War on a budget: Ukraine becomes hotbed for drone tech
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Ukrainian aviator Roman Schemechko loved building model airplanes as a child. Russia’s war on Ukraine has given him an unfortunate pretext to revisit that passion.
Prototypes of attack and surveillance drones built by his company, Besomar (White Demon), fill a spacious room in a bare-bones office building in Lviv.
“Drones save lives,” says Mr. Schemechko, now the CEO. “The more drones we have, the more possibilities we have to strike the enemy.”
The drone industry in Ukraine is booming. A new generation of Ukrainians has had its imagination captured by the beauty and logic of uncrewed aerial vehicles, and been inspired to manufacture drones. Many of them hail from a business and engineering, rather than a military, background.
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