According to Saska, in order for something like a “drone hub” to be created in the Czech Republic, we need at least hundreds of people who are dedicated to drones. Therefore, the state should allocate part of the budget for the development of strategic knowledge, ideally through the Czech equivalent of the DARPA organization. The mission of this agency of the US Department of Defense is the development of new technologies for national security. “We need to combine research support, a smart army and strong investors. Without this, we will not prevail against American and Chinese competition,” he says in an interview.
Before 2022, it seemed that drones would deliver packages or serve as larger air taxis. Today, drones are perceived primarily as weapons due to daily news from Ukraine. Has the development of civilian applications stopped?
On the contrary, everything has moved a lot, investments are increasing worldwide. It is not yet visible in Europe, but I think that Germany is already considering it. In the United States, where there is the most money, on the other hand, they are now considering whether a bubble has already formed. Many drone companies have been extremely loss-making for a long time. Ukraine is taming uncertainty because it shows that drones are critical know-how for everyone and that they are the future. For example, Skydio (an American manufacturer of autonomous drones, which this year raised $110 million in the latest, sixth round of start-up financing – editor’s note) is at zero, but money from investors is also included. Fly4Future is a bit of a curiosity in this regard, because we have been profitable from the beginning and we do not yet have an investor.
And will you have one?
We have to go this way because thanks to them, competitors have more money for people. We have opened the first investment round and there is great interest. I would like to gradually build a significant company in the Czech Republic with the help of investors, which will one day be a global player.
How much money are you going for?
We are already considering it as a Series A, because we have a product and contracts. We currently need to raise eight million euros (almost 200 million crowns – editor’s note) for one project. But there will be more of these projects gradually. The goal is to build a team of 60 to 100 people in Fly4Future that will be focused exclusively on engineering and integration of selected products – whether it is firefighting drones, GPS-free swarms or drone catchers. We have a wider selection of 20 applications where there is a demand for a technological solution that does not yet exist. We have the components, but we need to integrate them, and reliably, which is expensive. If we were to do it as we have done so far, it would take us a few years, and it may already be too late.
How many drones will you produce so far?
Some 70 to 80 units per year. But these are machines costing up to 1.5 million crowns with great added value.
In what fields do you see a chance for civilian applications?
Drones will help wherever there is a need to use a sensor or transfer something quickly – for example, any inspections and surveillance, where they are more effective than stationary cameras. They move faster and easier than ground robots or cars.
Can combat experience from Ukraine be transferred to civilian applications?
I'm going against the mainstream on this, but I don't think it can. The Ukrainians are solving a completely different problem. They need a cheap drone, where it doesn't matter at all that it's not made of high-quality components and that it's not completely reliable. It's hard for industry to accept a drone that falls down and injures someone in one percent of cases when used. In war, that's acceptable. Thanks to Ukraine, interest in drones has increased, and there's a greater influx of money through subsidies from governments and private money from investors. Technologically, however, the war in Ukraine won't affect development that much.
So you agree with the recent criticism of the head of Rheinmetall that Ukrainian drones are made of Lego on the knee, in a way.
Absolutely. I think that the needs of the armies in drones will be completely different after the conflict in Ukraine ends.
Couldn't the army use Ukrainian 3D printing practices? Isn't this the way to cheap drones?
I am more of a skeptic here too. Of course, we also print and can make a cheap solution that competes with the mass from China. But we will never achieve such reliability with 3D printing. I would compare it to airlines being advised to print their own planes. It will be cheap and it will crash here and there. But when you deliver packages over Prague with the help of drones, it must never crash. A 3D printed drone is certainly great in war, and armies are supposed to have plans and know-how on how to immediately start such production. In peacetime and for civilian applications, however, this is nonsense. Drones must meet certain parameters, pass testing and be certified.
The CTU team also cooperates with the army on several challenges. They select 15 teams to which they give money, and in subsequent rounds they gradually eliminate them until only the best ones remain. In the end, they also give the most money for development. It is beneficial for the state and at the same time it pushes companies to be much more efficient than with grants and subsidies.
As far as I know, companies would welcome it if the army was able to buy one prototype to test. That is already a reference for the company and it will get feedback. At the same time, the army has knowledge and an overview of the market. Is this the way to go?
Certainly yes. With Eagle One (an anti-drone that catches drones in a net – ed. note ) we had two more serious competitors. The American company won the contract with the American army at a time when its product was not yet
he assured. Similarly, the German competitor. That made them global players. A contract motivates you to make a product for a specific customer.
There is a PRODEF program under the Technology Agency. Isn't this the solution?
That program is a good way, but the amounts in it are simply small. A consortium of companies can get 50 million crowns there for three years. That's about 10 million per company for three years. That's not even enough to pay two people. Compare that to the DARPA budget, where teams receive tens of millions of dollars.
Are you working on drone swarm technology? How many drones can actually be coordinated in a swarm?
Currently, the limit is communication. There are light shows with ten thousand small drones. But that's an ideal world. If communication goes down, they all go down. That's why swarms cannot be completely centralized. They must be able to survive without communication. In the cities of the future, drones must move independently, but in a coordinated manner. In a decentralized system, the number of drones can be unlimited.
In Ukraine, the problem is electromagnetic interference, which the Russians are very good at. This probably also supports the path to drone autonomy.
They are fighting against it with wider communication bands and frequency changes, but that is not the solution. Autonomy will allow the drone to function completely without GPS and communication. They will still use them, but they can survive without them. Moreover, it is not just about Ukraine and the war. Anyone can buy a jammer cheaply and “for fun” drop a drone over Prague. Until this is resolved, we will not see drones around us in cities.
What other trend do you see as key in drones in the future?
The physical interaction of drones with the environment is being addressed quite a lot scientifically. That is, they not only fly, but they can also manipulate, cling to, clean surfaces or transfer something cooperatively. Theoretically, a flock of drones could build a television transmitter. However, in business terms, this is only one to two percent of applications. It is at the beginning.
I would be interested in your opinion on Chinese technology. The Americans are planning to ban new applications from the Chinese DJI, which with its Mavics effectively dominates the world market. Is this the right move?
I am surprised that this has not happened a long time ago. Chinese drones are flying cameras that send tons of photos with GPS coordinates of the location where they were taken to servers in Hong Kong and Beijing. It is the cheapest way to get information from all over the world. It is impossible to monitor it. A memory card can be hidden in the drone battery and another drone can then transmit the information. A Chinese cable can also be a risk, in which you can hide a lot of things. It is a legitimate measure, and in addition, it is support for companies that DJI has pushed out through unfair competition, because the company is subsidized by the Chinese government. I want something safer to fly in the sky instead of Mavics. We need to start with industrial applications, where companies are starting to understand that they should not have a Chinese spy in their factory.