President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi announced on Tuesday, December 19, during the end-of-year press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine will produce one million FPV drones in 2024.
As Oleksandr Kamyshin, Minister of Strategic Industries, noted in his turn, in December 2023, Ukraine was supposed to produce more than 50,000 FPV drones.
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Thus, Ukraine can currently produce about 600,000 FPV drones per year. With this in mind, in order to reach the target production rate of one million FPV drones per year next year, it is necessary to increase production by almost 67% and reach a monthly rate of more than 83 thousand FPV drones.
If we talk about prices, even if we take the conventional price of the FPV drone itself (without taking into account the ammunition for these drones, or, for example, night cameras) of 500 US dollars, then 1 million will require an average of 500 million dollars. We will remind that in the state budget for 2024 UAH 43 billion is provided for the purchase of drones. ($1.135 million)
As previously emphasized in the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, a decision has already been made to create a powerful production of FPV drones in the country, which will cover the shortage of artillery shells. At the same time, it should be noted that 1 million FPV drones per year is far from the limit, because Ukrainian manufacturers estimate the real need at 2.4 million drones per year, or 200,000 per month, which is four times more than the current production.
A separate direction in the development of FPV drones is the improvement of these weapons, such as, for example, retrofitting them for use at night or installing a more powerful warhead. Previously, for example, the supply of HE-FRAG munitions was arranged for Ukrainian FPV drones.
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