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Daily Maverick
15-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Rocket Man meet Drone Man – the future of combat
The tradition of Ukrainian aerospace continues. Driven today less by prestige than necessity, it has become a global leader in 'kopters' – as drones are locally known. It's a longstanding tradition. On this highway to Kyiv is a Soviet-era missile, a memorial to Sergei Korolev, born in nearby Zhytomyr more than 118 years ago, considered the father of the USSR's rocket and space programme. Korolev oversaw the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects, including the first human Earth orbit mission by Yuri Gagarin in April 1961. His was, however, not an easy ride. An apparently difficult child from a broken family and having failed to be accepted to the prestigious Zhukovsky Academy in Moscow on account of his poor marks (a lesson in not peaking too soon), he attended the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute to train as an aircraft designer. Arrested on a trumped-up charge during Stalin's 'Red Terror' (as a result of which at least 800,000 died between 1936-38) as a 'member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organisation', he was imprisoned for nearly six years, some of which was spent in a Siberian Gulag. Rehabilitated through his work in a penal design bureau producing aircraft under Tupolev and Petlyakov during World War 2, he was officially rehabilitated only in 1957. Korolev's greatest skill was to be in strategic planning and organisation, especially necessary when, after the war, the Soviets integrated about 2,000 German aerospace and rocket scientists. This jump-started the Soviet programme, just as the Americans had done with Werner von Braun and his group, who moved to America under Operation Paperclip. Despite his achievements being appropriated after his death in 1966 in the Soviet name, Korolev is today celebrated in his home town, with a small museum displaying the various achievements in the eponymous museum. Visitors to the museum on a cold May day include wounded Ukrainian soldiers recovering from the bruising front line at a local hospital. Aviation ingenuity The country's aviation sector continues to boom, this time out of necessity in Ukraine's struggle against its nemesis, Russia. The most famous name, Antonov, continues to produce, despite frequent missile interruptions, while its university centres of excellence churn out quality graduates in design and engineering. Sasha, 35, is also a graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic, a head of R&D with SkyRiper, one of the leading drone manufacturers in Ukraine. Driven by a shortage of artillery ammunition, Ukraine's survival instinct and 'horizontal interaction' between frontline units and the engineers back in Kyiv and other cities, Ukrainian production is now around 100,000 drones a month. About 10,000 are used by frontline forces each day, and seven of 10 battlefield Russian casualties are caused by drones, a shift in technology which helps to offset Russia's numerical population advantage. 'We all have friends and relatives at the frontline,' says Sasha, the leader of a youthful team (average age 22) of engineers. 'They tell us all the time what works and what they need.' Drones are now the great equaliser in Ukraine's defence, a cost-effective way of making up the deficit in manpower, materiel and financing compared with their Russian foe. Whereas 155mm artillery rounds cost between $2,000-$7,000 each, depending on their spec, and a Javelin anti-tank missile $250,000, Ukrainian FPV (first person view) kamikaze drones are less than $500 apiece. With a range of the smaller carbon and alloy drone of up to 30km with a 4kg payload, this has effectively shrunk the 1,200km frontline. Handled by a team of just three soldiers, and with mission times of around 15 minutes, drones can be continuously cycled. 'The frontline is now a 10km 'grey zone',' says the partner at SkyRiper, Anton, his 70-strong workforce delivering 10,000 drones a month from several sites around Kyiv. 'It's a no-go area over which drones dominate.' Most armoured vehicles – sometimes requiring as many as 10 drone hits – are knocked out usually on the way to this no-man's land. While it makes great headlines, there is less technological focus on drone 'swarming' than last-mile targeting, avoiding Russian efforts to jam signals (in part by increasingly employing fibre-optic technology), and focusing on improved lethality and manoeuvrability. 'The drones have to be capable of going into the forests, ducking under netting, looking for the weak spots in armoured vehicles,' he says. Anton cites Marx in keeping an eye on sophistication and cost: 'In drone warfare, quantity has a quality. It's better to have 100 drones than 10, which can swarm.' At a general aviation airfield 45 minutes outside Kyiv, Ivan talks enthusiastically about his Buntar B3 drone, designed at the National Aviation University at Kharkiv and built at an underground site in the capital. Battery powered, the Very Short Take Off and Landing (VTOL) multicopter is capable of 3.5 hours' endurance, with one operator capable of simultaneously controlling multiple reconnaissance drones using the Buntar Copilot system, operating safely from a position far behind the frontline. Drone capabilities have undergone a revolution since 2022, not least in terms of range, accuracy, cost, the networking of multiple feeds and survivability. 'There are hundreds of drone manufacturers in Ukraine now,' says Ivan, CEO of Buntar Aerospace and a serial entrepreneur, who joined the infantry after the 2022 Russian invasion and was wounded in the east. 'Most of them are assembling small drones from imported parts.' The B3 is a carbon fibre machine designed for ease of operation and survivability, including a minimal radar signature. They believe that eventually, with the pace of technological change, the drone industry will shake out to 'no more' than a dozen major manufacturers. 'We don't have the luxury of time,' says Sasha, who also serves as an officer in the Ukrainian reserves. 'We have 15,000 to 20,000 drones on the frontline at any time. But the Russians have perhaps three times this number, even though their effectiveness is about 40% of each mission, half as good as we manage.' Buffer for Europe The survival instinct of Ukraine has not only helped to change the current circumstances, but may also change the future of war and defence. It seems likely that international investment in Ukraine will be driven less by acts of charity in future and the defence of democracy, than self-interest, in particular in its role as what former president Viktor Yushchenko, who led the Orange Revolution in 2004, describes as 'Europe's body armour'. While it undergoes its own domestic arms revolution, Ukraine will simultaneously have to learn to splice itself into the practical defence of Europe: air and maritime, especially, as these domains disdain borders. Ukraine will need to get itself on to the accounting book, even if it isn't formally part of Nato, as Finland and Sweden did well in the 1980s. In the process, Ukraine has the opportunity to become a source of capability, not a market for it, to develop the most potent defence sector in Europe, fuelling its own coffers, providing deterrence capability and buttressing European combat power. If it can manage this transition, to become not just one of the world's leading developers and manufacturers, but also exporters, Ukraine will become tougher as a target while boosting its economy. This would demand more international capital investment, which means releasing the fetters on various controls. While there is a risk of acquisitions and compromise of intellectual property, the exchange would translate into another Ukrainian tether to the Western system. 'This war has changed,' says Captain Viacheslav Shutenko, Commander of the Unmanned Systems Battalion in Ukraine's 44th Mechanised Brigade. 'In 2022, this war was … more or less classical. But, in three and a plus years,' he observed in May 2025, 'this war is about technology, this war is about precision, and this war is about speed. Unmanned systems are no longer an auxiliary. They are decisive on the battlefield. This is why to win, Ukraine needs more drones, more unmanned systems – we need scalable production of drones and uninterrupted supply of drones.' Setting up a defence sector for mass production of the tech that's been fundamental to their success, for their own use and for that of allies, lies at the centre of this approach. Without Europe and Ukraine working more closely together, the end of the war is likely, in the words of another rocket man, to 'be a long, long time'. DM
Newsweek
10-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Soviet Spacecraft Kosmos 482 Crashes Into Earth: What To Know
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A Soviet spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere on Saturday, more than 50 years after its unsuccessful mission to Venus. The spacecraft Kosmos 482, launched in 1972, crashed into the Indian Ocean on Saturday after spending over five decades in orbit. Newsweek contacted the European Space Agency for comment via email on Saturday outside of usual working hours and was directed to its live blog for updates. File photo: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft's landing capsule is seen on display at Moscow's Museum of Cosmonautics on April 9, 2021. File photo: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft's landing capsule is seen on display at Moscow's Museum of Cosmonautics on April 9, 2021. Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images)/Getty Images Why It Matters Kosmos 482's descent highlights the longevity of space debris and the importance of monitoring defunct satellites. Experts note that, while such re-entries are rare, they show the need for continued vigilance in tracking objects in Earth's orbit. What To Know Kosmos 482 was part of the Soviet Union's Venera program between 1961 and 1984, aiming to study Venus. However, due to a malfunction in its launch vehicle, the spacecraft failed to escape Earth's orbit and had remained trapped in an elliptical orbit since March 1972. As reported by U.K. news outlet The Independent, the spacecraft was spherical in shape, 3 feet across. Its robust design, intended to withstand Venus's harsh conditions, allowed it to survive reentry. Weighing approximately 1,100 pounds, the lander was built to endure extreme pressures and temperatures. The reentry was unmonitored, and the exact time and location of the crash were uncertain until confirmation of its descent into the Indian Ocean. Agencies such as the European Space Agency (ESA) had been tracking the spacecraft, predicting a reentry window between May 9 and 11. Before this, the ESA, which was monitoring the craft's uncontrolled descent, said it was last spotted by radar over Germany, NBC News reported. As of Saturday morning, the U.S. Space Command had yet to confirm the spacecraft's demise as it collected and analyzed data from orbit, The Associated Press reported. What People Are Saying University of Colorado Boulder scientist Marcin Pilinski said, as reported by The Independent: "While we can anticipate that most of this object will not burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, it may be severely damaged on impact. The odds of it slamming into a populated area were "infinitesimally small," he said. The live blog from ESA's Space Debris Office posted: "Satellites and rocket parts of moderate size reenter almost daily, while small-size tracked space debris objects reenter even more frequently. "Pieces that survive have only very rarely caused any damage on the ground. With the increasing space traffic, we expect that reentry frequencies increase further in the future." On the subject of whether space debris can cause injury, ESA's blog stated: "The risk of any satellite reentry causing injury is extremely remote. The annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion. In comparison, a person is about 65,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning." What Happens Next Any surviving wreckage from Kosmos 482 will belong to Russia under a United Nations treaty, The Independent said.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Putin praises Musk as visionary, likens him to Soviet-era space icon Korolov
Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 16 lauded U.S. tech billionaire Elon Musk as a trailblazing visionary, comparing him to legendary Ukraine-born Soviet rocket scientist Serhii Korolov during a speech at Bauman Moscow State Technical University. "You know, there is such a person, he lives in the States, Musk, who, you could say, raves about Mars," Putin told a group of university students. "Such people (Musk) do not often appear in the human population, energized by a certain idea... Just as the ideas of Korolov, our pioneers, were implemented in their time." Korolov, an engineer born in Zhytomyr in Soviet Ukraine, is widely regarded as the father of the Soviet space program, having developed the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, and the Vostok spacecraft that carried the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit in 1961. Musk — the CEO of SpaceX, owner of X, and a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump — has long claimed his ambition to put humans on Mars. He has suggested 2029 as a possible target for the first crewed mission, with 2031 considered more likely. The Kremlin has been intensifying its outreach to Musk. In March, Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund and a key Kremlin envoy in talks with the U.S., proposed that Moscow supply nuclear power technology for Musk's Mars missions. Dmitriev called Musk a "great visionary" and said Russia was open to cooperation between SpaceX and Roscosmos, Russia's state-run space agency. Initially supporting Ukraine by providing Starlink satellite communications, Musk has become increasingly critical of the embattled country and President Volodymyr Zelensky, often echoing pro-Russian narratives. Despite severe Western sanctions and the collapse of most economic ties with the U.S., Russia and the United States continue to cooperate on some space initiatives. Read also: Trump extends US sanctions on Russian ships for another year We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
