3 years into war with Russia, this Ukrainian startup is powering a drone revolution

Ukraine’s war with Russia—sparked by Russia’s invasion in the spring of 2022—is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his country’s defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide. 

“Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop,” Chulyk says. “But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting harder. We need to be more effective on the front line.”

The scale of drone deployment is staggering: Drones are responsible for about 70% of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, according to Ukrainian officials. In 2024 alone, Ukraine produced more than 2 million small drones for its war effort, with plans to manufacture 4.5 million this year. But such scale comes with a challenge—there simply aren’t enough operators to control them all. That shortfall is precisely why the company is focusing on autonomous systems, developing drones capable of operating semi-independently.

The deployment of swarms of autonomous or group-controlled drones comes as a far cry from the early days of the conflict, when larger individual drones, such as the Turkey-produced Bayraktar UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), were put onto the battlefield. “They’re big targets,” Chulyk says of the Bayraktars. “The shift now is toward smaller, disposable systems. You fly a drone, it completes its mission, and if you lose it, it’s fine.”

But ensuring drones reach their targets is no simple task. “Environments are very contested, and it’s hard to operate,” says Andriy Zvirko, Sine.Engineering’s chief strategy officer. In response to the growing drone threat, Russia has ramped up GPS jamming—disrupting the traditional navigation systems UAVs rely on. In response, Sine.Engineering has developed a solution that enables drones to navigate accurately without GPS. 

More pressingly, Ukraine must contend with a shortage of qualified drone operators—and here, again, Sine.Engineering’s innovations could prove a crucial boon to the country’s wartime efforts. The company is developing technology that will enable one operator, sitting hundreds of miles from the front line, to control dozens of drones simultaneously through a real-time electronic map. Eventually, the hope is that those drones can number in the hundreds. “It’s like StarCraft,” says Zvirko, referencing the iconic strategy game. “He will see everything, what is happening on the battlefield, and he can operate dozens of drones by himself.”

That shift would be a significant scale up in capabilities for the Ukrainian armed forces. Sine.Engineering’s technology is already capable of controlling 10 to 15 drones simultaneously, with systems currently being deployed to the front line in recent weeks. That rapid pace of development is something Ukraine has achieved out of necessity—wartime demands quick iteration and adoption.

But Chulyk warns that allied nations must speed up the implementation of new technologies like Sine.Engineering’s as the threat from Russia to the global West continues to grow. “Western countries need to move faster,” he warns. “They need to wake up—not just to help Ukraine, but to help themselves.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91308757/three-years-into-war-with-russia-this-ukrainian-startup-is-powering-a-drone-revolution?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss