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Oct 22, 2024

How Ukraine's soldiers are turning to hedgehog backpacks and hi-tech robots in the fight to stay one step ahead of Putin's killer drones

By Sabrina Penty 12:43 19 Oct 2024, updated 16:35 19 Oct 2024 Comments Comments Ukrainian armed forces have turned to hedge-hog style backpacks and high-tech land robots in an attempt to stay ahead of

By Sabrina Penty 12:43 19 Oct 2024, updated 16:35 19 Oct 2024

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Ukrainian armed forces have turned to hedge-hog style backpacks and high-tech land robots in an attempt to stay ahead of Russian killer drones.

The roll-out of the new counter-drone equipment to the Ukrainian front line will begin in four weeks, as tech firms in the war-torn country rush to create new technologies to keep up with Russia's rapidly evolving weapons development.

Ukrainian tech company Kvertus ' highly advanced $6,000 'hedgehog' backpack, which gets its name from the number of antennas on it, will be used to disable Russian drones, with its radiating wires acting as a dome-like defence.

Meanwhile, the firm's $100,000 land robot - an unmanned ground vehicle also equipped with antennas - was developed to disable drones by blocking their GPS signals.

It also serves the purpose to transport soldiers away from the battlefield, which will be particularly useful for those who are injured.

Speaking to The Times, Kvertus' commercial director Serhii Skorik said the idea behind the bot came after being told by a Ukrainian commander that troops were unable to get their wounded soldiers off the battlefield because of the amount of Russian drones circling the skies.

Ukraine's skies are largely crowded by Russian drones, with the majority of soldiers dying on the battlefield believed to have been killed by the unmanned aerial vehicles.

The antennas are meant to block signals up to 300 meters away.

Skorik, however, believes that Kvertus has saved more than 50,000 lives with its equipment since Russia's invasion of Ukraine back in 2022.

Ukraine has also been using anti-drone guns to help curb Russian attacks.

Australian firm DroneShield supplied its anti-drone guns to Ukraine at the beginning of the war.

It comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this month that the country can produce four million drones annually and is rapidly ramping up its production of other weapons.

Speaking to executives from dozens of foreign arms manufacturers in Kyiv, he said Ukraine had already contracted to produce 1.5 million drones this year.

Drone production was virtually non-existent in Ukraine before Russia's invasion in February 2022.

'In extremely difficult conditions of the full-scale war under constant Russian strikes, Ukrainians were able to build a virtually new defence industry,' said Zelensky.

Ukraine tripled its overall domestic weapons production in 2023 and then doubled that volume again in just the first eight months of this year, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the same gathering. Ukrainian officials gave no absolute figures.

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