Ukrainian and partner defense companies have found themselves facing a dilemma: how to keep pace with constantly changing battlefield conditions while producing weapons at an industrial scale. The executives of Ark Robotics, Frontline Robotics, and Granta Autonomy shared their solutions to this problem with Business Insider. We present a brief summary of the article.

Updates come at a high cost

The war is changing so rapidly that technologies can become obsolete within weeks, forcing manufacturers to continuously adapt their products to new threats and countermeasures. But for companies operating at an industrial pace, this is quite challenging.

Achi (a pseudonym for security reasons), CEO of the Ukrainian-Estonian company Ark Robotics, explained:

In large-scale production, any change is very costly. A redesign or significant update can halt or slow down the production line for a long time.

At the same time, the company cannot afford to forgo changes:

You can’t limit the ability to make changes. So the company tries to track the overall trend rather than react to every individual case. This allows us to deliver products at scale and with quality.

For example, early last year Ark bet that video transmission and drone control would gradually shift from analog formats to onboard computers. The bet paid off and defined the company’s subsequent engineering direction.

With every change, the company asks: what impact will this change have if scaled a thousand times.

Don’t lose tomorrow’s battle

Gediminas Guoba, CEO of Lithuanian drone manufacturer Granta Autonomy, also identifies the balance between mass production and keeping the product aligned with frontline requirements as the key challenge.

According to him, the company works to solve current problems, improve capabilities, and add new features — while also thinking one to two years ahead:

If we focus only on today’s problems, tomorrow we may lose the battle.

Companies address this dilemma by designing their products so that changes can be made easily without stopping production.

Ark Robotics builds its ground robot platform to be as inexpensive and mass-producible as possible, and only then adds armor modules or other equipment. The base platform remains unchanged.

Products are becoming modular and software-oriented — upgrades happen without a full restart of the design or lengthy withdrawal of equipment from service. Ark also uses 3D printing for rapid testing and minor modifications.

European defense industry can’t keep up with the pace of innovation

Ukrainian company Frontline Robotics, whose products are used by more than 60 units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, employs manual assembly at certain production stages instead of full automation. This makes it easier to introduce changes. According to Business Development Director Mykyta Rozhkov:

Production processes must remain flexible enough, yet stable enough to withstand up to 20 changes per month.

Granta Autonomy, in turn, updates the software in its drones every month, making a bet on product autonomy.

Western allies are watching this experience closely: national leaders acknowledge that their defense industries and armed forces are not keeping up with the pace of innovation, and want to learn how to accelerate by working together with Ukrainian companies.

You have time right now. Ukraine is buying you that time right now so that you can realize the urgency of the situation, — says Achi, addressing Ukraine’s European partners.