By Anna Voitenko
KYIV REGION, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian teenager Yelisei Mamonov desires of attending his nation’s high technical college someday.
For now, he’s gaining precious 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 beneath 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 units into use.
“We have to scale it up. We wish as many as attainable to be on the entrance, so that each unit, each firm has one,” Mamonov stated, as a prototype whizzed down a dust observe at a coaching floor outdoors the capital Kyiv.
The Mamonovs fled the jap 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 avenue.
Throughout a latest go to by Reuters to their workshop, they confirmed off two fashions: a light-weight, foldable stretcher and a heavier-duty tracked car, referred to as a TerMIT (Tracked Modular Infantry Transporter).
The sound of sparks and clanging of steel stuffed the green- and white-walled house, the place digital and mechanical elements had been splayed about.
Yesenia, who by now has discovered to attach electrical components, 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, stated spouse and mom Oksana, 41, who was additionally pulled into the undertaking, referred to as the Tank Bureau, to area orders for front-line troops.
She brushes off criticism from members of the family and others that her children are lacking out on an extraordinary childhood.
“I feel that, quite the opposite, after they develop up they will be grateful as a result of they will have extra abilities than others.”
Drones and myriad different hi-tech units are enjoying an more and more pivotal position within the battle, and high 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.
“Which means mass manufacturing, which means we want a correct plan,” he stated. “However as a way to attain this, we want a radical leap ahead.”
