The war has transformed Ukraine from a farming country to a defense tech nation.

Ukraine, known for agriculture and other heavy industry, is not an obvious setting for drone innovation. The necessities of war, however, have turned the country into a kind of super lab of invention, attracting investment from vaunted business luminaries, including former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, says the WP.

More than 200 Ukrainian companies involved in drone production work hand-in-glove with military units on the front lines to tweak and augment drones to improve their ability to kill and spy on the enemy.

According to Brave1 cluster, AI technology, under development by a growing number of Ukrainian drone companies, is one of several innovative leaps underway in Kyiv’s domestic drone market that are accelerating and democratizing the lethality of unmanned warfare.

The defense tech genius improved speed, flight range, payload capacity, and other capabilities that are making a massive impact on the battlefield, enabling Ukraine to destroy Russian vehicles, blow up surveillance posts and even wreck parts of the Crimean Bridge in an operation last week involving explosive-laden naval drones.