“Developers do not understand what the army needs”: The army detected a problem that slowed down the Ukrainian Armed Forces

The first phase of the Department of Defense hackathon, called “Advancement of Machines,” held Jan. 28-29, brought together developers and military personnel to seek new technological solutions. As former volunteer and now junior sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Karpyuk (Serg Marco) noted, the meeting showed that developers do not always understand the needs of the front and waste their precious time on unnecessary projects.

Alexander Karpyuk notes that most developers do not have access to UAVs and real fighter pilots. Navigation tool developers do not have the opportunity to test systems in real conditions. The creators of guided munitions have no idea how real large drones work and are unaware of the details of their use. For example, photo target recognition systems cannot process video. They also do not understand the problems of the army as a whole, what kind of equipment is needed for more effective combat operations.

Important

“Developers do not understand what the military needs and what their priorities are. For example, there are manufacturers who are developing a system for additional guidance of ammunition. And they are testing them with target detection on optical cameras. You ask them: “why” is it in the camera?” “The big helicopters have ammunition and they bomb at night. We started thinking. They’ll buy teplak (thermal imaging devices) and rebuild it. A lot of time is wasted running in the wrong direction.”

Some, even very complex developments (for example, the function of controlling a flock of unmanned aerial vehicles) have almost no practical application during military operations. Its creators have no answer to the question of why the army needs this, and they rely entirely on the soldier’s creativity. Others offer useful features but poor implementation.

“The manufacturer comes out and shows a directional antenna from a drone. And I say: finally! Finally, the connection between the ground antenna and the aircraft will be organized using directional antennas with locators, which will make it possible to place … about enemy electronic warfare and RERs that neutralize enemies. Continuation of the presentation – and they demonstrate this development on a land-based drone, on a wheeled drone. Why is it needed there if it is needed for a UAV?”

According to Karpyuk, there is no structure in Ukraine to assign technical duties to engineers. It is obvious that there is a need for a platform where manufacturers can communicate with the military, interact with equipment samples and create the necessary mock-ups. However, he also drew attention to some successful technologies that have not yet been tested, such as electronic warfare domes against drones.

The same opinion is shared by military electronic warfare expert Sergei Beskrestnov, nicknamed “Flash”, who participated in the hackathon. He noted that Ukrainians demonstrated great talent and ideas that the military often did not need.

“Sometimes they do something that was done a long time ago or something that seems important to them, but the military does not need it. But this can be fixed,” Sergei said in his note. “I will not make it public. What we discussed and where we moved forward, but to our enemy, future Russian drones We will respond honorably with machine vision.”

The hackathon, in which 458 developers participated, is not yet completed: the jury has not yet determined the winners.

However, there are also successful examples of interaction between the military and drone manufacturers. Ukraine’s Cobra unmanned aerial vehicle is still in the testing phase, but is being delivered to the trained army.