Trying to intimidate them Russia targeting random Ukrainian civilian buildings

Australia faces a hostile Chinese military superpower that's preparing for war and we seem almost defenceless. Last week some of our top military officials and experts warned we're just not ready. Our weapons platforms, satellites, our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, ISR, it's just not secure enough. If you don't think we have to work out how to fight through degraded ISR, degraded SATCOM, degraded PNT and still work out how we can trust that when that missile fires it's actually going to hit the target intended or it's been manipulated with Bidenversary, then we're delusional. But Ukraine's ambassador to Australia said there well look why don't you learn from Ukraine and because here is a country fighting another military superpower and like I said before the break Ukraine is slowly winning now this year. That Centre for Strategic and International Studies report I mentioned said the Russian military has suffered 1.4 million battlefield casualties and as many as 450,000 deaths since the February 2022 invasion and Ukraine was this year killing and wounding eight Russian soldiers for every one Ukrainian. I mean that is just that's something to learn from I would have thought. I've noted before that Ukraine's revolution in war fighting is so innovative. For one it's built and used lots of cheap stuff. Drones totally transform modern warfare. Drones that cost more than the other side can afford. Drones that cost much less than the other side's weapons that they're shooting down. So it's unbelievable and they're not just drones in the air. There's also cheap marine drones that can blow up navy vessels with half a billion dollars. This is asymmetry. Cheap drones against very expensive missiles and anti-missiles. And Ukraine now makes around five million drones a year. So many that it's been selling even its drone interceptors to the Gulf states in the Iran war in exchange for loans and cash and oil. And what's more this is really important. Unlike our highly centralized military Ukraine has pushed a lot of decision making to frontline units. So much so the Ukrainian army has a kind of Amazon site as I've explained before for those units where they can order exactly the right kind of drones for the particular targets they are facing. Each unit using a budget that they can top up by showing evidence of targets destroyed paying success. And for instance supporters can also donate to each unit. You can do it right now to buy more equipment from army approved suppliers. And all the targets of course that are destroyed and all the missiles flying in and out of Ukraine they're tracked in real time on a site that's available from the president down on laptops and things as as Vladimir Zelensky explained in London this year showing the iPad that he carries that tracks in real time what's firing at what. Joining me is Ukraine's ambassador to Australia Vasil Miroshnichenko. Now Vasil before thank you so much for coming on to give it before I start right there has been a terrible terrible attack overnight on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. 70 missiles I think maybe 500 drones all aimed at civilian targets I think 13 dead maybe more this is a war crime isn't it it's a deliberate attack a massacre of civilians. It is indeed Russians are targeting Ukrainian civilians trying to intimidate them trying to put pressure on them but 13 dead over 90 injured. We are still trying to uncover people from the rubble so the casualties are growing as we speak and this is you know there's been incessant for the past four and a half years but of course during the last year Russia's attacks have intensified including our energy systems including our civilian infrastructure but now we see they just hit different random buildings in in the capital of Ukraine including apartment blocks you tell me how that can be excused I mean it's just shocking stuff. Now you said Australia could learn from Ukraine and defending itself so that we don't go through what hell you're going through what should we learn? Oh there is a lot to learn and certainly that's our experience of asymmetric warfare and it's again I would like to stress that it's not an instead of capability it is as well as capability and we had to reinvent ourselves a lot of that was driven by the necessity facing the much bigger adversary we had to come up with a solution how we can actually bring pain to the Russians how we can hit them asymmetrically and hence we've invested quite a lot in developing some of those capabilities drone capabilities counter drone systems electronic warfare systems and a lot of that innovation has been driven by that but that was a unique ecosystem that Ukraine was capable of creating where soldiers startups government agencies and volunteers are all working together on bringing a prototype to a product and into and straight into the battlefield and sometimes it just takes weeks and and how quickly we can do it but again as you have demonstrated it's actually a lot of that has been outsourced or actually simplified procedure of acquisition for the units on the front lines where they can literally pick what they need and also there is a whole look of how information from the battlefield is transferred to R&D to manufacturing and then back to the to the battlefield and I think any advantage of a Ukrainian drone manufacturer is that they have access to the data and that data is extremely useful in our ability to adapt and change and innovate on the ongoing basis and of course you know we last year we produced five million drones I think this year we're even aiming for seven and that's we were able also to scale it up and I think there is a lot to learn and we'll be interested in working with Australia on on developing some of those sovereign capabilities here well on that very point I mean you have said you know one of the lessons of Ukraine you've got to build uh the weapons you need at home and so far as possible uh don't rely on others boy have you found that out to the hard way uh we have started to build drones here but you've now got two Ukrainian defense companies negotiating to build their drones here in Australia why are your drones better what's in this for us oh it's still early stage but indeed two companies have expressed their interest in looking at Australia potentially locating production here the thing is that that there are no better drones than Ukrainian drones at the moment I mean the only other drones which can probably compete with ours are Russians and when we talk about Russia we always talk about North Korea which has access to it and also most likely you know the silent partner Russia China which is benefiting from that experience all three countries are Pacific countries but our drones are better because they have been tested in a battlefield and plus we're able to get the initial support we got from our partners two three years ago in terms of those drones but we were able to make them better to improve them to harden them Australian companies still play an important part in its supply chain and there are a number of companies from Australia including telecommunications equipment navigation equipment which is supplied to our drone manufacturers but because our drones had that experience in the battlefield and also a lot of the targeting is now done with the help of AI we are able to use open source AI models and train them on the classified data from war from the battlefield and we can improve the targeting and efficiency of those drones and that's something that only local manufacturers have an ability to do it and definitely cooperation with Ukraine would be a huge benefit to Australia just because of that edge because pretty much most other manufacturers if they're not supplying to Ukraine if they don't have the feedback from the battlefield they cannot compete with other manufacturers and most likely any adversary you may be facing in the future will have the technology which is currently much more advanced which will be coming from Russia and therefore the only one the only technology which can compete with that or counter it would be the one coming from Ukraine yes absolutely you've got millions and millions of case examples of feedback of drones that work and don't work and and how you can improve them whereas Western companies relying normally on just trials in the field they're talking about hundreds of examples you're talking millions it's just invaluable experience I would hope and you can't comment I would hope a lot of Australian soldiers are actually over in Ukraine studying this very very carefully Vesel Miroshnichenko thank you so much for your time