Turning a Deaf Ear: Why Ukraine Isn’t Protecting Its Energy Grid

Source: Author’s Facebook page

The problem of the lack of centralized state procurement of domestically produced systems – the “Ukrainian sky shield” for the border, energy, and industry – lies not in technological capability. Its root lies in the crisis of public administration.

Where strategic planning, long contracts, guaranteed demand, and execution discipline are needed, we see manual mode, situational decisions, and constant postponing of key decisions “for later.”

This is especially dangerous because Muscovy has long been waging not only a frontal but also an economic war of attrition. Between March 22 and August 31, 2024, the UN recorded nine waves of large-scale coordinated attacks on the Ukrainian power industry. On April 11, 2024, the Trypilska TPP was completely destroyed – the largest in the Kyiv region. On March 22, 2024, the Zmiivska TPP, one of the country’s largest power plants, was destroyed. In June 2024, DTEK estimated that about 90% of its available generation was destroyed or damaged. In February 2025, a drone pierced the arch of the New Safe Confinement at the Chornobyl NPP, and the IAEA later confirmed the serious nature of the damage. This is a systematic defeat of the enemy’s rear, energy, production, and infrastructure.

The consequences for the economy are obvious. According to a February survey by the IER, 41% of enterprises cited power, water, and heat supply disruptions as one of the key military obstacles; 52% temporarily stopped work due to outages; and the average loss of working hours in January 2026 was 9%. In your previous text, this effect was already described at the micro level: office rent +25%, warehouses +20%, logistics +70%, an actual doubling of electricity costs under the generator model, zero or negative margins, and the consumption of working capital. When strikes on the energy sector are imposed on such an operational background, production moves from development mode to survival mode.

In this reality, the implementation of automated acoustic early warning systems should be considered not as an additional option, but as a basic engineering design standard. After 2024–2025, no critical infrastructure facility should be designed or operated without a deployed passive acoustic loop. This is not about replacing air defense, but about a cheaper, more massive early-detection layer that closes the gaps before the fire response. It would be incorrect to explain every missed strike solely by the lack of acoustic monitoring. But it is equally incorrect to continue to pretend that this gap is secondary.

Anatomy of the “Ear of the Country”

To fully grasp the scale of managerial sabotage, the reader must understand how this architecture is physically constructed – a large passive “ear of the country.” These are not randomly placed microphones. This is a deeply layered, three-level acoustic circuit, united by a single neural network of situational awareness.

The first line is the border and frontline: A continuous chain of sensors is installed along the contact line and border, working as an invisible “acoustic stretch.” As soon as an enemy UAV crosses the airspace, the system instantly takes its azimuth.

The second frontier is territorial: Sensors are deployed along radar “blind zones” – over riverbeds, ravines, and forest areas, which are usually used for Shaheda routes. The drone is literally transferred from one node to another: a dynamic triangulation system calculates its speed and forms an accurate movement vector on a nationwide electronic map.

The third frontier is the object frontier: A dense ring of microphone arrays around each thermal power plant, nuclear power plant, logistics hub, or defense plant.

Thanks to such a network, the most important thing happens: 5-10 minutes before the drone approaches a critical target, mobile fire groups and short-range air defenses already receive a perfectly accurate angle and direction on their tablets. They are not looking for a sound in the night sky blindly – they are already waiting for the target with their barrels pointed. This network emits nothing, so it is completely invisible to enemy electronic warfare. This is the same sovereign Ukrainian shield, which we are, today, artificially and strictly forbidden to build from the inside.

This is where the FENEK case becomes illustrative: according to the manufacturer’s official description, it is a networked acoustic detection system that captures both aerial targets – UAVs and helicopters – and ground threats – transport, explosions, loud talking, illegal logging. The product line separately highlights FENEK Air Defense for aerial targets and FENEK Border Defense for border integrity control and unauthorized crossings. The system operates in continuous mode, determines the target’s azimuth and elevation angles, identifies target parameters, forms a situational awareness map, and transmits data to response forces. The website directly states that the solution can be built at the state and regional levels, to protect public space and individual critical infrastructure facilities; energy, gas supply, water supply, transport, and logistics are among the risk sectors.

In applied terms, this means a very wide range of uses. Border strip. Power plants. Substations. Generation facilities. Large industrial sites. Logistics hubs. Water and gas infrastructure. Administrative quarters. Military-industrial complex enterprises. Civil defense facilities. All places where early detection, precise threat direction, and transmission of target designation to facility security, mobile fire groups, TRs, or short-range air defense systems are required.

It is also important that FENEK is not an early prototype. On the Brave Inventors platform, it is marked as TRL 8, that is, the technology is complete and qualified, with available design documentation and preparation for serial production. The basic characteristics are also given in the open access: PoE power supply, up to 25 W of consumption, IP65 protection, 24/7 operation, and 180-second readiness. The declared sensor detection ranges are: FPV – up to 100 m, aircraft-type UAVs – up to 500 m, Shahed – up to 2500 m, Mi-8 helicopter – up to 3000 m, armored vehicles – up to 1000 m, cars – up to 500 m. And at the same time, on the same page, the development is marked as “Looking for customers”. For a country that has been under attack by Shahed/Geran for years, this sounds like a verdict not on technology but on the architecture of state demand. According to Military and Octava, in the simplest configuration, a single device on a mast is enough for a mobile fire group, which determines the azimuth with an accuracy of up to 2 degrees. For accurate positioning, three or more nodes are required. The system supports dynamic and pulse triangulation, meaning it works with both a constant source of noise and a one-time event, such as an explosion or a shot. The FENEK team also became one of the winners of the Ministry of Defense hackathon “Vehicles’ Offensive 2.0” in the sensors and surveillance equipment category, and the winners were promised support and implementation at the time.

All of this leads to a key conclusion: the bottleneck today is not on the Ukrainian producers’ side. It is on the state’s side.

According to the Ministry of Defense, in 2025, external financing for the Ukrainian defense industry totaled $6.1 billion. At the same time, Reuters reported in 2024 that the sector’s production potential reached $18–20 billion per year, but the state could finance only about a third of it. In April 2026, Reuters already estimated that the available financing covers only 60% of domestic weapons production. When the system’s political and budgetary energy goes mainly to the external circuit, the internal demand for Ukrainian solutions is relegated to the background. This is how defense subjectivity is lost.

The private sector has been warning about this for a long time. At the end of 2024, the Technological Forces of Ukraine reported that 75% of private arms manufacturers had not even held negotiations with state customers regarding 2025 contracts, and only 19% had transitional contracts. Only on December 26, 2025, did the government finally introduce long-term contracts for the full production cycle under the “Weapons of Victory” program. By that time, the sector had already been living for years with a short horizon and without foreseeable serial demand. For an investor, this is a bad market. For an engineering team, it means a regime of constant cash starvation, and for the state, it means a delayed underproduction of its own defense capabilities.

In early 2025, the conflict over the Defense Procurement Agency reached a point where G7 diplomats separately called on Ukraine to quickly resolve the situation and avoid undermining the continuity of defense procurement. Reuters also reported on the NABU investigation into possible abuse of power in the context of this conflict. In parallel, the Financial Times published a story about $770 million in advances paid to foreign suppliers for weapons that were never delivered. For a Ukrainian manufacturer and investor, the signal here is clear: even when the domestic market is underfunded, the management system does not demonstrate sufficient predictability and discipline in allocating large defense resources.

The most dangerous thing is not even that FENEK is looking for a customer, but that the state still does not appear to be a customer who has recognized the class need for such systems. In a country where low-altitude UAVs penetrate deep into the territory and strike energy, logistics, production, and facilities, incurring high downtime costs, the lack of a centralized program for building a passive acoustic circuit appears to be a systemic management gap. Under such conditions, mobile fire groups and facility security too often work late, and the state is forced to spend many times more on expensive interception measures, when accurate early targeting could change the defense economy.

Conclusion

In my opinion, after 2024–2026, the implementation of automated acoustic early warning systems based on FENEK-class solutions should not be an option, but a strict standard of engineering design. No critical infrastructure facility should be operated without a deployed passive acoustic circuit. So, Ukrainian technology exists. Its applied value is obvious. The military scenario of its use has long been confirmed by the very logic of Russian strikes. The level of readiness is sufficient for a series. The gap does not lie in R&D. It lies in the lack of systemic state demand.

Every uninstalled FENEK-type system for me is a deliberate blow to our infrastructure. Until we recognize that the state apparatus has been captured by agents who act in the interests of the enemy and their own corrupt profits, we will continue to lose our energy, our economy, and our blood. A normal warring country builds its “heavenly shield.” Our internal “occupation authorities” are doing everything to ensure that we never have this shield.

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