Defence Ministry plans to scale marketplace to all AFU and launch drone designer

The Ministry of Defense plans to scale the marketplace to all Armed Forces of Ukraine and launch a drone designer. This was announced by Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal on the Telegram channel, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"In the future, we plan to scale the marketplace to all Armed Forces of Ukraine and expand the list of manufacturers and available means of destruction. In addition, this year we plan to launch the Drone Designer - the ability to modify UAVs for our combat missions. Our goal is to reach 70% of UAV provision through DOT-Chain Defence within 6 months," he said.

Shmyhal noted that two months ago, the Ministry of Defense launched the DOT-Chain Defence pilot - a weapons marketplace for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

This is a platform where units themselves order what they really need on the front, and all bureaucratic issues and payments are closed by the Defense Procurement Agency.

According to Shmyhal, this allowed to reduce the time of delivery of drones to the front from months to a few days, at the same time it is a direct feedback from the front for weapons manufacturers, it makes it possible to quickly adapt products.

Currently, 12 combat brigades in key areas have been included in the pilot: Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk Region, Kherson.

During this time, through the marketplace:

the military ordered almost 17,000 UAVs worth almost UAH 600 million;

received almost 13,000 UAVs worth UAH 443 million, the average delivery time is 10 days, the fastest is 5 days.

23,800 vehicles were delivered under the Drone Army Bonus program.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in September, the Cabinet of Ministers additionally allocated more than UAH 2 billion to the Ministry of Defense to finance the Drone Army Bonus project.