Facing manpower shortages, overwhelming odds, and uneven international assistance, Ukraine is searching for a strategic advantage against Russia. This search is leading them to abandoned warehouses and factory basements, where a network of laboratories and workshops are leveraging innovation.

An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to develop technologies that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and protect its own soldiers and civilians.

Defense startups across Ukraine, estimated at around 250, are building these weapons at secret locations that often resemble rural car repair shops.

At one such startup run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko, an unmanned ground vehicle called the Odyssey can be assembled in four days in a shed. Its most important feature is its affordability: $35,000, about 10% of the cost of an imported model.

Denysenko requested that The Associated Press not disclose the location to protect the infrastructure and personnel.

The site is divided into small rooms for welding and body work. This includes creating fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green, and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, commercially available cameras, and thermal sensors.

The military is evaluating dozens of new unmanned air, ground, and marine vehicles developed by these low-key startups, whose production methods are distinct from those of large Western defense companies.

A fourth branch of the military, the Unmanned Systems Forces, was established in May, joining the army, navy, and air force.

Engineers draw inspiration from articles in defense magazines and online videos to create cost-effective platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later.

“We are fighting a huge country, and they don’t have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives,” said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. “War is mathematics.”

One of their drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it moved forward in a cornfield in northern Ukraine last month.

The 1,750-pound prototype, resembling a small, turretless tank with tracks, can travel up to 18.5 miles on a single charge from a battery the size of a small beer cooler.

The prototype serves as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be adapted to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or deploy mine-clearing charges.

“Squads of robots … will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots,” a government fundraising page stated after the launch of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. “The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, encourages citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. His goal is for Ukrainians to produce a million flying machines annually.

“There will be more of them soon,” the fundraising page said. “Many more.”

Denysenko’s company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would enhance a soldier’s strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier’s equipment and even assist them up inclines. “We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia’s) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people,” Fedorov wrote in an online post.

Ukraine has been endowed with AI, and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is raising concerns among experts. They warn that the proliferation of low-cost drones will be a significant issue.

Technology leaders at the United Nations and the Vatican are worried that the use of drones and AI in weapons could lower the threshold for killing and dramatically escalate conflicts.

Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern shared by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk, and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind.

“Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation,” said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “Their autonomy is also only likely to increase.”