How to resist the Russian Reb and fly for 2000+ km: Skyton reporting
Since then, the meeting has been transferred repeatedly, and the dates have changed. However, the focus finally managed to get to the enterprise where unmanned systems are produced. During the meeting, we talked with the CEO and founder of Alexander Stepura to learn more about new developments, difficulties at the beginning of a full -scale war, as well as plans for the production of BPAC abroad. Before the interview with Alexander, we talk about the pain.
It turns out that Skyton also excludes electricity, and the company is actively booking workers. There were some delays in papers, but with the introduction of reservation in "Action" everything became much easier: "Successfully booked a certain number of people. They submitted documents through" action "and immediately received confirmation. " The conversation began with the discussion of Skyton's public statements about production in Slovakia.
On July 12, you announced the opening of production in Slovakia, tell us at what stage this project is now, and did the first drones come out of it? So it's true. We really opened an enterprise in Slovakia. It is a full -fledged enterprise of a full cycle of production, but its capacity is not yet the one we planned, because our product is very difficult. It is a really complex professional system where there are many electronics, a lot of software and mechanics are not easy.
And so people at a Slovak enterprise need to be taught to work. And they do not work as we are used to Ukraine without a day off for 24 hours a day. Well, we also studied. Nine years we learn to do what we are doing today. Therefore, for some time we will learn from Slovakia to produce a full system, at full capacity. Today, the plant is still producing some of them, subsystems, catapult, some other subsystems that are very important for our Ukrainian orders, they help us to fulfill the task.
But so far, we have not yet been supplying the systems. But soon let's start. And will Slovak drones be supplied for the needs of defense forces? This may happen if the orders are in Ukraine more than the Ukrainian enterprise can do, the Slovak plant will supply as much as systems need. But it can be said that some nodes will be supplied as separate subsystems to Ukraine.
That is, globally the factory is custom -custom -custom -custom -custom? Maybe you could talk about the first customers? This is so, but it should be understood that many countries want to help Ukraine today. And inquiries from some states such as Denmark, Luxembourg and others, which will be exactly located at this Slovak plant, are also equipment for the Ukrainian army. Therefore, it is sometimes not direct orders from our country, but still for Ukraine.
What are the difficulties with European legislation to open production? Our product in any country will have a classification of Dual Use, that is, double-purpose. And sometimes it is worse than military purposes, because many countries do not know what to do with it. And sometimes it is better to say that we are doing military equipment and undergo very complex processes for legalization and production related permits.
If it is military equipment, what standards is it done? Nativ standards or not? It is difficult, but clearer. When Dual Use, then it is not clear to anyone, and it is necessary to explain. If you say openly that you are doing military equipment, then all the banks immediately run through the bushes. No one wants to open your accounts and transfer money in Europe and anywhere.
Therefore, we declare that it is Dual Use and continues a lot of time we have a process of explaining what it is, how it is different from civilian use and from the military. Documentary processes are very complex and in many countries they do not fully have a clear form.
Could you open the curtain about the second foreign production? At what stage is the project? I think this question is related to our business logic, because our business model looks in such a way that we can make a transfer of our technology to any state except Blacklist, well, of course, there is northern Korea, Russia, Iran and so on.
That is, when a state plans to buy a large number of our systems, we must organize technical support, training and teach them not only to use, but also to produce some of the details that can break, get out of their resource, time of resource and more. It is our business model, that is, we can convey technology at a certain level, help build a production of a certain depth. And we openly declare it, and we will discuss it with several states.
But nowhere we have not implemented this project, everything is in the negotiation stage. In society, from time to time there is an opinion that it is necessary to provide Ukrainian manufacturers with weapons for export. However, this is not possible for political reasons. Like, we ask for weapons with one hand, and the other we sell. What is your company's position on this? Everything is very simple here. In fact, a lot of Nativ foreign equipment is working in our army today.
HIMARS, ATACMS and more. In order to work with them effectively, we must be integrated into European and American systems. To do this, you need to work on integration and organize interactions. Without having our systems in Europe and on other continents, we will not build our integrated Ukrainian system, which will effectively work with Nativ or "not Nativ" products we use today.
Therefore, we do not have a different way of supplying equipment to other states, integrate it into the developed systems of defense of other states and then supply it as a strategic system protection to Ukraine. We need to work with those who supply the equipment we do not have. And for this we need to cooperate with them and this is the fact that we are also in their countries, including.
What became the main challenge when a full -scale war began? We had to recycle, to uninstall a lot of subsystems, because we imagined that there would be a rebe, but we did not imagine that it would be so saturated. 40-60 kilometers in depth of the territory controlled by the Russians there is no GPS navigation.
Therefore, it was necessary to develop a navigation system very quickly, to finish it, to add many other devices to still be coordinated to fly and not only to fly, but also to find objects and to understand their coordinates with great accuracy. And also the coordinates of our aircraft, the coordinates of the object we found. It is extremely difficult. At first it was extremely difficult, but then easier. It's a redesign. RND was crazy, it ate all the money we earned and eats everything today.
And there will be more years to eat it. And it was the main Challenge, how quickly everything is to be exalted in such a way that it was relevant in today's conditions. And constant work with the military, with the operators, with them on the front line, simply constant interaction with them, only this helped us to make adequate equipment.
How do your drones bypass the Russian means of detection and air defense when their range is over 2000 km? A good question, because this is the main problem today among those air systems that fly far. But it should be understood that if we talk about two thousand kilometers, it means that we do not have our flying drone. This is quite difficult because in this sense we will work through either satellite systems or through telephone systems of mobile communication.
And since we will radiate something into the air from the board, we will definitely see us. We perform our tasks in most distances. It is 150-200 and a little further kilometers. And we rarely see us, because we have worked out production technology. The drone, the flying part of it is so designed that we are very inconspicuous. We look like a noise on the screens of different radars. To do this, they worked and removed those certain things and nodes in the system that help the radars to find us.
So the first is stealth technology. We integrated them into the production of our flying "Bjard". There is also the second question of what we do with GPS suppression, connection with satellite systems that help us coordinate flight and mission. To do this, we have developed our navigation system in the company. We call it Synthetic Navigation System, because it is so -mounted from many subsystems development - this is our autopilot of our own development with a very rich number of sensors.
It is a rather complex inertial system that consists of several sensors. This odometry is different, pixel, video odometry and some other tools that allow us to coordinate our flying object in space when we do not have GPS. It is simply a composition of many tools that we have made today on our plane and so we work quite effectively at long distances. I would say that the Russian Reb is probably the best Russian in the world, so it is not easy to fight it.
They also press the satellite communication system, GPS, including Datalin systems, control, and so on. Each subsystem has its own fighting system, it depends 50% on how steeply the technology is worked, and 50% depends on how much users understand and work out their techniques, I would say, missions, and a person depends a lot.
People who have been working with our systems for a long time are operators who have been fighting and have been used for several years, they have their own secrets, how to make the enemy not beaten, not noticed how to make the mission extremely effective, so therefore that our systems are used in the strategic missions of our army and to lose the board is a very bad story. Much depends on people.
There are just heroes in this sense, operators who make extraordinary efforts to make the plane back and they return. There are just fans of our technique that have already understood how it works, how much it can be harmful to the Russians with a small bird, and they do it.
On June 5, did you show remote driving drones from Paris in Ukraine at the European exhibition, how did you manage to reach the signal over such a distance? We talk while sitting in Paris, with people sitting in America or other country. Our conversation is also data, it is also data transmission. How is it different to call another country from conveying a video? We can not just talk, we can include a video channel and see a person who is a few thousand kilometers from us.
To transfer a signal there to one side and to the opposite direction is not a very large challenge today. Our "gadgetmen" in the company are quite simple. We have a function to sit in one place, and to control the tool at a distance of several hundred, sometimes thousands of kilometers. We built it. Any communication engineer will tell you, it can tell you how it is done, it is not difficult.
Could you open the veil about what technologies the company works on? And why is the integration of artificial intelligence so important? Without artificial intelligence, there will be nothing today and tomorrow. If you look at manned military systems and military planes, we need to understand that in today's conditions, today's war, the operator simply has no time to think about what to do. He has only reflexes. They work, only reflexes.
Everything should be solved, all tasks should be solved for a second. And if it is only reflexes, then it is a kind of artificial intelligence. That is, there is no time to think. If you do not have to think and no time to think, the computer will be much better and faster to solve any task. He just needs to be taught. Therefore, I think that today many tasks are done with artificial intelligence: navigation without GPS, guidance without GPS.
It's all at a very initial level, but in a year or two, no bird will fly without a si. We see Russian drones fly into our rear and affect our goals. Did you analyze Russian UAVs type "Orlan" or Zala, how do they manage to fly into our territory? We analyze, very well understand how they work. I can say the following: they spend more time developing the system of interaction of their drones with all other means of attack and defense. This makes them extremely effective in their system strategy.
But they do not spend much time that each product, "Orlan" or Zala, bring to the parameters of extremely effective flight or work of other subsystems. That is, they develop holistic swarms and interaction with other attack systems and expect that their drones should be very cheap and accessible. They understand that they will be knocked down.
We do not agree with this, our system should not be knocked down, their systems are designed to be overwhelmed in large numbers and this is a completely different philosophy. They remain cheap and the occupiers do not spend time to improve the parameters of a particular bird.
What were the main difficulties at the beginning of working with our military when the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014? The main problem was due to the fact that from the beginning we have been a manufacturer of aircraft, because since 2006 we have produced sports aircraft, training, manned and we have a license to develop pilot and aircraft production. We formed the basis of the strategy of production of extremely professional equipment.
This is a completely different approach, it is different from the hobby. It was the reason why we were designed by a lot of subsystems in the company, and the same autopilot, and everything was literally designed in the company because we built the system professionally. So it came out not cheap. And the first systems we offered into the army for purchase, first, greeted misunderstandings why such a price.
And here I will point out that only the useful load on one aircraft can cost $ 300-400 thousand for only one product, and they can be several within the same system, which is ordered. And the second problem, when we have already supplied the systems into the army, the operators who serve in the army and bear personal responsibility for the boards, were simply afraid to approach and use them.
Only after we have signed a letter with our military that we take the responsibility that if they break something, something happens to the system, then we take the responsibility to replace, teach more. These were our risks, of course, we realized that we would fall on money, but there was no other chance to start working with our army, and it, in fact, gave a very cool response.