South Korean defense company Newtype Industries has terminated its cooperation with Ukrainian military units on a project involving artificial intelligence software for artillery. The company developed the Barbara system and tested it in Ukraine, The Diplomat reports.
Newtype Industries CEO Seungwon Cho was instructed to halt all work with the Ukrainian units in mid-October. He was not given an official reason, but he links the decision to the diplomatic conflict between the two countries.
“The main reason for the termination of the cooperation is the diplomatic conflict between South Korea and Ukraine,” Cho said.Barbara is designed to facilitate the transmission of information and the designation of targets by artillery units. A servicemember can dictate a report into a smartphone, and the system can convert it into structured text for the officer controlling the fire. The software can also flag potentially incorrect coordinates and targets located in civilian areas. The decision on whether to open fire remains with a human.
Newtype Industries established contact with two Ukrainian units through the Canadian consulting company Reaktion Group. According to Cho, the military evaluated the system’s capabilities positively, and the tests were supposed to be completed by the end of 2026.
After mid-October, however, communication with the Ukrainian partners was cut off. The planned tests, the exchange of feedback from servicemembers, and discussions about the possible deployment of the technology were canceled or postponed indefinitely.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment, clarifying that it does not comment on private initiatives. So far, there is no official confirmation that the termination of the project was directly caused by the diplomatic dispute.
According to The Diplomat, such projects rely primarily on personal contacts with military personnel, as there are no established support mechanisms in Ukraine for South Korean startups. “In practice, almost all the partnerships and the local network of contacts we had built ceased to function,” Cho said.
How the Dispute Between Kyiv and Seoul Began
Diplomatic tensions escalated in September after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the UN General Assembly that Kyiv had handed over to South Korea two North Korean prisoners of war captured during the fighting in Kursk Region.
The South Korean side said that Ukraine had violated a confidentiality agreement. Kyiv denied that such an agreement had existed, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha explained the discrepancy as stemming from different interpretations of the stages during which the information was supposed to be kept confidential.
On October 8, Seoul recalled its ambassador from Kyiv, and at the end of October it also withdrew eight diplomats. Newtype Industries does not currently plan to resume its work in Ukraine and would consider changing its decision only after relations between the two countries are normalized.
Sources: unian.net, thediplomat.com