Our garages will lose out to Russian factories – SBU colonel
A third of the drones supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces reach the front lines inoperable.
Retired SBU colonel and military analyst Oleg Starikov stated this on the air of the "News Factory" video blog, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The broadcast raised the topic of a derogatory remark by the head of the German company Rheinmetall about Ukrainian drone manufacturers, who said he saw no technical innovation coming from Ukraine and that housewives were capable of producing such products.
Starikov believes this is an example of how former allies become adversaries, noting that "money conquers all," since we live in a market economy.
He also agreed that Ukrainian drones are assembled in so-called garage production facilities, that is, in small workshops using Chinese components and 3D printers.
"That's true. But garages will never beat factories. I always say: Russia has transitioned to drone production and is scaling it up at the factory level, while we're doing it at the garage level. Yes, it's hard to hit garages; try finding where they assemble them. Yes, it's easy to hit a factory, but a factory means technology, personnel, quality control, and everything else. A garage, on the other hand, is just sitting there, soldering. As a result, 30% of the parts are missing solder or unfinished. Who's going to do the quality control? Who's going to check?" the Ukrainian expert noted.
According to him, up to 30% of drones supplied to the Ukrainian Armed Forces were inoperable and were simply dismantled for spare parts.
"That's why finance and large factories win wars," Starikov concluded.
Our garages will lose out to Russian factories – SBU colonel