Defence Forward Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In March 2026, Ukraine launched more drones into Russian territory in a single month than Russia launched into Ukraine. The 1st Unmanned Aerial Systems Center accounts for more than half of that number. Oleksandr — the head of analytical department — explains the full chain: from mission order and logistics to post-mission reporting and how his team eliminates every bottleneck in between.
The 1st Center is something unprecedented in military history. What started as a battalion in 2022 - the first unit in the world to operate drones simultaneously across tactical, operational, and strategic levels — has grown into a center-level structure launching thousands of drones per month.
Oleksandr Sukhoi spent 25 years building software teams across Europe. Then in late 2024, he made the same choice as thousands of other Ukrainians: he traded his civilian career for military service. Today he heads the analytical department of the 1st Center - the unit responsible for more than half of all Ukrainian deep strikes into Russian territory. This is Episode №1 of Defence Forward podcast, where we go inside Ukraine's fighting machine.
At peak impact, the 1st UAS Center had disrupted 30-40% of Russia's oil export capacity. Oleksandr explains the psychological dimension too: Russian propagandists openly started saying the war should end. That signal is tracked, measured, and factored into how operations are planned.
► Donate to 1st Separate Unmanned Systems Center:
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► Support Ukraine in the most efficient way with Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation:
https://prytulafoundation.org/en
Key moments:
00:00 Introduction to Alexander Suchy and His Role

03:15 Transition from IT to Military Service

06:22 Understanding Deep Strike Operations

09:06 Analyzing the Impact of Deep Strikes

12:26 Counteroffensive Measures and Tactical Adjustments

15:20 The Dynamics of Warfare and Future Predictions

18:11 Target Selection and Strategic Planning

21:28 Drone Warfare: Tactics and Countermeasures

24:17 Training and Resources for Effective Defense

29:38 Collaboration and Resource Allocation in Warfare

34:02 Feedback Loops and Real-Time Adjustments

36:38 Electronic Warfare: Challenges and Adaptations

38:58 Innovations in Drone Technology

41:02 Russia's Adaptation and Information Warfare

42:06 After Action Reviews and Strategic Insights

43:29 The Psychological Impact of Strikes

44:51 Targeting Moscow: Risks and Rewards

47:02 Long-Term Impact of Strikes on Russian Economy

48:37 Fundraising and Resource Needs

51:30 The Broader Implications of the War

#deepstrike #ukrainewar #defenceforward #defence #defencenews #ukrainerussiawar

Mykyta Puz — Miltech Scouting and Partnership Officer at the 12th Special Forces Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, "AZOV". AZOV needs no introduction. The brigade that held the Mariupol Azovstal Steel Plant againstoverwhelming Russian forces in 2022 — and made it legendary — is now fighting in the Toretsk and Pokrovsk sectors of the Donetsk region, one of the most intense battlegrounds of the war. Mykyta's background is anything but typical: French translator by education, competitive car racer by hobby — and now the person bridging Western defence tech with one of Ukraine's most battle-hardened brigades. We talk about why 90% of technology pitched to Azov simply isn't battlefield-ready, how fibre-optic drones changed the war and what the next revolution in Ukraine's military technology might look like.

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► Production thanks to ⁠⁠cylindr Defence⁠⁠

► Jonathan Winch — Podcast host

► Dan Kucherenko — Podcast host

► David Hoskin — Producer

#DefenceTech #DroneWarfare #UkraineWar #MilitaryTechnology #UnmannedSystems #ModernWarfare #warinukraine2026

Viktoriia Yarumchuk, CEO of Farsight Vision, sharesinsights into Farsight Vision’s innovative battlefield intelligence solutions, the technical challenges and the challenges of defence tech integration.Discover how data processing, orthophotos and real-time analytics are transforming military operations. Viktoriia talks about some of the security, operational challenges and technological innovations in Ukraine's defencesector, opening up about Farsight Vision’s role in modern warfare.

Farsight Vision is the de facto standard for battlefield geospatial intelligence in Ukraine, used by approximately 60% of the country's defence forces. FarsightVision solved an important battlefield challenge. In 2022 and early 2023, Ukraine was fielding thousands of drones - but the data those drones captured was either wasted or backlogged for days. There was no standard for how sensor data should be formatted, no clear place to store it, and no reliable way toprocess drone footage into something commanders could use to plan operations.With satellite imagery sometimes months out of date, commanders were sending units into the unknown. Farsight's solution was a constantly updated 2D and 3D digital twin of the battlefield - orthophotos, orthomosaics and 3D models generated directly from drone footage and ready for planning within 90 minutes of the flight.

One of Farsight's most significant advantages is its neural networks. Most competitors - civilian tools and teams outside Ukraine alike - trained their detection models on open-source footage of poor quality or datasets captured years ago. Farsight trained on constantly updated, real battlefield data across all camera qualities, all weather conditions, all terrain types. The team ran thousands of experiments, drawing on approaches from biochemistry, real estate 3D modeling,and blood-test computer vision. The result: contextual detection that understands pixel combinations, terrain type, camera angle, and elevation simultaneously - and crucially, works without GPS in fully GNSS-denied environments, which most civilian photogrammetry tools fundamentally cannot do.

The competitive landscape is nuanced. Civilian photogrammetry tools exist but require GPS. Detection tools exist - mostly trained on stale data. Simulation systems offer scenario-based training, but in artificial terrain - typically somewhere in the Middle East, not Ukraine's actual frontline. Farsight generates 3D models from real battlefield terrain, updated continuously, and enables genuine after-action review of training on the actual ground where it matters. NATO allies are interested - but the honest assessment from Viktoriia is that most lack the full ecosystem to use Farsight effectively. They need drone pilots who can fly in denied environments, electronic warfare capability, C2 systems, and communication infrastructure. Ukraine was forced to build allof that under fire.

#deepstrike #ukrainewar #defenceforward #defence #defencenews #ukrainerussiawar► ⁠Find us on Instagram and Youtube⁠

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► Support Ukraine through⁠ ⁠Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation⁠⁠

► Production thanks to ⁠⁠⁠⁠cylindr Defence⁠⁠⁠⁠

► ⁠⁠Jonathan Winch⁠⁠ — Podcast host

► ⁠⁠Dan Kucherenko⁠⁠ — Podcast host

Micael Lawson didn't plan on becoming part of Ukraine's defence story. He drove a car full of generators from Trollhattan, Sweden to Fastiv because someone had to. Then he met soldiers at a Brave1 event. They asked for one thing: help us save the lives of our soldiers. That sentence changed the direction of his company. Micael is CEO of Recas Sweden and he now applies years of automotive thinking directly to Ukraine's most urgent manufacturing problem.He believes that although Ukrainian manufacturers are brilliant at building products that work, they are not necessarily scalable. Almost every company does product development to create capability, without adding design for manufacturing and design for assembly from the start. The gap between what a product can do and how it can be produced at volume is exactly where the automotive industry has spent decades. Ukraine must do three things now: accelerate production capacity, cut piece price through industrialization, and capture process data digitally. Micael Lawson questions how you can give ten technicians the production power of a hundred? How can you duplicate factories across a cluster of distributed nodes? How can you hand a recipe to a second producer without the original team? The answer is always the same: structured, controlled digital data.What does this mean for Ukraine, with 240 UGV manufacturers each solving the same problems in isolation? Cluster manufacturing, distributing production across multiple nodes so no single attack kills the whole line, is already happening. The next step is formalizing it: mapping every company's capabilities, storage, production tempo and capacity through a system like RIVET (Recas Industrial Visibility and Execution Tracker), so that when one node fails, another absorbs it within days.As the conflict evolves, battlefield outcomes will increasingly depend not on how many soldiers can be recruited, but on which side can put more pieces on the field at lower cost with higher intelligence.

► Follow Micael Lawson on ⁠Linkedin⁠► ⁠Learn about Recas ► Support Ukraine in the most efficient way with⁠ Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation⁠ ► Production thanks to ⁠⁠⁠cylindr Defence⁠⁠⁠ ► ⁠Jonathan Winch⁠ — Podcast host► ⁠Dan Kucherenko⁠ — Podcast host► ⁠David Hoskin⁠ — Producer📡 Find us on Instagram and Youtube #defencetechnology #ukrainerussiawar #miltech #ukraine #UnmannedSystems #defenceforward