The war introduced serious changes to the capabilities of the military-industrial complex. However, Ukrainian Armor has maintained its ability to produce the Novator armored vehicle.

This was stated by Vladislav Belbas, Director General of the private company Ukrainian Armor, in his interview to Ukrinform.

According to him, under current conditions the production of Novator will take 6 to 8 months.

Belbas admits that to date, unfortunately, the number of orders for new vehicles has significantly decreased. “The Ministry of Defence is now looking for already available products, that is, for buying the imports”, says the Director General of the Ukrainian Armor.

In his opinion, “as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle”. “Indeed, for the conduct of military operations, the vehicles are needed now, not in six to nine months’ time. On the other hand, if you buy everything on the basis of imports, and everything is diversified, then in a very short period of time the exploitation of these vehicles will stop, because there is neither supply of components, nor maintenance,” warns the expert.

According to Belbas, the Novator vehicles are light tactical armoured wheeled vehicles that are quite universal.

“We have already tested the installation of combat modules on such vehicles. By the way, the company has been integrating various payloads on the Novator in recent years. We are talking, for example, about counter-UAV systems, combat drones, kamikaze drones, and remotely piloted combat modules,” says the expert.