Ukraine will be able to carry out more drone strikes on Russian ships, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister told Portal after a recent series of raids.
“There will be more drones, more attacks and fewer Russian ships. That’s for sure,” Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview on Friday in response to a question about recent attacks near Crimea.
Ukraine this week launched multiple drone and missile strikes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet in and around the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
In a sign of growing self-confidence, Kiev recently claimed responsibility for the attacks in the region. Russia has acknowledged that a Ukrainian missile attack this week damaged a warship and a submarine, but says it has repelled all drone attacks at sea.
Funded by a crowdfunding platform
Mykhailo Fedorov posted a video on social media on Thursday that appeared to have been filmed from a ship heading toward a much larger warship, followed by an explosion.
He then said that this attack was the work of Ukrainian systems funded by a state crowdfunding platform that helps raise funds to purchase equipment, including drones.
Mykhailo Fedorov also said that Ukrainian drone production increased more than a hundred times in 2023 compared to the previous year. “I expect production to increase 120-140 times by the end of the year compared to last year,” he added.
Artificial intelligence systems
According to the minister, Ukraine is currently testing artificial intelligence systems capable of locating targets several kilometers away and guiding drones there, even if external communications are disrupted.
“We need AI, for example target finding technology like the Lancet (a Russian drone) does, so that a target can be located and destroyed in electronic warfare,” he said.
“At the moment this is all still in the testing phase, but some drones we are buying use AI to detect targets. In a forest, they can recognize a target and know if it is there. “It is a person, a tank or a specific vehicle.” These technologies are being actively used.”