Ukraine is hopelessly behind Russia in terms of the number of patents for new unmanned technologies, Komersant ukrainskyi citing the Independent.
During the full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia, the world has seen a real boom in drone technology, triggered by this war. The new “arms race” is largely a competition in drone development. This competition is also taking place in the field of patent law.
Thus, according to the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), the number of patent applications for drone-related technologies increased by 16% in 2023 compared to 2022 – 19,700 applications against 16,800 a year earlier.
“This is part of a new global arms race. It differs from the more traditional arms race of tanks and rifles and is much more driven by the technology sector. Especially in Ukraine and Russia, where such technologies are being developed to withstand a war of attrition in which it is difficult to make real progress. It’s not necessarily a technological revolution, it’s just about using drone technology in warfare to gain advantages on the battlefield,”
– said Marcel Plichta, a former analyst at the US Department of Defence.
International patents for inventions are part of this process. And it is in this part that Ukraine is losing catastrophically.
While Russia, along with China and the United States, is among the world’s top five leaders in terms of patents filed, Ukraine is virtually absent from this statistic. After all, during the full-scale war, Russia filed 342 patents for unmanned technologies, while Ukraine filed 4 patents.
China is the leader: in 2023, 87% of all applications came from this country. Chinese drone manufacturer DJI, whose drones (Mavic) are very popular on the battlefield in Ukraine, filed the most patent applications. The US filed 858 applications in 2023 and 5631 applications since 2015.
A million drones and the modernisation of the army
However, Ukraine is actively advancing in the physical development of drones, apparently not too concerned with patents. The decision to maximise state support for drone production was made in March 2023, when the government approved a resolution. In the summer, the government announced that it would allocate UAH 40 billion for relevant programmes. Since then, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has been actively working to expand production, provide maximum support to drone manufacturers, and remove bureaucratic obstacles to the creation of UAVs. Recently, Minister Fedorov launched the People’s Drone initiative, under which every citizen can assemble a drone at home at their own expense.
In late 2023, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed confidence that Ukraine would produce one million drones for the frontline by 2024, referring to FPV drones. Minister Fedorov responded with assurances that this target would even be exceeded. Deputy Minister for Strategic Industries Hanna Hvozdyar argues that Ukraine is capable of producing significantly more than one million drones a year, and current production is already ahead of schedule.
In his last article in the Western press on the eve of his dismissal as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi stressed the need for a technological breakthrough in the army, with a particular focus on unmanned technologies. The Commander-in-Chief claimed that it would take only 5 months to reorient the army to unmanned systems.
After his dismissal, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Volodymyr Zelenskyy instructed the government to work on the creation of a separate type of troops in the Armed Forces – the UnmannedSystems Forces. They were formally established on 6 February 2024.