How the co-founder of monobank develops drones for the army, cheaper than foreign counterparts
Monobank co-founder Volodymyr Yatsenko, together with like-minded engineers, has launched a project to produce drones for the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian development, says the initiator of the project, is several times cheaper than its Western counterparts, but it is not inferior to them in terms of characteristics.
The main thing is that Vladimir Yatsenko is a banker, co-founder of monobank. However, by first education — a radiophysicist engineer, programmer, who is also fond of aviation. The launch of the drone development program is a continuation of his hobby, which was reborn into a serious project. Vladimir Yatsenko assembled a team of Engineers to develop drones in Dnipro and Kharkiv. Foreign specialists from Australia and the United States are also involved in the work. The developers have created a universal frame that is modified for the desired combat mission within an hour: from tactical (scout or attack drone) to operational (work at long distances from the front line with the same functionality). "We set ourselves the task of making a very cheap and very efficient UAV. According to calculations, the probability indicator of overcoming the enemy'S electronic warfare and air defense is one of the best due to the use of new technologies, and its cheapness eliminates losses from losses when performing a combat mission. One of the drones that we handed over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the invaders could not shoot down with air defense systems for 10 days. To destroy it, they used a BUK missile. Imagine: a simple, almost basic model of a UAV, which cost no more than 5 5 thousand, forced the enemy to spend a missile worth 2 200 thousand," says Yatsenko. Information about where exactly the drones are being used now, Yatsenko did not disclose, but noted that they have already been transferred to the front line.
According to Yatsenko, the approach to working on drones was the same as when designing large aircraft: a fully electronic model is tested on special simulator programs and only then start real production.
The next development of Yatsenko's team is to control a group of drones, which will give the Ukrainian army a significant advantage over the aggressor. According to the expert, the future of the army lies in the "swarm" of drones with various purposes: Scouts, false targets, attack vehicles. Such a group can break through the most modern air defense systems.
Now Yatsenko is looking for specialists in the field of artificial intelligence to effectively process large amounts of information to find disguised targets.
"The task of artificial intelligence itself is to recognize potential targets in real time with the transfer of coordinates to attack drones working in a group with a scout and a UAV operator to make a decision. These are gigabytes of video and photos," the expert explains.
Updated 13.07.22
Vladimir Yatsenko is one of the founders of the Monobank project, a former minority shareholder and top manager of PrivatBank. Yatsenko is also suspected of embezzling more than UAH 137 million. he was allegedly one of those who withdrew money from accounts under fictitious contracts the day before the nationalization of PrivatBank. According to Hromadske, in order to save the largest private bank from bankruptcy, in December 2016, the Ukrainian government issued debt securities worth UAH 155 billion. This money closed the hole in the capital of PrivatBank. So far, no one has been punished for withdrawing money from a financial institution. Only five years later, the first suspect, Vladimir Yatsenko, appeared in this case. On February 22, 2021, the NABU detained a former top manager of PrivatBank. And already on February 25, he was released on bail of UAH 52 million.
Earlier, DOU told The Story of embedded developer, founder of the rocket startup AMW Labs Stanislav Barantsev. For the first month and a half of a full-scale war, he was engaged in satellite intelligence, and now he has returned to making observation drones that will help the military perform combat missions.
