Rockets and drones from laboratories. How to make Ukrainian science friends with weapons production?

The Oplot tank, the BTR-4, the Zenit launch vehicle, or the legendary Mriya and Ruslan aircraft – all of them, like many other technologies, were once created in a single Ukrainian scientific and industrial ecosystem with the participation of thousands of specialists.

But in recent decades, the scientific sphere in Ukraine has largely declined. Chronic underfunding, the lack of a conscious state policy in the field of science and innovation, and the gradual aging of specialists - all this has slowed the development of technologies and their introduction into production.

The activities of scientific institutions remained bureaucratized at the level of the last century and were confined to the planned economic system, and conditions for cooperation with business were not created. As a result, a number of institutes with unique experimental and production equipment simply collapsed.

As a result, dozens, if not hundreds of developments gradually "leaked" abroad for pennies. Such activities gave the institutes the opportunity to survive and preserve the core of the teams, but development is impossible under such conditions.

Before the war with Russia, Ukrainian science approached it rather by inertia, working within a narrow framework. Unique developments and "brains" still make it competitive in several strategic industries. For example, competencies in physics, materials science, research of metals and alloys, welding or technologies for rocket technology made the services of scientists necessary for such enterprises as Motor Sich, Antonov, Zorya-Mashproekt, KB Pivdenne or Zavod im. Malyshev.

At the same time, in more dynamic technologies - drones, robotics, artificial intelligence or components for drones, it is much more difficult for Ukrainian science to compete. In a field where technological changes occur every six months, or even three months, it is difficult for scientists without stable ties to production and the military to work.

Many R&D teams that are currently improving unmanned aerial vehicles or developing electronic warfare systems were educated or worked in Ukrainian science. However, due to bureaucratic over-bureaucratization, low salaries, and the lack of opportunities to commercialize their own developments, these people left institutes and universities and created their own companies. And scientific institutions and the state simply lost money and development prospects.

This model makes more sense for a defense company that doesn't have time for bureaucracy. At a time when innovation on the frontline is needed here and now, collaboration with private sector teams seems to be the best solution.

But for truly complex defense technology projects, the experimental and computational capabilities for many solutions are located precisely in state institutes and universities. Therefore, cooperation between science and business would be very appropriate for weapons production now.

For decades, Ukrainian lawmakers have been trying to create effective legislation that would promote innovation and increase investment in science. But so far, businesses have had to find semi-legal ways to obtain state-funded research.

Why is the system not working well?

As an inheritance from Soviet times, Ukraine received a powerful scientific and research infrastructure, which consisted of scientific and research institutes with special design and technological bureaus, scientific and production enterprises and experimental plants. In the conditions of a planned economy, such a system could generate developments, although it was not sufficiently flexible and effective.

It consisted of four levels. The first is the institutes that develop the theoretical basis for practical research.

The second is research institutions that work with physical materials and their properties. Such institutions, in addition to experimental equipment, usually also had their own small-scale production for product demonstration.

The third level is industry-specific research and production enterprises or design bureaus that produced finished products (for example, boards or devices for the aviation industry) and had a powerful research and development base that worked on continuous product improvement.

The fourth level is a serial plant that put reliable and proven technology "on stream".

This system was managed centrally, with the participation of sectoral ministries and the Academy of Sciences. The ministries formed orders for science in accordance with their needs and monitored its implementation.

However, with the collapse of the planned economy and the lack of orders, and later the privatization of many enterprises, the system stopped working. The third link suffered the most – research and development enterprises. With the collapse of cooperation, there was simply no one to supply products. The main customers for design work also disappeared.

The most painful example is the microelectronics industry. In 1990, almost 200,000 specialists worked in this industry alone in Ukraine. In 2020, there were just over a thousand people.

One of the consequences is the purchase of components for weapons in China. It is unlikely that Ukrainian components, provided that the industry is preserved, would be as competitive as global counterparts. However, the production base for the development of domestic electronics production would be much richer.

In the 1970s, NASA created a scale of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). There are ten such levels. TRL-1 and TRL-2 are the formation of a technology concept, and TRL-10 means that the development has confirmed its characteristics and has been successfully applied for its intended purpose.

The problem is that Ukrainian science can operate up to the TRL-4 level, that is, work with technology at the laboratory testing stage. And the preparation of a model and a prototype for testing is provided for by the following levels of technological readiness. Industry research and development enterprises should work with them. But this link is now almost completely absent.

Business, for the most part, does not risk investing in scientific research, at least in state institutions that cannot conduct effective economic activities. Entrepreneurs see the risks of constant audits in state science, which can completely stop research. There is also a problem with tenders – state procurement through Prozorro takes a lot of time and delays the readiness of products. Add to this the time required for testing, and we get figures of several years. The technology will simply become obsolete before the tests are completed.

That is why the private sector works with sole proprietors. A popular practice is when a scientist at a scientific institution performs calculations, prepares analytical materials or even products, receives money for it, and the university actually remains "aside" from this cooperation and does not invest in development.

"If a scientist does not have a ready-made document that he can immediately sell, then he is deprived of an argument before the state as to why he is doing it. TRL-5 and 6 levels are the most labor-intensive. We need not one laboratory sample, but many more samples that can show the result in real conditions. You need more materials for this. Experiments require more time. This is also payment for working hours. And no one wants to pay for this. This is called the "valley of death" of development. Business is not yet ready to finance it, because it is very expensive for it. And it does not see how it will be able to return this money. This is natural for business, because it also takes risks," Oleksandra Antonyuk, head of the Scientific Committee of the National Council of Ukraine for the Development of Science and Technology, told Defense.

According to Denys Svyatokum, chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Cluster of Dual Technologies, state science is not keeping up with trends on the battlefield, so business is creating its own R&D teams at enterprises. "Scientists can find a cool solution, but it takes a long time. And we don't have time. And it won't be interesting to anyone tomorrow. Because the equipment needs to be constantly modernized ," he says in a conversation with Defense.

However, state science remains strong in many strategically important areas of the defense industry. Dozens of institutions are involved in the implementation of the missile program, the production of armored vehicles, artillery systems and ammunition. For their developments, including defense ones, scientists were awarded the National Borys Paton Prize last year.

What to do?

Most of these problems have already been solved in the West. Back in the early 1950s, a science park was created at Stanford, California, at the local university. Private companies could work on local equipment and involve students and their teachers in development, giving impetus to development and their ideas. Later, it was the Stanford science park that contributed to the development of Silicon Valley, which is the center of innovation not only in the United States, but also in the world.

The science park model allowed to combine scientific ideas and resources for research, and also brought capital to universities. Business, investing in the science park as a co-owner, receives technology, and the university operates in a non-bureaucratic system and commercializes its own developments. This model turned out to be so successful that it quickly scaled up in the USA, and later in Europe.

They wanted to adopt a similar experience in Ukraine. Back in 2006, a law on the Kyiv Polytechnic Science Park was adopted, and three years later the Verkhovna Rada voted for a universal law on science parks. Currently, according to the Ministry of Education, 49 science parks are registered in Ukraine, however, as one of Oboronka's interlocutors in the Ministry of Education noted, it would be good if at least three of them worked effectively.

The model of science and business in a science park should promote the development of innovations and technologies. Then a private defense company that wants to obtain technology for the production of alloys for equipment or equipment for searching for mines using UAVs could act as a customer or partner of the institute for the joint development of this technology in a science park. Such a model would be understandable for all participants.

"Today, defense enterprises have money. The only question is that we cooperate with them correctly. (...) For this year, the capacity (equipment and university employees - ed.) of KPI is officially, I mean what we received from the state customer, loaded with about 15% of what we can," Yuriy Yekhanurov, who heads the Institute of Advanced Defense Technologies at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, shares in the Security Talks program.

"A business culture has not been formed in Ukraine to order scenarios for the development of events even from Ukrainian Think Tanks. Although there are quite a few such institutions in Ukraine. I know quite a few examples when Ukrainian business orders research from foreign institutions. In my opinion, this is wrong, because Ukrainian science and Ukrainian education are quite powerful," Volodymyr Bugrov, rector of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, noted in a comment to the Defense journalist.

Science City and new science parks

The state plans to solve these problems with the government project Science City. It should regulate legal restrictions that hinder the effective operation of already established science parks.

The project was first announced by the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, in December 2024. The Ministry of Digital Affairs assumes the role of an integrator of science parks into the legal regime of Diya.City, and the Ministry of Education (MES) prepares programs and a legislative framework.

As one of the co-authors of the project, Deputy Minister of Education for the Development of Science and Innovations Denys Kurbatov, told Oborontsi, the first and main proposal is to exempt Science City residents from VAT and introduce duty-free import of research equipment, which is currently taxable. In addition, private business will be able to receive preferential terms for renting premises of scientific institutions for the implementation of joint projects with state science.

Benefits will be provided to science parks that implement priority projects for the state's needs, for example, for the defense industry. To do this, they must submit an application for registration of the project requiring support to the Ministry of Education and Science.

The Science City project has no restrictions on the form of ownership of the science park. There is only one condition – the share of a state university or institute should not be less than 10%. According to business representative Denys Svyatokum, it is the model of creating a park at a state institution, but with a predominant private capital, that will allow for effective search and investment in defense and dual-purpose developments. At the same time, the university will receive absolutely transparent benefits from royalties for the use of intellectual property.

As a result, the project assumes that the money received from science parks will go to the needs of the universities and institutes themselves, and will not disappear into individual entrepreneurs without any benefit to the institutes.

One of the first science parks to operate under the Science City model will be an association based on the Kyiv Aviation Institute (KAI). It will focus on developing solutions in the areas of deep tech, civil UAVs, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, materials science, and robotic systems.

The reform now faces a challenge – a reshuffle in the government, which could, if not completely disrupt, then slow down its implementation. But Kurbatov believes that since the reform was implemented jointly with Western partners and is strategic, it is unlikely that anyone will oppose it.

As scientist Oleksiy Kostenko aptly put it during a discussion of the prospects for creating a Ukrainian analogue of the American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), many technological solutions that were once put "in the refrigerator" now need to be retrieved and analyzed in detail. And now many solutions in the fields of artificial intelligence or for control systems can become part of a new development that will be launched by an initiative business team.

The science park model can become a kind of window for private defense companies to enter the scientific sphere. With clear rules and benefits for all parties. At the same time, the science park will be the link that will allow state science to fight for investments, compete with others, and therefore accelerate development. And finally get rid of the inefficient spending of funds for work that cannot be integrated into production.