For decades, the image of an arms factory evoked enormous industrial complexes, gigantic production warehouses and long assembly lines concentrated in the same place. That idea has also changed.
In a country subjected to constant bombing, kamikaze drones and long-range missile attacks, many defense companies have reached a conclusion as simple as it is brutal: a big factory is also a big goal.
For this reason, some of the main Ukrainian companies in the sector have chosen to divide their operations between multiple locations spread throughout the country. In some cases, theProduction is spread across five, ten or even fifteen locations different to prevent a single attack from paralyzing the entire activity.
The strategy has an obvious economic cost. It is less efficient, more expensive and much more complex to manage. But for many companies it has become a matter of survival.
“It’s very difficult to even sleep”
The Russian threat is not just a business issue. It also directly affects those who work every day in these facilities. Achi, CEO of the military-technological company Ark Robotics, explains that constant concern for the safety of his employees is part of his daily routine.
“It’s very difficult to even sleep. You know that you have dozens of people working there constantly under danger and you don’t know when the attack is going to come”he acknowledges.
His company develops drones, ground robots and software systems for autonomous vehicles. Although it maintains part of its operations in Estonia, it also continues to work from Ukraine, where the risks are permanent.
Precisely for this reason they have discarded the traditional model of a large centralized factory. “We try to be smart and not create a target big enough to attract too much attention”he explains.
Five, ten or fifteen different locations
Dispersal has become common practice within the Ukrainian military industry. Misha Rudominsky, executive director of the military communications company Himera, assures that many companies have fragmented their entire production to reduce risks.
Some manufacture components in one location, store material in another, and perform testing at a third site. Sometimes, operations are spread across ten or fifteen different headquarters, each with just a few dozen workers.
The logic is simple: if a facility is destroyed, the company can continue operating. Mykyta Rozhkov, director of Frontline Robotics, summarizes the philosophy with a powerful sentence. “We have adapted the company to be able to withstand the loss of any of our facilities.”
That doesn’t mean the blow isn’t painful. But it does prevent a single attack from destroying years of work and the productive capacity of an entire company.
Europe takes note
What is striking is that this experience is no longer of interest only to Ukraine. Several European arms manufacturers have begun to consult Ukrainian companies on how to adapt their production processes to a modern war scenario.
Fear is not so much an immediate threat as the possibility that Europa may have to face conflicts in the future in which drones, missiles and precision strikes turn large industrial facilities into priority targets.
Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, believes that some European countries should start preparing now. “Some countries should definitely do it,” states.
As he explains, one of the great lessons of war is that resilience can no longer depend on a single factory, a single supplier or a single geographic location.
A war that is changing the rules
The warnings are not limited to the arms industry. NATO military and Ukrainian officials have been insisting for months that the war has shown that many of the traditional models of military organization have become obsolete.
Command centers, air bases, logistics warehouses or factories must be increasingly mobile, more dispersed or even hidden underground. The reason is simple: technology has made finding and attacking strategic targets much easier than just a few years ago.
In Ukraine they have learned it with a missile strike. And while the war continues, its defense companies are developing a new way of manufacturing weapons that, they warn, could end up becoming the norm for much of Europe.
Because in the conflicts of the 21st century it is no longer enough to produce more. You also have to manage to continue producing after the next attack.
