February 12th, just before 5am, tragedy struck as a Russian ballistic missile completely destroyed the Rig Expert administrative office in Ukraine. The nearby area suffered devastating damage, with one person killed and four others injured in a neighboring building. Despite the severity of the attack, all Rig Expert team members are safe—no one was in the office at the time of the strike.
GigaParts sat down to talk with Rig Expert representatives about that day, and how this will affect Rig Expert’s business in the coming days, weeks and months.
Experts say it was a ballistic missile with a warhead weighing 500 kg. The explosion occurred almost at ground level, causing the blast wave to destroy the office buildings along with their contents. What was not destroyed by the explosion was damaged by glass shards.
Rig Expert and their teams are still assessing the extent of the damage. However, since their production facilities have always been geographically dispersed, they expect that all company processes will be restored within two weeks and fully normalized by March.
More details from Rig Expert’s Kateryna Bystriakova:
You should know that we have air raids every night in Kyiv. This means that Russian drones or, a little less often, missiles are flying. You understand that people are morally tired of the 3-year full scale invasion and no longer have the strength to run away somewhere every night.
It was Wednesday, February 12.
The first air raid was at night with drones, then the second one started at 4.26 in the morning.
This time, they were ballistic missiles. In fact, you do not have time to run to a shelter or behind two walls.
Our CEO Ashot lives near to the office, usually he wakes up early and at about 5 a.m goes to the office.
He said it was 4.33, because he was already getting ready, when he heard a loud missile hit and immediately received a message on the phone from the office security system about smoke in the building.
It is also fixed by our equipment. It was found inside on the floor.
Ashot’s first thought was to assess the extent of damage.
He jumped into the car and was at the building in 3 minutes. Before the services arrived. There was a fire in the car parked next to the building from a missile that hit it. It went several meters deep into the asphalt. More likely it was Iskander with about 500 kg of explosives.
Windows and doors were blown out by the blast wave, the faсade and one wall were destroyed. The neighboring building cannot be restored. The entire quarter was damaged. But the worst thing is that the boiler house stoker died and 4 security guards were injured.
Then the firemen, police, and special services arrived. The building was cordoned off all day and there was no access.
The next day my team arrived to clear the rubble, save the products, equipment. Everything that survived. It seemed that everything was not so bad, but you can see that the destruction was greater than we expected. But we were lucky that there was no fire inside.
The guys set up flashlights and cleared the corridors. Despite the fact that the building’s structure was intact, when I got there, I couldn’t recognize where the rooms were. There were no partitions. The ceiling had collapsed.
Everything was covered in fine dust. It was hard to breathe.
We have a rule. When the air raid starts, go to a shelter. The trick with ballistics is that you only have 1 minute from the raid to the explosion.
Usually, our employees prefer to come to the office at 6 a.m. If this happened during the working day, it would be a tragedy.
The top managers immediately found a new place for the office. Our Ukrainian partners offered people and cars to transport what was saved. Many thanks to them!
For 2 days everyone worked very friendly and harmoniously. At the moment, the work is finished.
You may call it team building in Ukrainian style.
The administration, warehouse and development department were located in this building. Fortunately, production is located in another place. And it was not damaged. Unfortunately, we lost all the laboratory equipment. Each of our devices was tested in several stages.
Also, over the past 2 years, we have acquired quite a lot of new expensive equipment.
The plan was to increase production, as well as make new developments. For example, projects such as Shackmaster, antenna control systems, rotators, SDR-based transceivers - all at the stop. We had only 1-2 prototypes of developments. Now they are gone.
Well, everything can be recreated anew, but all this time and costs.
This event did not affect our ability to produce the products that we are already actively selling. It affected the stage of their control.
We have already informed our partners that we will be able to resume shipments in 1-2 weeks. So, there will be some delays. We will try to do it faster. Our сustomers and fans have nothing to fear. In Europe and America, our partners have the necessary stocks. Please contact Gigaparts, and buy RigExpert devices. You will have everything in time.
We continue to receive hundreds of emails of support from partners, our clients, and radio clubs. Some even offer financial assistance. Some guys wrote that they went and bought a new device as a sign of support. This is very nice. We are incredibly grateful! It means we are on the right track.
We work, accept orders, answer emails, and calls. For technical support questions customers as usual can contact support@rigexpert.com.
There will be no delays in repairs or customer service. Delays only in shipping. About 1 week.
They say the radio is outside politics. But we must influence and not allow Russian terrorism. Our business center was almost an empty building, it’s not a military facility. We need publicity about what happened. This is what each of you can do for us.
We need security. Ukraine needs security guarantees. Everything else will be, we can achieve everything ourselves.
If anyone has the opportunity to donate equipment we lost, or give us a good discount, we would be grateful. This will speed up the process of development, new projects.
Rig Expert Ukraine thanks you for your time and efforts!
About Rig Expert:
Rig Expert is a leading manufacturer of antenna and cable analyzers, known for its commitment to innovation and quality. Despite current challenges, the company remains dedicated to supporting the global amateur radio and communications community.
