Triada Robotics CEO Artem Veselov: “The market is turning away from expensive legacy systems”

In summer 2026, first information and sighting reports about a new Ukrainian jet drone appeared on social media. In the interview, Artem Veselov, CEO of Triada Robotics, has his say.

We have seen a video of a jet drone that is very similar to your product. Development cycles in wartime are very fast, but it still takes ideas, concepts and lead time. Where does the company Triada Robotics have its origins?
Even before all of this began, I had spent more than a decade building things – in investment banking, in IT and in project management. Then, in 2022, I joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces to defend my country. An opportunity like that does not come often, and I simply could not stand by and watch. Together with other war veterans and engineers, I realised that we all wanted the same thing: not just to develop a good product, but to build a DefTech company – to develop a flagship system and then break down the underlying technology into components that other manufacturers can use as well. That is how Triada Robotics came about. The model that inspires us most is Anduril – a company that develops products and at the same time builds the infrastructure that goes with them.

Executives, employees and production sites of defence companies are exposed to extreme risks. What can you nevertheless tell us about the background of your team?
Our team is based on a direct connection: veterans of the war in Ukraine who have actually used the strike systems we build in operations work side by side with aerospace engineers with more than a decade of experience, including specific expertise in propulsion systems. Combat experience and technical expertise are united under one roof and shape decisions together – that is the entire structure, not two departments sending specifications back and forth. The people who understand what fails under real conditions are exactly the same people who develop the solution.

What distinguishes Triada Robotics’ systems? What sets them apart from the competition?
What sets us apart is not a single data sheet – it is the feedback loop in which our flagship system “Bravo” is developed. It is built by engineers with many years of experience in the aviation industry, and every iteration is shaped by direct feedback from active operations in Ukraine. We have already seen the system evolve considerably through this process. We do not develop in isolation and hope that it proves itself; we send something to the field, bring it back, learn from it and revise it quickly. That is what “combat-proven” really means for us in practice – not a label, but a continuous cycle. The result is a system that is constantly evolving, with a range of up to 2,000 kilometres and designed to function under electronic warfare conditions as well, not only under ideal conditions.

What does your development approach look like? What principles do you follow when developing a new product?
As a defence technology company, we start from what the front line actually needs right now – that is the first filter for everything we develop. The second filter is discipline. We deliberately avoid the trap of spreading ourselves across a dozen unrelated products. What we develop is a product family together with the ecosystem that allows them to reinforce one another – a strike platform, its mission software and its communications layer, functioning as a single system instead of merely existing side by side.

Development cycles have accelerated dramatically in the course of Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine. The field of long-range strike weapons is one of the areas that stand out particularly in this respect. In which direction do you think this sector will develop?
The market is turning away from expensive legacy systems. Conventional long-range strike systems are costly, slow to procure and difficult to scale in wartime – and this business model is now collapsing. We are seeing three overlapping developments. Autonomous warfare is now a core capability and no longer an experiment. Defence customers increasingly demand systems that can be deployed under electronic warfare conditions and in GPS-denied environments while reducing the risk to operating personnel. And Ukraine has become a real-world testing ground where all of this is developed, tested and refined in real time – not in the laboratory – on the basis of actual battlefield requirements. The next level of competition is not only about the airframe – it is about mission software, autonomy and navigation that does not depend on satellite signals. Whoever gets this technology stack right first will have an advantage that goes far beyond a single product.