HEREFORD, ENGLAND: Daryna Shymanska was a 19-year-old media student when her home was invaded. As a teenager in Ukraine, she had dreams of becoming a book publisher, but under the shadow of war, her plan started to feel futile.
“When the war started, I realised that I want to have skills that would be more helpful to Ukrainian society,” she said. “I realised nobody will be interested in whether you can publish a book when you get attacked by one of the biggest armies in the world.”
On the bloody battlefields of her homeland, Ukrainian soldiers were being battered by Russian drones; unmanned aircraft hovering in the skies and hunting for targets, controlled remotely by pilots.
Ukraine fought back, combating each new Russian drone development with a technological advance of its own. Civilian firms, more used to making drones for filming or racing, turned their hand to military equipment instead. And gradually, Ukraine has become a world leader in drone technology.
Today, drones account for the majority of battlefield casualties in Ukraine, with some estimates putting it as high as 75 per cent.
They are used for everything from transporting blood to surveillance and airstrikes, and cheap drones are capable of taking out million-pound missiles.
“I knew that I was not very ready to go to the frontline myself. I’m very afraid of blood. I know that I won’t be able to fight like a soldier, but I had a sense that I wanted to learn how to be able to help from the side, being involved with security and drone flying,” Daryna said.
Daryna abandoned her dreams of publishing and fled to the UK as a refugee, where she applied to university to become a drone engineer.
A Ukrainian soldier launches a reconnaissance drone near the frontline town of Pokrovsk (Photo: Reuters)Now 23, she has been studying at the New Model Institute of Technology and Engineering (NMITE) for more than two years and hopes to pursue a Masters in drones after graduating this year. The school, founded in 2020 and based in Hereford, specialises in automation, construction and robotics.
After a few years gaining experience in the UK, she would like to take her skillset back to Ukraine.
“I realised how how important it is to have a proper defence in your country,” she said. Others are clocking on too.
“More and more people are choosing [drones] as a possible future career. In our cohort, I think about half of the master’s project will be about drones. People are really interested, because it obviously involves a lot of technologies, and at the same time, it has a social value,” Daryna said.
“A few years ago, people saw it more like something that is not ethical, not in a very positive light. But now I think that it’s very important … you need to have means to be able to protect yourself.”
Army partnership to develop UK’s new drone leaders
This September, NMITE is opening its doors to a new cohort of students as part of a partnership with the British Army to establish a drone-specific undergraduate programme.
The course will begin with around 20 pupils, of which five will be serving military personnel, with plans to expand both the intake and the available programmes significantly over time.
NMITE will also deliver smaller, more flexible courses to hundreds of serving personnel across the country.
James Newby, of NMITE, says the course will have military, educational and economic benefits (Photo: Celine Marshall/ The i Paper)The Army collaboration has moved at lightning speed, from conception of the degree to teaching in just one year. It reflects the need to move at “wartime pace”, says NMITE president and chief executive James Newby.
“The university sector as well as Ministry of Defence procurement are not famous for doing things quickly or agilely, but the Army has absolutely recognised the need to ensure that the skills pipeline catches up to the battlefield and industrial requirements,” he said.
Close collaboration with the military will enable students to keep abreast of the latest technological developments on the battlefield and introduce them to working in defence. From the Army’s end, it will help develop a pipeline for the UK’s next generation of drone experts, after the Strategic Defence Review called for greater investment in autonomous systems for the military.
But it is also designed to boost economic growth and education.
Ministers and military chiefs have identified the large-scale acquisition of attack drones as a key element of Britain’s ability to fight in future (Photo: Finnbarr Webster/Getty)“The key intention of the increase in defence spending was always that we would build our defence capabilities – our national security – but that we would also drive economic growth, employment opportunities, educational opportunities as well,” Newby said. “So we’re doing both.”
The students won’t be funnelled into the military, organisers say. Drones have a wide and growing civilian use, from agriculture to delivering packages.
Professor Alex Stancu, an autonomous robotics expert who will be teaching on the course, said he believes in the idea of “universal applicability”.
“I’m inspired by Frank Sinatra’s famous song, ‘New York, New York’, where the lyrics say that ‘if I can do it there, I will do it anywhere’,” he said.
“If the students did graduate engineering and robotics at NMITE, they can engineer robotics anywhere. I like them to be able to adapt them to work in any kind of sector.”
We took security for granted. But I can see the Ukraine war on my phone
Gen Z has a reputation for being disengaged with defence, with polling indicating that only 11 per cent would fight for their country.
Last year, a survey ranked the Armed Forces alongside fast food and delivery firms as the least attractive places for Gen Z to work. But if that is true, NMITE’s students buck the trend.
“Definitely, when I was a teenager, I took global security for granted,” said Tierney McCann, 22, who is considering working in defence or prosthetics after graduating from a current NMITE engineering degree.
Tierney McCann, 22, said young people in the UK have taken security for granted but are now adjusting to the threat posed by Russia (Photo: Celine Marshall/ The i Paper)“Growing up in England, there’s never any war here, there’s never any large conflicts, but with phones and technology, you can kind of see it going on constantly around the world and getting closer and closer to home.
Some of his friends don’t like the defence sector over a perception the industry profits from war, but Tierney feels the mood is shifting.
“I think as we’ve seen the Ukraine war start, and everything’s close at home on the European continent, I think people have definitely shifted their opinions to be more realistic.”
Stephen Mansell, 24, said there is a moral advantage to working on drones (Photo: Celine Marshall/The i Paper)Student Stephen Mansell, 24, compares the current drone evolution with developments in aeroplanes after the Second World War, when they became cheaper and more widely used.
“Whereas 10 or 15 years ago, drones were huge and really expensive, like a Reaper drone, now it’s something that costs £100 or £200. If you can use it destroy something worth a million pounds, it’s kind of a no-brainer.”
He added: “Not only is it something that I find incredibly interesting, but there’s almost like a moral advantage to working and to trying to help the country.”
Ollie Moores said he feels there is no bigger contribution in engineering than working on drones (Photo: Celine Marshall/ The i Paper)Ollie Moores, 20, said that “lots of engineers just want to do something really useful and make a contribution, and there’s no bigger contribution than being working on drones”.
He said: “I think that’s kind of our duty as the UK, as we’ve always done, to protect more vulnerable nations. It’s really important to work on this technology and keep up with the times, because places like China and other places that are, I suppose, less friendly to the UK, progress very fast.
He added: “I think that [drone technology] is going to get really, really popular.
“And if more degrees like this one pop up, I think they’ll make a lot of change.”
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