{"id":140167,"date":"2025-05-29T01:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T01:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/140167\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T01:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T01:35:07","slug":"drone-companies-not-in-ukraine-might-as-well-give-up-uk-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/140167\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone Companies Not in Ukraine Might As Well Give up: UK Official"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drone warfare<\/a> is evolving at breakneck speed, with Ukraine’s battlefields becoming a testing ground<\/a> where the most innovative defense tech companies can refine their products in real war conditions.<\/p>\n

This means that it’s increasingly vital for those looking to develop the tech to have a presence there.<\/p>\n

Luke Pollard, the UK’s armed forces minister, said on Wednesday: “If you are a drone company and you do not have your kit on the frontline in Ukraine, you might as well give up.”<\/p>\n

Pollard, who was addressing the Drone Summit 2025 in Latvia, added that “we can see the effectiveness of Western drone technology in the hands of brilliant operators in Ukraine.”<\/p>\n

Valerii Churkin, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, echoed Pollard’s remarks, saying that defense tech manufacturers must have a physical presence in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

He also told the summit that drones can take too long to reach Ukraine, and that “we need to switch fully to a wartime production approach: fast, simple, scalable.”<\/p>\n

“Most importantly, decisions must be based on real battlefield experience, not from spreadsheets,” he said.<\/p>\n

European defense companies, including Portugal’s Tekever<\/a>, Lithuania’s RSI Europe<\/a>, and Estonia’s Milrem Robots, are among those rapidly adapting to the demands of the battlefield in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Kuldar V\u00e4\u00e4rsi, the CEO of Milrem Robots, which develops military robotics and autonomous systems, told Business Insider that his company updates its products based on their performance in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

“What we have learned and changed and implemented in our systems is everything related to EW, communication, and cyber,” he said. “This is a totally different environment than in peacetime training or exercise environment.”<\/p>\n

Milrem Robots has a team that regularly visits Ukraine, meeting with different military units and working directly with operators responsible for their equipment.<\/p>\n

“We listen to Ukrainian troops very carefully and try to analyze and synthesize,” he added.<\/p>\n

And it’s about to take its on-the-ground involvement one step further, with a team based in Ukraine to “be closer to Ukrainian forces and to support them even better,” V\u00e4\u00e4rsi said.<\/p>\n

Tomas Mila\u0161auskas, the CEO of RSI Europe, told BI that “our mission is very simple. To produce the military equipment that helps Ukraine win.”<\/p>\n

More than 100 drone companies, alongside military officials and government ministers, gathered in Latvia for the one-day summit.<\/p>\n

Ruben Brekelmans, the Netherlands’ defense minister, told those present that drones had “fundamentally changed modern warfare,” calling them “the most important innovation in the defense domain.”<\/p>\n

“Every day we learn new things from our collaboration with Ukraine,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drone warfare is evolving at breakneck speed, with Ukraine’s battlefields becoming a testing ground where the most innovative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[60852,57168,60851,9695,11553,60849,60843,60845,2000,299,16188,60850,60847,60846,60848,60844,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-140167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-autonomous-system","9":"tag-battlefield","10":"tag-brilliant-operator","11":"tag-business-insider","12":"tag-ceo","13":"tag-deputy-defense-minister","14":"tag-drone-companies","15":"tag-drone-company","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-frontline","19":"tag-kuldar-vaarsi","20":"tag-luke-pollard","21":"tag-milrem-robots","22":"tag-rsi-europe","23":"tag-uk-minister","24":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114588557431135824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}