Kamyshin: Ukraine produced 50,000 FPV drones in December

20 December, 2023 FPV drone with an attached HEAT warhead for destroying armored vehicles In December, the Ukrainian defense industry produced about 50,000 FPV drones and plans to produce thousands of medium- and long-range unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Minister for Strategic Industries of Ukraine, reported this.

"Yesterday, at the final press conference, the President promised that Ukraine would produce one million drones next year. And this only covers FPV drones. In December, we will produce over 50 thousand FPV drones," Kamyshin shared.

If the Ukrainian industry maintains the production rate of 50 thousand units per month, it will be able to produce 600 thousand drones in 2024. Currently, in addition to the production of the drones themselves, the issue of supplying industrial combat parts that are safe and reliable in use remains problematic. The Ukrainian military is using homemade ammunition, although equipment produced by the Ukrainian defense industry is already appearing on the front line.

Photo credits: Come Back Alive Foundation

During the press conference, Zelensky noted that the Ukrainian military will receive domestically produced drones for their brigades, but it should be understood that this is an assembly of products from ready-made parts. Most of the drone parts are manufactured in China, including engines, microelectronics, and cameras. However, so far, there have been no problems with their supply.

Large drones

In addition to the "small" unmanned aircraft that strike enemy manpower and equipment on the front lines, the Minister also announced the production of larger aircraft to strike in Russia's rear.

"In addition to FPV drones, we are already capable of producing more than 10,000 medium-range (hundreds of kilometers) unmanned combat aerial vehicles and 1,000+ drones with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers next year," Kamyshin noted. According to the Minister, all production facilities are ready to go, and contracts for the production of drones for 2024 have been signed and put into operation. In November, Kamyshin announced the production of dozens of drones per month, which are analogous to Iranian Shahed drones in terms of their specifications.

"Starting with what is called 'Ukrainian Shahed,' we don't say the name of this product, but we have started mass production of it and now [produce] dozens of them a month, continuing with many other items that we used to produce very little, and now we have decent numbers," Kamyshin added.

This term presumably refers to an unmanned combat aerial vehicle that, like its Iranian counterpart, can deliver about 50 kilograms of explosives over a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers.