FPV drones reshaped the battlefield, becoming almost impossible to ignore. Affordable, widely available, and precise, they delivered precision at scale.
We all saw €300 drones neutralizing €5 million tanks, and entire frontlines coming to a halt. Large armored maneuvers became increasingly risky. Over time, however, as Russian electronic warfare capabilities advanced, controlling and operating FPV drones grew far more challenging.
This is where Teletactica comes in. From field tests near Kyiv to an EU footprint for export and dual-use manufacturing, Teletactica is scaling battle-proven architectures while the electronic threat constantly evolves.
We sat down with Yevhen Zhebko, Teletactica’s CEO and co-founder, to explore how they’re turning wartime improvisation into durable capability and what it takes to fund, build, and ship deep tech in a live electronic warfare environment.
What Problem Are You Solving?
We build critical components for unmanned platforms: communications hardware (modems, antennas) for drones and robotic platforms. The core problem we solve is unreliable connectivity in contested or jammed environments.
We focus on stable telemetry, C2 (command-and-control), and video links where conventional systems, even some military-grade ones, often fail.
How Did You Personally Get Into This?
The story really starts in 2021. I’d already spent over 12 years working with hardware startups, much of that while based in Kharkiv, near the Russian border. Even before the full-scale invasion, I was receiving requests from special units to research critical areas such as GPS-denied navigation and resilient communications.
When the full-scale invasion began, I called an old friend with deep RF and hardware expertise, Anton Hetman, who is now our CTO. We dove into urgent volunteer projects.
Within a few months, we built a filtering system for large ISR drones that pushed the effective range under jamming from roughly 25–30 km to 50+ km. That breakthrough gave us the context and confidence to form a team.
We started as a team in 2022 and incorporated Teletactica in September 2023 after early demos and initial internal investment.
You’ve Watched Electronic Warfare (EW) Evolve in Real Time. What’s Changed From Day Zero of the Full-Scale Invasion to Today?
It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game. Both sides—comms systems and jammers—evolve every 3–6 months. In mid-2023, we realized our first iteration would be suppressed quickly due to architectural constraints, so we shut it down and rebuilt from scratch.
The current architecture has held up without full suppression for over a year, which we see as a meaningful milestone.
Early in the war, you saw lots of small, standalone jammers. Now there’s far more data fusion and coordination—reconnaissance data combining with complex, layered suppression.
That raises the bar for staying connected.
There Aren’t Many Companies in This Niche, Especially in Europe. Why Is the Talent Pool So Small?
True RF and military-grade communications expertise is scarce—and in many countries, details about jamming and countermeasures are classified.
Ukraine is somewhat unique: there’s been a push to share enough operational insight with domestic companies to accelerate the ecosystem.
We started with a few specialists, some luck involved in finding them, and have grown our capabilities through field learning and close collaboration with EW units.
What’s the State of Cross-Border Ukraine-Europe Collaboration?
It’s improving, but slower than it should be. We’ve spent a lot of time on panels and public outreach emphasizing knowledge-sharing, but programs move on peacetime timelines. For example, some grant cycles run a year; here, tactics and tech can shift every three months. The paradigm needs to adjust.
We’re addressing this by structuring for export and dual-use manufacturing. We have a parent company in Estonia, a subsidiary in Latvia, and we’re active in industry groups.
The goal is smooth scaling into NATO markets while Ukraine’s procurement environment remains volatile.
What Have Been the Three Most Important Factors in Teletactica’s Success So Far?
- Battle-proven reliability. In defense, only real performance matters.
- Sustainable engineering culture. We’re R&D-heavy, with over 60 employees, and we invest in developing talent and sustaining innovation beyond the founders.
- Export compliance and dual-use manufacturing. To be competitive and stable, we have to operate cleanly across borders, which means rigorous compliance and production pathways outside Ukraine.
Do You Think Ukraine’s Defense-Tech Ecosystem Will Evolve From Short-Term Fixes to Longer-Horizon R&D?
We’re already seeing more joint projects and local R&D hubs from international firms. The key is knowledge-sharing and structures that allow 1–2-year “moonshots,” not just day-to-day firefighting.
We’re developing more complex systems, like SDRs (software-defined radios), and building some of that in the EU to ensure planning and resourcing over longer cycles.
What Are the Biggest Near-Term Risks to Your Business, and How Do You De-Risk Them?
- Contract timing. We’re a components company, so our success is tied to UAV manufacturers. They can win or lose contracts for many reasons. We mitigate that by partnering with well-run firms that have strong internal R&D and manufacturing cultures.
- Supply-chain disruptions. We decentralize suppliers and constantly test alternatives. In Ukraine, a single missile can wipe out a warehouse—everyone needs a Plan B.
- Export controls. Processes have become more formalized, which helps, but they still require precise planning and extra resources. We parallelize R&D and manufacturing in Estonia to keep programs moving.
Fundraising in Defense Tech IS Not for the Faint-Hearted. What Did That Look Like for You?
Painful but doable. Defense tech isn’t a bubble; it’s a new industrial revolution, and Ukraine is a proving ground.
We started with founder and customer funding—from the army. Then, grants in 2023, and angel checks, often for CAPEX to finish R&D phases. We completed an accelerator with MITS Capital, raised pre-seed funding, and recently closed a ~$1.5M early-seed round from MITS Capital and Green Flag Ventures.
Both have deep ties to Ukraine, which matters: they understand the conditions we build under and why that’s an advantage, not a liability.
If You Were Starting Today: What Would You Do Differently?
Move faster from prototypes to standardized, integration-ready systems for both defense and industrial markets. Our early “over-prototyping” was understandable; we were mapping a huge unknown space, but in hindsight, we’d accelerate productization sooner.
The difference now is infrastructure: we have secure test ranges and proper channels for field testing. That lets us iterate quickly without compromising security or compliance.
Are There Any Things People Still Misunderstand About Communications on the Frontline?
How fragile “everyday” connectivity really is under attack. Civilians feel it when phones drop out during night strikes. On the front, that fragility can be the difference between success and loss.
Explaining the true complexity behind a “stable link” to non-technical audiences is still hard.
But that’s the essence of our work — engineering the unseen: making sure vital links hold when everything around them is trying to break them.
