Ukraine’s drone success offers a blueprint for cybersecurity strategy
In December 2023, Ukraine’s largest telecom operator, Kyivstar, experienced a massive outage. Mobile and internet services went down for approximately twenty four million subscribers across the country. Company president Alexander Komarov called it “the largest hacker attack on telecom infrastructure in the world.” The Russian hacker group Solntsepyok claimed responsibility for the attack.
This and similar incidents have highlighted the importance of the cyber front in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has invested significant funds in cybersecurity and can call upon an impressive array of international partners. However, the country currently lacks sufficient domestic cybersecurity system manufacturers.
Ukraine’s rapidly expanding drone manufacturing sector may offer the solution. The growth of Ukrainian domestic drone production over the past two and a half years is arguably the country’s most significant defense tech success story since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. If correctly implemented, it could serve as a model for the creation of a more robust domestic cybersecurity industry.
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Speaking in summer 2023, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov outlined the country’s drone strategy of bringing together drone manufacturers and military officials to address problems, approve designs, secure funding, and streamline collaboration. Thanks to this approach, he predicted a one hundred fold increase in output by the end of the year.
The Ukrainian drone production industry began as a volunteer project in the early days of the Russian invasion, and quickly became a nationwide movement. The initial goal was to provide the Ukrainian military with 10,000 FPV (first person view) drones along with ammunition. This was soon replaced by far more ambitious objectives. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, more the one billion US dollars has been collected by Ukrainians via fundraising efforts for the purchase of drones. According to online polls, Ukrainians are more inclined to donate money for drones than any other cause.
Today, Ukrainian drone production has evolved from volunteer effort to national strategic priority. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the country will produce more than one million drones in 2024. This includes various types of drone models, not just small FPV drones for targeting personnel and armored vehicles on the battlefield. By early 2024, Ukraine had reportedly caught up with Russia in the production of kamikaze drones similar in characteristics to the large Iranian Shahed drones used by Russia to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure. This progress owes much to cooperation between state bodies and private manufacturers.
Marine drones are a separate Ukrainian success story. Since February 2022, Ukraine has used domestically developed marine drones to damage or sink around one third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, forcing Putin to withdraw most of his remaining warships from occupied Crimea to the port of Novorossiysk in Russia. New Russian defensive measures are consistently met with upgraded Ukrainian marine drones.
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In May 2024, Ukraine became the first country in the world to create an entire branch of the armed forces dedicated to drone warfare. The commander of this new drone branch, Vadym Sukharevsky, has since identified the diversity of country’s drone production as a major asset. As end users, the Ukrainian military is interested in as wide a selection of manufacturers and products as possible. To date, contracts have been signed with more than 125 manufacturers.
The lessons learned from the successful development of Ukraine’s drone manufacturing ecosystem should now be applied to the country’s cybersecurity strategy. “Ukraine has the talent to develop cutting-edge cyber products, but lacks investment. Government support is crucial, as can be seen in the drone industry. Allocating budgets to buy local cybersecurity products will create a thriving market and attract investors. Importing technologies strengthens capabilities but this approach doesn’t build a robust national industry,” commented Oleh Derevianko, co-founder and chairman of Information Systems Security Partners.
The development of Ukraine’s domestic drone capabilities has been so striking because local manufacturers are able to test and refine their products in authentic combat conditions. This allows them to respond on a daily basis to new defensive measures employed by the Russians. The same principle is necessary in cybersecurity. Ukraine regularly faces fresh challenges from Russian cyber forces and hacker groups; the most effective approach would involve developing solutions on-site. Among other things, this would make it possible to conduct immediate tests in genuine wartime conditions, as is done with drones.
At present, Ukraine’s primary cybersecurity funding comes from the Ukrainian defense budget and international donors. These investments would be more effective if one of the conditions was the procurement of some solutions from local Ukrainian companies. Today, only a handful of Ukrainian IT companies supply the Ukrainian authorities with cybersecurity solutions. Increasing this number to at least dozens of companies would create a local industry capable of producing world-class products. As we have seen with the rapid growth of the Ukrainian drone industry, this strategy would likely strengthen Ukraine’s own cyber defenses while also boosting the cybersecurity of the wider Western world.
Anatoly Motkin is president of StrategEast, a non-profit organization with offices in the United States, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan dedicated to developing knowledge-driven economies in the Eurasian region.
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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
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Image: Ukrainian Magura V5 unmanned marine vehicles are seen on water during an exhibition of military equipment and weapons, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. April 13, 2024. (REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko)
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