Ukraine needs advanced technologies from its partners to defeat Russia technically since Ukraine will not be able to catch up with the occupiers in the production of conventional weapons.
Ukraine needs advanced technologies
TIME journalist Simon Shuster writes that Oleksandr Kamyshin, the Minister of Strategic Industries, has a huge task ahead of him.
He will need to breathe new life into Ukrainian factories and, in some cases, reconfigure them for entirely new purposes.
No matter how much we produce conventional weapons, we cannot catch up with Russia. We need to use advanced technologies to find a new approach, says Kamyshin.
He compared this challenge to the story of David and Goliath, who play on repeat when each new phase of the war obliges Ukraine to find a new slingshot.
The publication notes that Zelenskyy and his team bet that the transition to domestic production could give them a sufficient advantage to win over time.
The most significant task in the coming months will be attracting foreign partners to the Ukrainian arms industry and obtaining the licenses necessary to produce and repair Western weapons.
Our model used to be: give it to us. Now our model will be: Let's do it together, — says Kamyshin.
Obtaining licenses for the production of equipment
However, Ukraine does not have licenses to repair the received American weapons, not to mention their production.
John Ullrich, CEO of Raytheon Technologies, likens it to giving a friend a car but not letting them change the engine oil.
At the beginning of his career, Ullrich worked on producing the Javelin missile, which costs about a quarter of a million dollars per shot. The US delivered thousands of Javelins to Ukraine at the start of the invasion, and they were instrumental in defeating Russia in the Battle of Kyiv.
Now, Ullrich says, Ukraine needs access to more advanced technology and the money to use it and adapt it to the changing realities of the battlefield.
This war will be won in the factory. It's a war of attrition, he says.
