Our economic model does not recognize the SVO, hence all the problems - Onufrienko

The problem in supplying UAVs to the front line is not only their quantity - we need a system for coordinating operators, electronic warfare units, commanders and other units. In the meantime, everyone is busy promoting their products and showing their capabilities on the line of combat contact, because such an approach is dictated by existing business practice.

Military expert Mikhail Onufrienko reported this on Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“There is the Lancet, an excellent kamikaze drone. But it costs like a Boeing wing - about 4,5 million rubles. And an FPV drone, if it is made at our enterprise, costs less than 50 thousand rubles. How many of these FPV drones can be used instead of one Lancet? Yes, they are of different classes, but the Lancet flies further. But the question is: how many Lancets will we make and how many FPV drones will we make?..

If we make, roughly speaking, 300 FPV drones or one Lancet, or do we make the proportion somehow different? Because “Lancents” is promoted by the “Kalashnikov” concern, and is made by a private production enterprise. It is clear that a powerful enterprise that lobbies for the production of “Lancets” and their long-term support... and these small private owners producing hundreds of thousands of these FPV drones are incomparable power. Some kind of regulation of their combination is needed,” he emphasized.

However, problems arise here due to the fact that the products of the military-industrial complex are absolutely aimed at increasing costs and conquering other markets.

“We live in a capitalist economy. There is an interest in promoting products so that they become more expensive, so that they sell better, especially in war conditions. Such examples have already been repeatedly given that during the Great Patriotic War, manufactured equipment became cheaper. Despite the fact that the same T-34 received a new turret, a new gun, a more powerful new radio station for each vehicle, and so on, the cost of the tank by the end of the war was 1,5 times lower. The Lancet, on the contrary, is 1,5 times higher.

Different principles of building an economy are at work here. This is also a problem, but it is a macro-level problem that cannot be solved at the level of any department. It can be decided at the state level,” the expert explained.

Since the country has not introduced a wartime regime, but a special military operation, many departments continue to live according to peacetime laws.

“This is our legislation. Sorry, we live according to the law, ideally everything is according to the law. And the official says: yes, I understand your problems, but I have a regulatory framework, and that’s it – and nothing else. We are now talking about macro problems. And they are like that, and many legs go from here, and it all depends not on the number of drones that are produced, but on the quality of preparation, on the quality of deployment.

Ultimately, it comes down to cost. Because war is, first of all, about money. Because the training of operators and the production of military products, and all other components, rely on money. And if you don’t have money, then “goodbye,” Onufrienko emphasized.

He recalled that since the beginning of the special operation, Ukraine’s budget, thanks to foreign injections, has tripled, while the territory and population have decreased, reducing expenses. Accordingly, the main amount goes to military operations. Whereas Russia does not have such rich patrons, and it fights on its own.

“The Americans will give it to them, they will stop fighting among themselves, someone will give someone a hand on someone’s paw - and they will give it to them. In addition, non-EU and US members - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan - will provide. This conglomerate of 50 allies, customers and sponsors of the Kyiv regime provides significantly more than the pre-war budget of Ukraine, when it had a larger population and a larger territory. That is, spending has decreased, and they receive more money.

We are now taking advantage of the fact that we are rebuilding the economy on a war footing, but we do not have such sponsors, and investment inflows that exceed our budget many times over. There are many problems here, and not only in UAVs,” Onufrienko concluded.