My visit was shrouded in secrecy. No one was to know where I was going. So we met beside a nondescript bank in Kyiv to ensure the taxi driver did not discover our destination. I was led along a cluster of ordinary streets filled with residential blocks, offices and shops — and sharply told to stop my questions when we passed a woman walking her dog. Then, suddenly, we ducked down into a basement and I was ushered through a heavy door.

I found myself in a clandestine white-walled workshop cluttered with shelves of tools, boxes of machine parts and spools of wire. Here, a handful of men in their 20s and 30s were making some of the most sophisticated military drones on earth.  The future of warfare was being built before my eyes.

A Buntar 3 drone was there on a table with its wings removed. It looked like a big model aircraft, with its grey fuselage and tail propeller. But these craft, almost four metres long, are highly complex machines that cost up to $100,000 each. They take off and land vertically using four wing-mounted rotor blades before flying like conventional aircraft with a range of 80 kilometres. They can remain airborne for more than three hours. The carbon-fibre body contains a $30,000 camera with thermal imaging capabilities to detect enemy positions day or night. This is backed up with sophisticated software created from combat experience that integrates tools to monitor altitude, weather and terrain with the Delta battle management platform used by Ukrainian forces, which links to artificial intelligence systems.

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