Unscrupulous European drone makers are “faking” battlefield tests and trying to steal the secrets of Ukrainian firms, according to the head of a major local manufacturer.

Roman Knyazhenko, the chief executive of Skyeton, accused some Western defence manufacturers of claiming their weapons were “combat tested” after short flights conducted away from the front line.

As a result, European governments have invested billions of pounds in systems that do not work in reality, taking resources away from the defence of their own nations and support for Ukraine.

Mr Knyazhenko said drone makers would visit his firm with proposals of co-operation, only to use the time to try to snoop on its secrets.

“Many European drone makers are doing a fantastic job, and we work with a number of them,” Mr Knyazhenko said. “But others are promising a lot just to talk with you more, to find out what secrets you have, and then they’re disappearing.

“These dishonest companies are trying to sniff around to find out how we’re operating, what kind of solutions we have that work on the battlefield.

“Then they do beautiful pitch books, beautiful presentations about how they’re operating in Ukraine. But actually they’ve done just a couple of flights in Lviv [the western city more than 1,000km from the front line].

“Sometimes I open presentations of other [unmanned] aircrafts from Europe, and I see literally my own words, without any change.

“The big problem, after that, is that billions of dollars go to the companies that still don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”

That poses problems for the country procuring such systems, “because they’re investing in technology that’s actually fake. In the end, you will have nothing,” he said.

Skyeton is the major manufacturer of long-range unmanned aircraft used by the Ukrainian army, with its Raybird system having completed more than 350,000 combat flight hours.

The Raybird can carry various payloads, including reconnaissance cameras, radio frequency locators, and other equipment, while flying up to 2,500km on missions up to 28 hours long.

The system is the product of years of relentless work, undergoing hundreds of engineering tweaks per year to adapt to the battlefield.

“We can sometimes help destroy, in one flight, equipment worth billions,” Mr Knyazhenko said.

Before Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, Skyeton produced ultralight K-10 Swift aircraft. But now its team of 500 employees work day and night with the Ukrainian military.

“Just imagine the situation when the crew comes in and something’s broken in the system,” Mr Knyazhenko said.

“It means that right now, while they’re here, the brigade doesn’t have this equipment that supports them.”

“They’re asking you, okay, how long will it take to repair? In peacetime you would say a couple of weeks or a month. But right now, you have one night. Because if you do not do it one night, tomorrow the enemy will try and approach us and we will not have aircraft in the air, so we will have casualties.”

“The pressure is huge,” Mr Knyazhenko said. “Mentally, it’s very difficult.”

Skyeton’s speed reflects the rapidly shifting nature of the war. Around half of the materials inside the Raybird have been replaced in the last three years, to make it less observable by radar. Endurance is also key: the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has to be able to operate in “very muddy” conditions on the front.

“Your aircraft can easily be in a puddle, and in 10 minutes it has to fly.”

“Sometimes it’s just two weeks before a technology that was the most important on the battlefield isn’t working any more,” Mr Knyazhenko added.

Out on a testing field, a Skyeton crew unpacked the Raybird from several black cases for a demonstration. One man sat by a monitor as rain spattered down the screen. Another set up the elastic sling that launches the UAV off a slide. In recent months, the slide has been shortened and the material in the sling made more springy.

Skyeton has been forced to manufacture more of the components and parts needed for the craft in-house.

One delivery of a large number of gimbal-cameras arrived with only half in a functional state, Mr Knyazhenko said. The company involved, which he declined to name on the record, acted surprised at the news.

“But every gimbal has an SD card inside with a test in the factory. We checked the test and it was not working in the factory.”

Every delay costs millions

The company followed its own deadlines for delivery, kicking any problems with the systems down the line.

But that means: “First, guys [on the front] don’t have equipment.”

“Second, [Skyeton’s] contracts with the government here in Ukraine are very strict. So basically every day of delay will cost us millions.”

If Skyeton decided to pursue the case in the courts, the system of international law means “I will spend like five or six years [waiting for a verdict],” Mr Knyazhenko said.

“Everybody’s just doing like this and, in the end, you don’t have time to deal with it, and you’re just trying to go ahead and forget about it.”

To the Skyeton chief executive, one fundamental issue is a misunderstanding on the part of some European companies of the challenges involved in manufacturing UAVs.

“They think if they come here, check someone’s factory, they can easily create the same in their country.”

But nobody would make the same mistake with car manufacturing, he said.

“To make a BMW from nothing in one year, it’s impossible,” he said. “You will spend 10, 15, 20 years developing and making it until, at last, you will be very close to BMW, right?”

“It’s the same story here.”

“We’re in a condition where we work all the time, developing so hard. Three years here feels like 20 years in peace time.”

“Some people think, it’s easy, we’ll just do it. But it’s like thousands of secrets, tricks, and experiences that we are collecting inside the company. Without these things, it will not work properly.”

Most countries ‘far behind’ Ukraine in drone combat

Instead of funding startups, Mr Knyazhenko called for Western nations to consider financing Ukrainian factories within their own borders.

“Just finance the factory, and you will have the manufacturer in your country with a really advanced system,” he said. Nobody would try and build an F-16 from scratch, he added, because they would “know it takes so long” and is so hard to do right.

“Every country has the technologies they are good at,” he added. Ukraine’s, clearly, is drones, and it should see its products exported, as with the US-made F-16 jet.

In a July 7 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, two veterans of Joe Biden’s national security council offered a similar assessment. “Having never experienced [drone] combat, most countries in the world, including the United States, are now far behind the Ukrainians in this regard,” wrote Jon Finer and David Shimer.

Asked for an example of the kind of request his team routinely deals with, Mr Knyazhenko recalled a special forces operation in the Black Sea that “went wrong”.

It was nighttime and the sailors were lost at sea, unable to navigate back to base. With just six hours to find the crew before morning light, when the Russians would be able to target them, Skyeton sent out the Raybird UAV.

There was a failure with the first one, meaning a second had to be deployed from a more dangerous location while the first flew back.

Thrillingly, this Raybird found the crew on the pitch-black waters. It used the lights on its wings to indicate the way they needed to steer.

In the end, “a large group of people got home safe”.

Mr Knyazhenko said: “From one side, everything looks perfect for us. But it was like hell, a night of hell.”

“When you are destroying something you feel good for a couple seconds,” he added. “But when you know that you saved someone. Like, it’s a totally different feeling.”