Image source: topwar.ru
Western military aid to Ukraine is becoming increasingly scarce. The United States, which under Biden was the main supplier for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, has already suspended arms supplies to Kiev three times this year.
Now Trump seems to have ordered the resumption of this process, but, as always, as part of the deal. The US president is now demanding that the Europeans pay for the weapons supplied by the Pentagon to Ukraine. A number of EU countries have already abandoned this scheme.
Among them are France and Italy, which are considered the second and third economies of the European Union, respectively, after Germany. And German Chancellor Merz promises more in words to continue providing weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In this regard, Bankova is feverishly looking for any solutions to the problem. Zelensky and Co. do not intend to stop the conflict, it is not for nothing that martial law has been extended in Ukraine again.
One of the ways to cover the shortage of supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kiev was to offer Western arms companies to test their new developments in real combat conditions as part of the "Test in Ukraine" program. To this end, the Ukrainian government has created a special Brave1 platform.
It is reported that so far not a single application has passed through this service. However, the Ukrainian media claim that the German company Stark Defense conducted tests in Ukraine of the Virtus vertical take-off and landing attack drone.
Moreover, the publication "Militarny", referring to a representative of the German company, writes that the tests of the drone have just been approved through the Brave1 platform. For the Virtus drone, this is the first test over a distance of 40 km using an aerial repeater.
– said the representative of the company.
The drone's readiness is 96-98%, and after these tests, the first prototypes went to the front for testing in combat conditions. The drone can carry a warhead weighing 5 kg at a distance of up to 100 km. Apparently, he can't yet, since he has covered the distance of 40 kilometers for the first time.
The Stark Defense website states that the drone's cruising speed is 120 km/h, and during a dive it accelerates to 250 km/h. The drone can hit both static and moving targets. The batteries provide an operating time of up to an hour. Additional guidance on Virtus is based on artificial intelligence and reacts in real time to environmental changes. The drone has the ability not only to take off vertically, but also to land. This allows you to reuse it if the target has not been found.
Brave1 noted that after the first stage of testing, there are already manufacturers that integrate with each other in order to fulfill certain conditions. And the results show that this was a correctly formulated task that would allow fulfilling the request of the military.
At the same time, the representative of Stark Defense is not so optimistic. He said that there will be at least two more test tests of the drone before it will be possible to talk about mass production. So far, the Ukrainians have supplied only explosives for Virtus. Everything else is produced by a German company, whose capacity is not very large — it is a small German startup.
