Ukraine sees 'priceless' digital battlefield data trove as key to West's support

KYIV, August 28 ------ Ukraine is looking at how to share battlefield data with allies, the country's deputy prime minister said, calling the vast trove of stored information one of Kyiv's "cards" to strengthen its position as it negotiates support from friendly countries.

"The data we have is priceless for any country," Mykhailo Fedorov, who heads Ukraine's digitalization ministry, told Reuters in an interview, adding that Ukraine is currently "very careful" about sharing it.

Vast datasets are crucial for training artificial intelligence (AI) models to recognize patterns and make predictions. That need is particularly pressing in the burgeoning global defense sector. While datasets for most civilian activities can be found commercially, the 21st century's biggest war between advanced armies has given Ukraine a set of combat data with no parallel, which could help Kyiv prove its value as an ally to Washington.

Since Russia launched its 2022 invasion, Ukraine has collected reams of meticulously logged battlefield statistics. And with the war increasingly fought by drones, it now has millions of hours of combat footage filmed from the air. "I think this is one of the 'cards', as our colleagues and partners say, to build win-win relations," Fedorov said, an apparent nod to U.S. President Donald Trump, who told Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in a disastrous Oval Office meeting in February that "you don't have the cards". "The demand for the data is incredibly high, but at the moment we are forming policy how to organize this process correctly," Fedorov said.

Ukraine has also sought to position itself as a testing ground for international defense companies, inviting them to try out new weapons in Ukraine. Fedorov said that nearly 1,000 applications had been received so far, and 50 different products were "coming to Ukraine". Ukraine now uses AI to help pilot drones, including several of its systems used for long-range attacks deep inside Russia, Fedorov said. Computers can scan detailed aerial and satellite reconnaissance imagery for targets which would take a human "dozens of hours" to find, he said.

Source: reuters.com