The Ministry of Defence, together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Brave1 defence cluster, is launching grant competitions to develop guided air-to-air missiles and Ukrainian-made radars. The Ministry of Defence reported this.
The defence ministry explained that the aim of the new competitions is to provide the Security and Defence Forces with effective means of countering aerial targets, reduce the cost of intercepting jet-powered drones, and develop the production of Ukrainian radars. Grant funding will be one of the tools to support developments that can be scaled up to meet the needs of the Security and Defence Forces.
The Ministry of Defence expects Ukrainian manufacturers to develop their own navigation solutions, strengthen electronic warfare capabilities, create radars to detect low-observable targets, and deliver affordable systems that can be scaled in production.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara stressed that the main Russian threats at present include ballistic missiles, cheap cruise missiles, high-speed drones and guided aerial bombs. As a separate task for manufacturers, the defence minister cited the search for new solutions to counter guided aerial bombs and reduce the effectiveness of their use.
“Our requirements are clear: effectiveness, affordable cost, interoperability between systems, and sufficient supply volumes. These are precisely the outcomes on which we must focus the joint work of the state, the military and Ukraine’s defence industry,” Yevhenii Khmara said.
The next step will be a grant competition for turbojet engines. The Brave1 grant programme is intended to help manufacturers develop new solutions to counter aerial threats.
Recently, the Brave1 defence cluster, together with the Main Directorate for Defence Innovations of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, conducted large-scale tests of modules for automatically guiding drones onto moving ground targets.