Ukrainian Official Calls for Mobile, Underground Drone Centers in the West

Taras Berezovets, head of the military cooperation department of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, told attendees at a drone summit in Riga, Latvia, that Western allies should build future drone units and command centers to be mobile and ideally underground.

Berezovets said the recommendation stems from Russia's repeated efforts to locate and strike Ukrainian drone operations. "This war, especially in terms of the drone war, is like a cat-and-mouse game.

The Russians are always searching for the locations of our drone units," he said. Ukraine keeps many of its drone command centers concealed and operates them underground when possible. Some centers function as mobile systems inside trucks and armored vehicles, while drone operators regularly work from concealed or underground positions.

He acknowledged the approach is more expensive but argued it is necessary given the threat level. Ukraine is nearly 10 times the size of Latvia. Berezovets said smaller NATO countries would find it much harder to relocate drone units and command centers if they are exposed.

Ukraine says drones are causing 90% of Russia's front-line losses. The country has publicly celebrated strikes on Russian drone command centers. " The head of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces said last year that Russia had tried to strike multiple Ukrainian drone unit leaders at once.

Sir John Stringer, NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told Business Insider that Ukraine shows the "big single air operation center" is no longer viable. Some Ukrainian defense companies have advised Western counterparts to avoid concentrating production in single large sites.

Achi, CEO of Ukrainian firm Ark Robotics, said the company keeps different parts of manufacturing independent and remains flexible about location.

"As default for defense-based manufacturing going forward, you don't want to have huge factories in one place because they are these targets," Achi said. " Karmo Saar, head of sales for Estonian company Krattworks, told Business Insider that some of Ukraine's large drone makers operate more than 15 production sites. He said the rest of Europe needs to learn from that practice.

Business Insider reported the remarks from the Riga summit.