A Latvian drone maker says a key lesson for the West from the war in Ukraine is to avoid overengineering weapons and keep focus on what works.
Operating out of a NATO ally that shares a border with Russia, Origin Robotics has been closely following the war, even building combat systems for it. The CEO told Business Insider that the feedback they’re receiving is providing important lessons not just for it, but for the West as it equips itself for potential future fights.
The company makes autonomous aerial and airborne systems, including a drone-launched precision-guided weapon known as the BEAK, which is in use in Ukraine, and an AI-enabled drone interceptor called the BLAZE.
Agris Kipurs, the Origin CEO, said that Ukrainian soldiers don’t care about how advanced the technology they use is. They want effective systems that can be made at scale.
“They need something that simply works,” he said.
“They really don’t care about the type of technology that is enabling that capability. They couldn’t care less if it’s an AI model, if it’s a computer vision algorithm, or if it’s just a skillful pilot flying it and doing it purely manually,” he explained.
His warning comes as Western leaders and companies increasingly acknowledge that NATO’s longtime focus on fielding smaller arsenals of highly sophisticated weapons may not be the best approach.
Kipurs said that in the West, “the incentive is just wrong” for companies developing new technology, with flashier and more advanced gear often prioritized over what’s practical.
He said his company takes what it learns from Ukraine, where it even brings early prototypes and gets feedback from soldiers, to help NATO defense. “We take the learnings of Ukraine, but we adapt those weapons systems specifically to be used in a NATO country.”
Kipurs argued at the Drone Summit in Latvia, which Business Insider attended this past May, that “at times we overemphasize the sophistication of technology.” But Ukraine shows “that nothing’s more important than getting the job done, and sometimes the minimum viable product is what you should be focusing on in times like they have on the battlefield.”
He said speed can be more important than “overengineering stuff and making it commercialized.”
The cost of weapons compared to their success is key, he said. “You don’t get points for integrating the most advanced stuff in your products. You get those points for getting the job done with the least amount of resources spent doing this.”
It’s an idea that’s also building momentum in the West as it watches the war. NATO chief Mark Rutte said in January that the alliance makes weapons too slowly because it is overly focused on perfection. He said that “one of the problems here we have is that the better is the enemy of good: It has to be perfect.”
He said that NATO should be learning from Ukraine, which will proceed with equipment rated “six to seven” out of 10, while Western militaries insist on reaching “nine or 10.”
That’s a problem when it comes to building affordable mass, as Western industry figures have highlighted.
Steve Milano, senior director of advanced effects at Anduril, said in a recent Cogs of War podcast that “we’ve got the exquisite weapons systems, but we really need affordable, sufficient mass.” His company is among several working toward cheaper missiles that give the US the ability to stockpile for a high-intensity fight.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been eye-opening in this respect. Ukraine’s defense industry is booming, with both small, homegrown companies and large ones quickly innovating and producing. It’s fighting to survive, a position NATO countries are not in, but many of them say they must learn from how Ukraine is innovating and building so quickly, lessons the alliance would need in a hard fight.
Cheaper weapons
Drones are a driving factor in such considerations. Inexpensive drones have destroyed expensive tanks, sunk costly warships, and stressed top air defense systems. Cheap mass is straining the exquisite.
For the air defense fight, Ukraine continues leaning into drones for precision strikes on a budget while also developing cheap interceptor systems to take out enemy threats. And NATO is paying attention.
Kipurs’ products are not exactly the minimum viable product. They are advanced and use AI as part of their modern systems, but they are far from the expensive surface-to-air missiles.
He said that with air defense, “you need a multitude of tools” to meet a range of threats, and you probably want a 10:1 ratio between the cost of the interceptor and the average cost of a target.
Kipurs said that it’s not that the West doesn’t need advanced technology, but it’s about balance. Ukraine still wants Patriots, but it is also pouring money into far cheaper alternatives able to be produced at scale.
A change for the West
The West is nervously watching Ukraine, worried Russia may attack elsewhere in Europe. That war likely would not look the same as Ukraine. NATO militaries are far larger, with much more advanced weaponry, meaning they would rely less on cheaper systems Ukraine needs, like drones.
But affordable mass and deep magazines cannot be shrugged off as unnecessary. This war has been a clear wake-up call for Western militaries.
Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told Business Insider earlier this year that the West needs significantly more inexpensive weaponry to meet the threats posed by Russia and China, calling this “one of the lessons” from Ukraine.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s former foreign minister, previously told Business Insider that while the West has focused on new weapons that are expensive and time-consuming to manufacture, the Russians are “building something that’s cheap, that’s expendable, that’s fast.”
It isn’t just the officials who see this. Kuldar Väärsi, the founder and CEO of Milrem Robotics, an Estonian company making ground robots that are used by Ukraine, told Business Insider the war shows the importance of the “simplicity” of weaponry so that it can be scaled faster and more affordably.
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