms. Bondar: Yes. And – yeah. And there were volunteer groups uniting these software engineers trying to tackle the separate issues, which currently resulted into sophisticated systems like Delta, which was approved and adopted by the Ministry of Defense; Kropyva; et cetera, et cetera. So they coexist right now, but they started developing in 2014 by volunteer groups. And this is how it all started.
So by the time there was full-scale invasion, we kind of already knew what should be done. Drones were used before the full-scale invasion. And actually, from my conversations with Ukrainian warfighters, I think that Russians started using drones first. Don’t quote me on that because – (laughs) – nobody knows exactly. Like, the first occasion, probably it’s not documented. But from the feedback that I heard, it’s Russians who started testing this in 2016.
Capt. Slivinksi: Probably started with reconnaissance.
Ms. Bondar: Yes, mainly it’s DGI, schematics –
Mr. Karber: It was actually earlier – it was actually earlier. So the first Russian drone was the Israeli Forpost. And they leased them to Russia, and then sold them and gave the Russians the right to produce them. I actually saw them on the ground, after it had been crashed, and they had U.S. – I actually have photographs – U.S. ITAR-controlled products. And nobody’s ever brought that out, I guess, to Mr. Netanyahu. But so the Russians were using that. And they were tying it – using quadcopters for low-level tracking, and then had a datalink with – and once you saw that Forpost Grad strike, multiple rocket launcher strike was – very often followed that.
The Russians also created a thing called the caravel system, where they created teams of intelligence guys, artillery guys, and drone operators, and put them in the same cell, so that you – you didn’t have the command problem. You know, intel guys don’t hit anything. They want to listen. The drone guys want to, you know, do their thing, so forth. And so that worked pretty well. But when it – when the level of conflict got intense from the invasion, that that system basically fell apart on them. They haven’t been able to sustain it. But I didn’t mean to interrupt, but it’s –
Ms. Bondar: No, it’s a really good point, just proving the point that all this technology was introduced and deployed before full-scale invasion. And just the scale changed with the full-scale invasion.
Capt. Slivinksi: Right, even the employment too, right? How they were armed and – right?
Ms. Bondar: Yes, tactics and, you know, strategies, et cetera. But it all happened way earlier. And both Ukrainians and Russians already had those capabilities. They just figured out how to scale them up and how to deploy them more efficiently, probably. And that became the hype after the full-scale invasion.
Capt. Slivinksi: Right.
Mr. Valentine: So I think it started well before the 2014 invasion as well. I mean, let’s rewind the clock. We can look at the first use, or overt use, of MQ-1s was in Afghanistan by the U.S. And I think the real trend that we’re seeing, and the real innovation, is if you look at how the MQ-1 was operated, you had a relatively large, expensive asset that took several humans, a launch recovery unit to launch the drone, and then the remote split out. You had another group that was actually flying and operating the drone. So this was, like, 60-70 people, if I remember correctly, that they said took to operate that one drone in Afghanistan.
And so the trend that I look at over time is that the cost of that asset has gone down precipitously. And a lot of that’s due to compute, to miniaturization, and the trends we’re seeing just in commercial technology in general. And then the big thing, though, is the number of humans that it takes to operate that thing. So –
Capt. Slivinksi: Yeah, is it truly unmanned if needs 70 people?
Mr. Valentine: That’s right. As we moved into 2014-2022, we started to have a one-to-one relationship with these drones. So you had an operator – maybe two or three to one. Maybe you had an observer. Yet an operator. But, you know, essentially a one-to-one human holding a controller moving sticks to control a single drone. And I think if you kind of extrapolate where that trend line is going, the next step is going to be, single human operating a large number of disaggregated drones – and these could be heterogeneous robots, some that swim, some that fly, some that walk – and taking – and I think the next challenge is going to be taking that human intent from a single human or small group of humans, and distilling that intent to this cloud of robots, and then having them independently reason how they will accomplish that goal. And them be able to do things like self-healing if and when some of them don’t make it to the target, don’t make it to the objective. They can recalculate and redetermine how they’re going to do it.
So we’ve done much of this already. This isn’t new. We are leading a program called AISUM where we’re doing exactly that. But I think that is the next step. And to get to a point Kateryna mentioned, I think integration is a hugely important part of this. So one of the reasons I think the Ukrainians were so successful is they essentially said, we are – we’re going to rapidly build all these things. Then, when they are in operation, we will learn something from that. And then we will build a system to aggregate. So Delta, Vasha (sp), OCHI, you know, depending on which organization you’re working with. And so being able to integrate into that system is important, which is another reason we have engineers in Ukraine now, is to help integrate our systems into that platform.
But they started with the objective. Here’s what I want to accomplish. Let me get the thing that tactically will make that work. And then we will work to operationally connect them together. And in the US, we often flip that. And we say, what is the platform? What is the overall operating system we need? Then we will mandate that everyone builds something into that. And part of the problem is, that is so complex that you will end up with analysis paralysis for five years trying to define that. And while you’re doing that, technology is just rapidly iterating over here. And by the time you achieve that goal, you realize you’re five years late and you have to start again.
Capt. Slivinksi: Yeah, it’s fascinating what you had mentioned, Mark and Kateryna, about the importance of, like, interoperability. It’s also clear that perhaps co-production, right, from foreign countries – if the domestic Ukrainian industry was unable to, let’s say, provide an innovative drone, they went out and found them, sought them, or received them through donors and other things, from companies like Skydio. In cases where, you know, the U.S., you know, our domestic industry might not be delivering technology or capabilities kind of on the timeline that we need, are there lessons from the way Ukraine has done that, that the U.S. could potentially apply? You know, obviously there’s, there’s reform – legislative reform that’s being proposed to help get at some of that. And maybe even ITAR. Do you have recommendations for, perhaps, policy reform in the U.S.?
Mr. Karber: So the first time I saw drones being made wasn’t in an industry lab. It was in one of the brigades, one of the volunteer, in Dnipro – actually, in the Dnipro regiment – by scientists in the regiment. But the guys would come in from the front, and we used the example, and then they come back and say – so that had two very interesting aspects, in terms of the speed of innovation. You had multiple people working on it independently, and taking direct feedback back from the – in other words, it was combat operators who were actually working on the design of the thing in real time. The first armed drone I saw, they hooked an RPG to the bottom of it and would fly it into the back of a tank. And they were building them with 3-D printers, and some Chinese parts.
The second, I think, dramatic thing – and it goes along with this integration – is proliferation. So, you know, back in ’14-’15, you know, you have maybe one or two drones per unit flying. I mean, now you have every – almost now – if I said platoon it would probably be too much. But every company, right, has a drone operator. And the Russians are doing – one of the things, I think, that Ukraine has had the advantage on is because they’re doing that local production, well, the Russians have drones, and more high altitude, and still more of the expensive ones. And are using them even strategically, like the Iranian Shaded. What’s happening at the front is just this utter proliferation.
It raises a really interesting – I’m an old Marine grunt. I can’t imagine fighting on a battlefield of the future where these things are just dominant. Now, so I think what you’re going to start seeing is, you know, what’s the – what’s the countermeasure? Is it counter optics with the laser? Is using – one of the biggest things that Ukrainians right now are doing is they’re attacking Russian drones with their own drones. But you mentioned the swarm. I actually saw them test a swarm up at MIT. And it’s phenomenal. You have like – it’s, like, a flight of – in the imagination it reminded me of – only on a much smaller scale – of the B-24s and B-17s flying in formation over here. But they’re going like this, 40 of them at a time. But they know where each of them – it looked like a flock of birds.
And so I haven’t seen that actually be applied yet, where you take and put 40 birds on a unit that’s attacking, or something. But that certainly is –
Capt. Slivinksi: It sounds terrifying, yeah. Yeah, absolutely terrifying.
Ms. Bondar: Well, I would agree that probably the swarms is the future. But observation from the battlefield right now is basically that we’re not there yet, because for the real swarm we need AI. We need more sophisticated software for the drones on those nodes in that swarm to communicate, to make decisions. And it’s not just the air show where you have algorithm written by a person which drone drones should fly where to make –
Capt. Slivinksi: Right, how does that work in a contested environment?
Ms. Bondar: Yeah. So basically, it’s higher, let’s say, intelligence of the system to coordinate those drones and to allow them to make an independent decision from an operator, just to engage the target, for example. So for now I would say, yes, Ukrainians are testing swarms, but these are just experiments. And they’re not working really well so far right now, because a lot of aspects of this technology are still not in that level of development that allows swarming, like autonomous navigation. That’s the biggest problem for now. This decision making process is really hard to predict how actually AI works, because it’s a black box, basically. So I would say this sounds scary, but on the real battlefield it’s not deployed yet. So it’s under –
Mr. Karber: But what it’s doing right now is still scary enough.
Ms. Bondar: Yeah, yeah. (Laughter.)
Mr. Karber: Because, you know, what Bill Perry, former SecDef, used to say, what we – what we – what moves we can see, and what we see we can kill. And back then, the lag time was very significant. Now it’s real time. I can’t – it’s very hard for me to envision what – and I’m not even talking about swarming – but just the massive proliferation of these things. And the – you know, tanks are now vulnerable. And that was presumably, because of the mobility and armor, the most survivable vehicle on the battlefield. And they’re dying like crazy, from drones. So it is very interesting. And I absolutely agree with both the integration and the future of AI, and just for some degree of autonomy.
They are using AI and autonomous – semi-autonomous systems, so that you they’re not vulnerable to electronic warfare. When we first sent over Ravens, the Ukrainians sent them back and said, we don’t want them, because the Russians would – with their electronic warfare – would capture the Raven, and turn it around, and use it on Ukrainian forces. So the electronic warfare component of this, and also the future of how do you defend against this, is –
Mr. Valentine: I think there’s an interim step, though, between where we are now and full autonomous swarms. And that interim step is remote operations. So right now, again, it’s typically a one-to-one interaction – single human, single drone. But what we’re seeing in the commercial space and public safety are now multiple drones reporting into an operations center with, you know, a police force, what have you. So I can see this taking effect in the military domain, where you’ve got a group of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, what have you, operating multiple drones from a single operation center, whether that’s the TAC, the AOC, you know, whichever service is operating it. And then each of those drones being able to execute elements of autonomous behavior.
As Dr. Karber mentioned, you know, that’s happening right now with computer vision algorithms operating on the edge of a drone. So you’ve identified the target, you’ve committed the drone to destroy that target, and you say: Go. Well, much like a laser-guided bomb has a terminal guidance phase, or a JDAM, or what have you, now that drone enters a terminal guidance phase where it uses that computer vision model to track that. And so if it loses its RF linked to the controller, it’s just keeps going its mission. So that is an example of an element of autonomous behavior. So I think you will have many of those types of elements. Have a small group of humans in an operations center operating hundreds, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of drones. That is your interim step before you get to full Skynet.
Mr. Karber: That’s, like, a triple nightmare, and that’s the intermediate step.
Capt. Slivinksi: Yeah. That’s right. We’re starting to run short on time. The final question, maybe, for the group. There’s been recent talks of potential ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. And I’m wondering if you all have a sense for what future military aspirations of Ukraine might look like under a ceasefire, as well as what the future of the Ukrainian defense industry might look like. As Dr. Karber had mentioned, that has been significantly, you know, destroyed to a certain extent. So if you all have any projections.
Mr. Karber: Well, I’ll give you a quick thing and let everybody else finish up. What nobody is talking about in a ceasefire if you have 2,000 kilometers of front to cover. Now, right now you’re only fighting on about 1,200 kilometers, or so, of it. But you still have brigades sitting out and covering things. If you go to – the Russians have violated every ceasefire agreement they’ve made. They violated Minsk I. They violated Minsk II. They violated the Budapest agreement. They violated the INF Treaty, the – (laughs). So what’s crazy is that they’ll agree to something, but there’s no – there’s no – unless it’s enforced, there is no way of keeping them to their word.
Well, the only way you’re going to enforce that is if you actually can keep them – you know, Putin goes back, he reorganizes and recoups his force, and two years, four years later, bang, he comes back in and wants to get another big piece of Ukraine. How are you going to – and you don’t know when he’s going to – when that force is going to hit the front. So you can’t leave the front open. So the problem is, where is Ukraine going to get the –
Capt. Slivinksi: They can’t – and their defense industry, either, right? They can’t really throttle that at all.
Mr. Karber: Who’s going to – where is Ukraine going to get the manpower? Right now they have about 40-some brigades. Divide 2,000 kilometers into a brigade, that’s a frontage that everybody would go, how do we cover that? So what’s being missed is the idea that a ceasefire – I would argue a ceasefire is inherently unstable unless there’s enforcement behind it, and the enforcement has to be more than just Ukrainians.
But, sorry.
Ms. Bondar: I’m a bit biased – (laughs) – answering this question, but I fully agree with what was said before. And I think enforcement in this, where the key word is “force.” So no agreement, no promises, no memorandums. Won’t work. The key word is “force.” And this force for Ukraine is the ability to defend itself.
So I think these are, like, two aspects of this ability, is self-sufficient defense industry in Ukraine, which requires people talent, which requires funding, investment – and this is where the United States can help and allies can also help. Give Ukrainians resources; they will build everything. And technology transfer. (Laughter.)
And the second, Ukraine, like, defense industry is a long-term project. You cannot build it in a year. So to fill that gap there should be support from allies. And just being really strong and being able to defend itself, this is how Ukraine can sustain, survive, and probably deter Russia. Russia is always going to be there. The frontline is huge. And to keep that, Ukraine needs force and strength. And the strength comes only with military power. That’s what I think.
Mr. Valentine: Yeah. I agree with both of the previous speakers. At the end of the day, it’s going to be a deterrence calculus, and the major part of deterrence is the ability to prevent your enemy from taking an action because you know that they would incur a huge cost by doing so. So having the force to back up that threat is absolutely critical.
I do think the innovation that has sustained Ukraine thus far will continue once the hot war is over. There’s a lot of activities that are going to have to be done, whether it’s observing the border to enforce whatever the final agreement is, also surveying all the damage that has been done. And I think a lot of the capabilities the Ukrainians have demonstrated success in with drones on the battlefield, they will be able to take those capabilities to help them rebuild their country as well.
And what I hope we in the U.S. learn from this is just the massive scale that exists in a peer conflict. I don’t think that is something we have had to consider for a long time. When – and again, the reports vary, but you know, in certain phases of the war the Ukrainians were going through 10,000 small drones a month, and I just don’t think we in the United States have calculated what that actually means. If you look at, like, the number of small UASes or systems that the United States has bought, if the 10,000 a month is true the U.S. could operate for about a month and a half at that rate of loss. It is just something we have not considered.
So, you know, that means stockpiling the materials that it would take to build these things. That’s chips, it’s sensors, all sorts of things that, quite frankly, aren’t necessarily built in the United States anymore. Securing those strategic supply lines so that we maintain access to those things like batteries, et cetera, are going to be extremely important. And if we need to explore the use of the Defense Production Act to build those things and stockpile those things, then that’s something we need to get on right now because, again, it’s about deterrence. And if we can’t demonstrate that we have the capability to do something, that’s how deterrence fails and wars start.
Capt. Slivinski: Well, thank you. I might go around, just maybe a couple closing comments from each panel member.
Mr. Karber: I would like to –
Capt. Slivinski: Yes. Please go ahead.
Mr. Karber: Can I – can I ask him a question? (Laughter.) Being in the defense industry, how can – what would you recommend to, say, a congressional committee to make it easier for American companies to work with the Ukrainians and cutting through the red tape, cutting through –
Capt. Slivinski: And perhaps even with the government itself.
Mr. Valentine: Yeah. So working with foreign governments like the government of Ukraine – you mentioned it earlier – the ITAR restrictions are very cloying. And so, basically, if you have a small drone that has a thermal sensor on it, you have some form of ITAR control, whether it’s full ITAR or, you know, EAR99. You’ve got to get some sort of export license. And that significantly slows things down.
Well, here’s my ask. The thermal sensor is a commercial item. You can literally buy it on Amazon. But somehow now when you buy a drone on Amazon and you tape them together, you’ve now created something that is ITAR restricted seems a bit ridiculous. So I do think the United States needs to review some of that. And even if it is decided that that technology is still super sensitive and we need to meter its use outside the – we at least need to create strategic partnerships with countries like Ukraine so that we can speed that up.
And then when it comes to our own capability, again, I think it’s all about supply chains. I have learned so much in the last few years. Like, for instance, we at Skydio actually were sanctioned by the Chinese government for some sale of drones to Taiwan. There was one piece of our drone that was still made in China, and that was the battery. And so, losing that, we’ve been scrambling to develop a new capability that’s built here in the West, which actually we’ve solved now and we’re good to go. But you know, civil-military fusion is a big thing for some of our peer competitors and they will use economic warfare against us, so we need to insulate ourselves.
Capt. Slivinski: Yeah.
Kateryna, do you have any final thoughts, lessons learned or, you know, potential asks or desires from the U.S.? What can the U.S. learn?
Ms. Bondar: Well, my ask is just to establish more collaboration with the Ukrainian defense industry because I think it’s going to be mutually beneficial for both sides. U.S. have something to learn from Ukrainian innovations, and this is creativity. This is – maybe there is not much innovation itself, but the way to apply things, the way to deploy – the way to deploy things are pretty much innovating. How to make things cost efficient, reduce costs, and save a lot of money, that’s also crucial and critical, especially when we’re talking about attritable systems, right?
For Ukraine, of course, again, to be able to deter itself and not to get to another war with Russia, Ukraine needs support from U.S. both in investment and technology.
Capt. Slivinski: Providing the deterrence.
Ms. Bondar: Yes. Yes.
Capt. Slivinski: Dr. Karber, final thoughts?
Mr. Karber: Great panel. I learned a lot from my colleagues.
Capt. Slivinski: I wish I had more time with you all.
Mr. Karber: It was a fun discussion.
But just the last thing I would add, to just put onto Kateryna, is the Ukrainians offer us a very rapid-turn cycle. And when and if we need, but in – when we recognize we need, we can also get potentially a lot of production from them if they’re not using it at the front. You know, if they’re losing 10,000 drones a month, that means they can produce 10,000 drones a month.
Capt. Slivinski: That’s right.
Well, thank you all for joining me today. It was a fantastic conversation. Again, I wish we had more time with you all. I’m sure we could talk for hours on end.
But this has been the Defense Industrial Base Panel of the Conflict in Focus: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine series. We will be exploring lessons learned from several other domains in the upcoming weeks, and you can find them on the CSIS website. Thank you for joining us today.
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