Summary
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called for an “immediate” summit between the US, EU, and Western allies to discuss Ukraine following a heated White House meeting between Trump and President Zelenskyy.
The February 28 meeting ended without agreement on a minerals deal after escalating into a confrontation over US aid and peace deal conditions.
Meloni warned that Western division “makes us all weaker” as European leaders reaffirmed support for Ukraine.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas commented that “the free world needs a new leader,” while European allies worry about being excluded from US-Russia negotiations to end the war.
To maintain a defensive posture you don’t need to spend a cent, raise your elbows and clench your fists. I’m using your wordplay to highlight that you don’t need to spend billions in weapons designed to attack and kill other men to be able to defend yourself.
Yes. You do. That’s unquestionable. Ukraine is barely holding on with overall generous support from the USA and Europe.
The government and invisible lines on the ground are barely holding. In many occasions Ukrainian people managed to defend themself with diy drones duck taped to explosive which proved to be more effective than equipment worth millions dollars.
I can say a few words about that, since I make DIY drones (minus the explosives).
Short summary: you need billions of investment into industry to be able to make cheap drones (but a nice feature: the same factories can supply peaceful activity during peaceful times).
Motors: you cannot DIY them, you need a factory making magnets, ball bearings, rotors and stators, and a final factory for assembly.
Motor controllers: you cannot DIY them beyond a crude prototype for which you naturally need to buy parts. You need a factory making microcontrollers, MOSFETs, PCB boards and a factory to assemble the stuff (robotic pick and place machines, automated soldering ovens, automated testing, etc).
Flight controllers: same as with motor controllers, you need a factory to make them. Open source only comes in at the last step where you configure BetaFlight or ArduPilot as you please.
Flight computers: same as with flight controllers, you need a factory. Fortunately Raspberry Pi, the world’s most-produced microcomputer is made in the UK… from parts largely imported from China. DIY comes in at the last moment, where you choose the operating system and customize (or build) navigation software.
Batteries: making cells needs a factory. DIY comes at the last stage, if the factory doesn’t make ideal batteries, so you buy loose cells and customize.
Fiber optical transceiver: I have not yet seen a garage-built one, though I have seen free space optical transceivers (currently not used in war fighting) that are pretty DIY. But you need components. You can’t cook a silicon photomultiplier in a kitchen, you need a semiconductor factory.
Optical fiber: unfeasible to DIY. Samples can be made in a lab, but to make 20 kilometers of good fiber, you need a well-adjusted factory. You buy up telecom fiber, by shipload if you can, by truckload if you cannot.
Camera: nope, cannot be DIY-ed.
Explosives: can be DIYed at the cost of accidents costing engineers’ lives. So in practise, cannot be DIY-ed.
Airframe: now, the airframe of a drone can be DIY-ed (and this can convey tangible benefits).
(I better not try to write the same about artillery barrels, since artillery is the second most destructive weapon in this war after drones. A DIY artillery barrel is possible, but for pumpkin shooting competitions or at best, short range smoothbore mortars. Heavy industry, high quality steel and a long process with many steps are needed to make a long rifled barrel for high pressure shots.)
Thanks for sharing your knowledge on drones. By diy i wasn’t talking sourcing every material as if you were stranded on a desert island but rather referring to the modular drones already available. They also have been using rc cars with explosive, while making one from scratch would require an industry the idea is that there’s plenty available already and people if needed can successfully defend themself with what they can source.
The sourcing is what actually makes people worry, and makes the Ukrainian government ask from every big supplier: “do you have a backup plan that works without Chinese parts?”.
Tracing the supply chains would reveal that Europe has only half of the industries needed to make a decent drone - with the rest coming from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, etc.
In peaceful times, it would not be such a problem - “oh, we cannot make autonomous agricultural vehicles”.
In not so peaceful times, it’s a considerable risk, and a lot of people are working to lower the risk. It means setting up industries which were outsourced to the other side of the planet.