Ukraine’s military had only one Bohdana artillery gun in its arsenal when Russia invaded the country two years ago. However, this unique weapon, made in Ukraine in 2018 and capable of firing NATO-caliber rounds, proved so effective in the early days of the war that it was trucked to battlefields across the country, from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the southwestern coast along the Black Sea and points in between.
Ukraine’s arms industry now makes eight of the Bohdana self-propelled artillery systems every month, and although officials won’t say how many they’ve made in total, the increased output signals a potential boom in the country’s domestic weapons production.
The rise comes at a pivotal time. Russia’s war machine is already quadrupling weapons production in 24-hour operations. Ukrainian forces are losing ground in some key areas, including the strategic eastern town of Avdiivka, which they withdrew from in February. A US aid package is still pending in Congress. And while European defense companies are aggressively opening operations in Ukraine, major American arms producers have yet to commit to setting up shop in the midst of war.
It is widely agreed that Ukraine needs to rebuild its domestic defense industry so that its military does not have to rely for years to come on the West, which has at times been reluctant to send sophisticated weapons systems – including air defenses, tanks and large range missiles. Whether that can be done in time to change the course of a war that would be even weaker without more U.S. military aid remains to be seen.
But Ukraine’s military engineers have already shown an amazing ability to build old weapons systems with more modern firepower. And in the last year alone, Ukraine’s defense companies have made three times as many armored vehicles as they did before the war and quadrupled production of anti-tank missiles, according to Ukrainian government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Funding for research and development is projected to increase eightfold this year — to $1.3 billion from $162 million — according to an analysis of Ukraine’s military budget through 2030 by Janes, a defense intelligence firm. Military procurement jumped to a projected 20-year high of nearly $10 billion in 2023, compared with a pre-war figure of about $1 billion a year.
“We say that death to the enemy begins with us,” Alexander Kamysin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, said in an interview last month in his office in a scruffy brick building in Kiev, hidden among restaurants and apartment buildings.
“It’s to show that we’re not sitting around waiting for you to come and help us,” Mr Kamyshin said. “It’s about trying to make things ourselves.”
Some weapons are proving more difficult to produce in Ukraine than others. They include 155mm artillery shells, which are desperately needed on the battlefield, but depend on imported raw materials and licensing rights from Western manufacturers or governments. Mr Kamyshin said domestic production of 155mm shells was “on the way”, but did not say when.
Once a major supplier to the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s defense industry has shrunk over three decades of budget cuts since the country declared independence in 1991. The government in Kiev now plans to spend about $6 billion this year on weapons made in Ukraine, including of a million drones, but, Mr. Kamyshin said, “we can produce more than we have available funds.”
The long period of decline can be difficult to overcome. To restart production of the 2S22 Bohdana artillery gun, for example, officials had to track down the weapon’s original designers and engineers, some of whom had been assigned menial military duties across Ukraine.
By June 2022, Ukrainian forces were using Bohdana’s 30-mile range to target and destroy Russian air defenses in the successful battle for Snake Island in the Black Sea.
“It was a very big surprise for the Russians,” said Major Myroslav Hai, a special operations officer who helped liberate the island. “They couldn’t understand how anyone could use artillery for that distance.”
In Europe, political leaders worried about eroding American support and business executives who see new market opportunities are pushing military production ventures in Ukraine, even if it will be several years before any of those weapons or hardware reach the battlefield.
German arms giant Rheinmetall and Turkish drone maker Baykar are in the process of building production plants in Ukraine. France’s defense minister said in March that three French companies that make drones and ground warfare equipment were nearing similar deals. Last month, Germany and France announced a joint venture through defense conglomerate KNDS to manufacture parts for tanks and shells in Ukraine, and eventually entire weapons systems.
Experts said Ukraine’s military has placed air defense systems around some of its most critical weapons factories. It is likely that the foreign-backed factories will be built largely in the west of the country, far from the front lines but also protected by air defenses.
Christian Seear, director of operations in Ukraine for British-based military firm BAE Systems, said even the nascent moves by foreign producers send “a critical message – that you can go to Ukraine and set things right.”
While BAE Systems plans to build weapons in Ukraine in the future, Mr. Seear said, the company is currently focusing on a “fix it forward” approach, to repair battle-damaged weapons at factories in Ukraine for to bring them back to the forefront. faster. Many of the weapons in Ukraine’s ground war — including the M777 and Archer howitzers, Bradley and CV90 combat vehicles and Challenger 2 tanks — are made by BAE Systems.
“We want to continue to fight these things, and it’s becoming clear that you can’t continue to keep these assets in neighboring countries,” Mr Seear said. “It is not acceptable for a long war of attrition to have hundreds of high quality, reliable howitzers that have to travel hundreds of miles.”
To date, Ukrainian and US officials have said that no major US arms manufacturer has announced plans to open production lines in Ukraine. But some senior officials have visited Kiev in recent weeks to meet with Mr Kamyshin and other officials, and the Biden administration hosted meetings in December to bring together Ukrainian leaders and US military contractors.
Helping Ukraine rebuild its defense industry has become even more vital as Republicans in Congress have blocked $60 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine. (However, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has recently indicated that he is looking for politically palatable ways to bring the aid package to a vote.)
But a web of red tape in Kiev threatens to slow at least some investors as they try to push proposals through three ministries, Defense, Digital Transformation and Mr Kamyshin’s Strategic Industries.
“We’re trying to figure out how these all fit together and how they work together,” said William B. Taylor, a former ambassador to Kiev who is leading a U.S. Institute of Peace effort to help connect American and Ukrainian defense companies.
“American companies have many opportunities to invest in other places around the world,” Mr. Taylor said. “This is a point where U.S. national interests are at stake, so we would go the extra mile to help make those connections.”
Since 155mm artillery rounds are desperately needed, Mr Taylor suggested that an initial joint venture between Ukrainian and US companies could focus on increasing their production.
European producers are already entering this market.
“If the Europeans participate in its development in the volumes they promise, I think we will solve the problem of ‘shell hunger’ over time,” Oleksandr Shirsky, commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said in an interview with state media information of Ukraine. .
Although Ukrainian manufacturers are banned from exporting weapons until the war ends, Mr Kamyshin sounds keen to compete with foreign arms producers.
A powerful speaker with a goatee and a top-of-the-line hair style traditionally worn by Ukrainian Cossacks, Mr. Kamyshin is one of what Mr. Taylor described as a new generation of leaders in Ukraine — at 39, a young gun who has quickly risen through the ranks of government. classes.
After his appointment as minister in March 2023, Mr Kamyshin visited almost every arms factory in Ukraine and said he found an industry in dire need of an overhaul. Workers were working in damaged factories in some places. In others, rockets were built by hand.
While he said production is moving more smoothly now, he still receives daily updates on critical assembly lines to quickly spot breakdowns and fix them quickly.
“We’re moving things faster and cheaper, and they’re working,” Mr. Kamyshin said in an interview that was as much a sales pitch for domestically made weapons as a discussion of foreign investment.
“We will join you and NATO one day,” he said confidently. “So if you procure from us, you acquire capabilities and that will become part of the common capabilities one day. So why not invest in your shared potential?”
Vladyslav Golovin and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed to the report.
