By Anna Voitenko
KYIV REGION, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian teenager Yelisei Mamonov desires of attending his nation’s prime technical college sooner or later.
For now, he’s gaining invaluable expertise at a family-run workshop making remote-controlled stretchers to rescue wounded troops as Russia’s invasion grinds on and Kyiv seeks extra revolutionary battlefield options.
Working below his father Dmytro, 52, a former manufacturing unit supervisor, and alongside his 10-year-old sister Yesenia, the 14-year-old has already put dozens of such gadgets into use.
“We need to scale it up. We want as many as possible to be at the front, so that every unit, every company has one,” Mamonov mentioned, as a prototype whizzed down a dust monitor at a coaching floor exterior the capital Kyiv.
The Mamonovs fled the japanese metropolis of Sloviansk shortly after Moscow’s February 2022 assault and arrange manufacturing in central Ukraine, removed from the cluster munitions that after rained down on their road.
Throughout a current go to by Reuters to their workshop, they confirmed off two fashions: a light-weight, foldable stretcher and a heavier-duty tracked automobile, known as a TerMIT (Tracked Modular Infantry Transporter).
The sound of sparks and clanging of steel crammed the green- and white-walled house, the place digital and mechanical parts have been splayed about.
Yesenia, who by now has discovered to attach electrical elements, adjusted the wheels on the smaller mannequin, which prices about $1,900 to make. The TerMIT’s manufacturing value is about $5,200.
Enterprise is booming, mentioned spouse and mom Oksana, 41, who was additionally pulled into the mission, known as the Tank Bureau, to discipline orders for front-line troops.
She brushes off criticism from members of the family and others that her youngsters are lacking out on an extraordinary childhood.
“I think that, on the contrary, when they grow up they’ll be thankful because they’ll have more skills than others.”
Drones and myriad different hi-tech gadgets are enjoying an more and more pivotal position within the conflict, and prime Ukrainian officers have acknowledged the necessity to step up home manufacturing.
The Mamonovs’ effort has been funded by a Ukrainian defence tech accelerator run by the federal government. However extra could also be wanted to attain Dmytro’s imaginative and prescient: a battlefield the place robotics like his household’s are as widespread as first-aid kits.
“That means mass production, that means we need a proper plan,” he mentioned. “But in order to reach this, we need a radical leap forward.”
