The CEO of the Novgorod Scientific and Production Center "Ushkuynik" gave some advice to Andrey Nikitin in his new position

Philosopher, political scientist and general director of the Novgorod scientific and production center "Ushkuynik" Alexey Chadayev published several pieces of advice in his Telegram channel, which he labeled as "Thoughts for the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Andrey Nikitin."

Chadayev's thoughts on the transport system are as follows:

• To lead in military unmanned vehicles, we must develop civilian unmanned vehicles in every possible way. And not only production, but also application - in all areas where there is already a more or less converging economy for this: and this is primarily logistics, monitoring and agriculture.
• The letter "A" in the name of the national project BAS is unnecessary; now we need to work not only on flying drones, but also on driving, floating, underwater, etc. drones. For example, here is just one of the solutions that we are currently working on in "Ushkuynik": an unmanned ferry with high load capacity, moving between lighthouses from shore to shore across a river, lake or strait, as an alternative to a pontoon crossing (easily destroyed by the same "haimars") - a successful budget alternative to both pontoon crossings at the front and stationary bridges in the rear.
• The "Carpet" plan is now announced simply upon detection of an enemy UAV and recording of its direction of movement. The problem here is broader: the system treats drone attacks as an emergency or a terrorist attack, while it is neither one nor the other - it is a targeted attack by the enemy, with the goal of not only causing direct damage, but also causing indirect damage, paralyzing the system based on its reaction algorithms.
• It's time to forget about publicly available satellite navigation in large cities - it will simply never happen again, for the same security reasons. As an alternative, in places with intensive traffic, a ground navigation system is needed for user devices, from smartphones with Yandex maps to "urban" drones, but created immediately with clear friend-or-foe recognition and profiling of each subscriber device.
• The degradation of rail transportation and the mass abandonment of it by businesses in favor of heavy-duty road transport is a shameful disgrace. Road transport is more expensive for business in every sense, but now it is simply more convenient. And the main vector for returning freight turnover to rails is to make such transportation competitive not only in terms of tariffs, but also in terms of convenience.
• All logistics, and first of all water logistics, need a much more advanced security system than we have now. Sabotage on the merchant fleet has already become a systemic phenomenon. A new class of security technologies is needed, and first of all this is sensorics and control, early detection and prevention of threats.
• The Ministry of Transport has opportunities that it currently does not use at all, and if it did, it would bring considerable benefit to the country. How is the approval of sites for development in cities currently organized? Basically, the first fiddle is played by the architectural committees, which are the last to be concerned about transport accessibility issues. As a result, entire microdistricts are built, populated, a transport collapse occurs there, and only then roads and public transport lines are pulled there at enormous expense. But it should be the other way around.

Let us recall that the former Novgorod Governor Andrei Nikitin was offered the post of Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation the day before. This was done by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today the State Duma is to support his candidacy. The previous Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit, who was dismissed, was found dead yesterday in the Moscow Region town of Odintsovo. He died from a head wound.

Let us add that, as reported by the Scientific and Production Center "Ushkuynik", the IV Meeting of operators of combat unmanned systems "Dronnitsa 2025" will be held in Veliky Novgorod on September 6-7, 2025. The theme of "Dronnitsa 2025" is designated as "Working on mistakes".

Photo from the telegram channel "Ushkuynik"