On the condition of anonymity, the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced the collapse of «two specialized IT units and the threat to DELTA and other related projects. This was written by Hromadske The information was confirmed by the intelligence community InformNapalmand the deputy Mariana Bezuhla.
According to the military, two specialized units, recruited from experienced IT companies, were created at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The units were tasked with developing systems for situational awareness and intelligence. Many of the military also had combat experience and were aware of the real problems. So far, the developed systems and related to them as DELTA is used by «all the structures that exist in our country» and «more than three hundred connected units».
Almost immediately after the change of leadership of the Armed Forces in early 2024, a ban was issued use of DELTAintegrated with the systems developed by these units. However, the decision was canceled after complaints from the Minister of Defense and the military to Ukraine’s partners abroad. But instead, the actual disbandment of the development units began.
It all started with inspections by many government agencies, the SBU and others. The results of the inspections were not reported to the military, but they claimed a «positive» outcome. However, even before the inspections were completed, 150 people from one of the units were transferred to one of the brigades. The military say that the transfer was unsystematic:
«A person who had 5 years of experience in the SSO received an order to be transferred to a diesel engineer; a person who did not have a license had to drive an infantry fighting vehicle. Just pure randomness».
Later, the soldiers were told that there was a mistake and the order would not be executed. They found themselves in «suspended» status for four months, two of which they received their previous salary, and then only 1.5-2 thousand UAH. The second order already provided for transfers to different units, not to the same one. When the inspections were completed, another order came — to disband. The transfer continued to be delayed.
The second IT unit was also going to be disbanded, but the decision was changed to downsizing. The soldiers who had been assigned to these two specialized units from other units returned to their previous places of service.
«People have worked for 8-9 months on super-sensitive intelligence projects. They know the architecture, the data sources, where we get it from, how it all works. If this person is taken prisoner, it basically negates all the work we have done. It could have very dire consequences for everyone… It took us three months to convince them to send these people back to us again.
While the story of the military transfer was going on, the projects they had developed were mothballed. According to the authors, the systems cannot «exist somewhere in the air» and require constant maintenance. The Ministry of Defense is ready to provide cloud infrastructure for these systems, while donors are currently covering cloud hosting. Other organizations that are part of the Ukrainian Defense Forces are ready to take on the specialists and the project, but the Armed Forces do not agree to this.
In the current situation, military IT specialists continue to support critical requests from projects. However, requests to connect more units to the systems are not accepted due to the lack of capacity to serve them. The military say they have avoided publicizing the problem until recently because of the criticality of information about it to the enemy.
International intelligence community InformNapalm confirmed published information. It is argued that the described situation with projects and IT specialists is not an exaggeration.
«Indeed, after the resignation of General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (which was actually pushed by Mariana Bezuhla), processes of sabotage, if not degradation of the system of innovation and IT development began. We are personally acquainted with some IT professionals who worked in these disbanded units and can state that the situation described in the article is real, not pulled out of thin air. Unfortunately».
So, the situation seems serious, and the military says that further delay could lead to the systems being shut down. Hromadske has contacted the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Defense Ministry for comment.
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