04/04/2023
As Ukraine continues to absorb the onslaught of Russian artillery and explosive ordnance, these Remnants of War (ROW) will take decades to clear long after the conflict. Over 30 percent of Ukraine’s crops are affected by unexploded ordnance. Ukraine wheat fields play a vital role in the global food supply, providing over 40 percent of the World Food Program’s wheat. It is estimated to take over 9 years to remove UXO in the agricultural areas alone. Current technologies and methods take up to two weeks or more to “clear” on acre. AltruTek has partnered with an emerging UXO Mapping Alliance that can provide an app that identifies blast radius zones of both surface and subsurface UXOs, using their drones to map an acre and adding it to their active database in 2 hours or less. This means that a fleet of 99 of these drones can map over 80,000 acres per year. It will take roughly $7 million to create such a unique fleet and deploy it in Ukraine. The timing of this effort will be key to saving lives across Ukraine, long after the war has ended. AltruTek currently seeks to raise this funding and provide it to the targeted UXO Mapping Alliance in order to expand manufacturing of these systems and train drone operators.
