MILAN — Ukraine’s government-backed defense technology cluster, Brave1, has partnered with the American company Palantir to create a platform where artificial-intelligence models can be tested using sensitive military data.
Dubbed the Dataroom, the secure digital environment will allow Ukrainian defense companies to train and validate their algorithms by relying on real-world intelligence on Russian aerial threats collected by the country’s military.
The workspace has been envisioned with the goal of equipping interceptor drones with AI to enhance their target detection, classification and neutralization capabilities.
“In the future, we plan to expand the Dataroom’s abilities to other areas related to autonomy and AI – but for now, our focus is on the most urgent task: countering the threats that appear in our skies, Shahed-type drones,” Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, wrote in a post on his LinkedIn page.
The official noted that while interceptor drones have been effective on the battlefield, defending against thousands of targets requires a high degree of autonomy and the ability for the systems to identify and counter targets independently.
The Dataroom is currently only accessible to Ukrainian industry, primarily due to the sensitivity of the information used for training.
Palantir Technologies, co-founded by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, opened an office in Kyiv and has cooperated significantly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. The company’s MetaConstellation software is used by Ukraine to gather and visualize data of enemy positions and equipment via a network of commercial satellites, sensors, drones, and other systems.
Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said in an interview with online media outlet lb.ua this week that Russia can produce more than 400 different kinds of Shahed-type drones daily and that it plans to increase this number to 1,000.
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.