FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Unlike Western militaries, where the procurement cycle can take years, in Ukraine it takes only three or four months to make a new technology available.
In Ukraine, every new weapon is born on the eastern border. Drones, software, and defensive weapons systems find their first rudimentary laboratories along the front lines. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian military-industrial complex was highly centralized; the government managed almost everything, supported by a few large defense contractors. Today, Kyiv is one of the leading centers for technological innovation in the sector, a pinnacle of excellence for aerial, naval, and land-based drones. But it is only the center of a constellation of small startups scattered across the country, companies that are born month after month and contribute to the development of modern military technology.
It is a decentralized model for production, testing, and distribution. This shift was made possible, above all, by the intuition behind the creation of a dedicated defense supply chain platform, Brave1, which we discussed last month.
That is why the front line serves as a laboratory for innovation: every day, it provides local businesses with concrete evidence of the need to innovate, to find new ideas and to develop new tools. This is an important lesson, a lesson that should be a wake-up call for everyone: innovation in defense systems, evolution and breaking away from old and outdated methods is a necessity not only for Ukraine, but for all of Europe and the democratic world. Except that the West does not seem to want to learn.
Deborah Fairlamb, an American investor based in Kiev and co-founder of Green Flag Ventures — a fund specializing in technology startups with military applications — explained this well in an interview with the industry magazine The War Zone . Fairlamb closely observes a rapidly evolving reality, with all the daily transformations of modern warfare. She believes that the United States, NATO and their allies are missing a crucial opportunity: they can learn from Ukraine not only tactically, but also strategically, industrially and organizationally. In the meantime, she is trying to lead by example. Her Green Flag invests in companies developing anti-drone, security and communications technologies.
Unlike Western armies, where the procurement cycle can take years, in Ukraine it takes only three or four months to make a new technology available. Many units even receive their own budgets to purchase independently from a list of authorized suppliers. A radical change, unimaginable within NATO.
The results are clear. Production of FPV (first-person view) drones has taken off, leveraging 3D printing, readily available materials, and direct collaboration with the military. The processes are efficient and circular—build, test, adapt, test again. A nationwide assembly line, driven by necessity, not bureaucracy.
Electronic warfare is the dominant operational environment in Ukraine. The proliferation of signal jammers has made it increasingly easy to disable traditional GPS-equipped drones, as communications are constantly disrupted. That’s why Ukrainian developers have been testing and mass-producing drones with fiber-optic cables. And that’s not all. Thanks to advanced software like Swarmer, developed by one of the companies backed by Green Flag Ventures, a single operator can control entire coordinated swarms of drones even in weak signal environments. It’s an operational paradigm that the West, stuck in a still-individualized vision of drones, is trying to adopt.
One of the most shocking aspects concerns the industrial capacity for scaling and adaptation. Fairlamb explains how the West's potential adversaries - Russia and China above all - are capable of converting entire civilian supply chains into military production in a very short time. "If tomorrow the Kremlin orders a washing machine factory to produce FPV drones, that factory will do it," he says. And that is what happened, with the sudden shift to a war economy. It is an authoritarian and centralized, but industrially efficient model.
In contrast, Western democracies remain bogged down in slow processes, constrained by bureaucracy, legislative approvals, and annual budget cycles. Even initiatives like the Pentagon’s Replicator program—designed to accelerate the adoption of autonomous weapons, that is, systems equipped with artificial intelligence to make autonomous decisions about when and how to attack a target—end up operating within the confines of the old system. “The problem is not a lack of talent or intent,” says Fairlamb, “but the fact that we’re still working with old tools.”
The defense industry has historically been synonymous with high costs and, consequently, high investments. Ukraine has also managed to improve the balance between costs and benefits. Ukrainian FPV drones cost between five hundred and one thousand dollars, even with sophisticated accessories such as night vision goggles. Fixed-wing models cost around ten thousand dollars, and the most sophisticated, large, and high-performance ones can reach thirty thousand dollars. The equation is simple: building thousands of effective, low-cost drones is now more profitable than investing in sophisticated systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
In this way, Kiev has overturned the traditional Western approach, oriented towards large, high-performance weapons systems that are produced and deployed slowly. In a war of attrition and attrition, quantity matters at least as much as quality. And Ukraine - like Russia - has understood this.
The numbers help put everything into perspective. In 2022, Fairlamb explains to The War Zone, it took Ukraine about six months, maybe seven, to adapt or replace a technology that had become ineffective. In 2023, five months. Today, in 2025, we’re talking about changes every month, a month and a half at most. These times are incompatible with any existing Western military structure. “And it’s not just about software updates. The changes include hardware, tactics, and engagement models. The adaptation is continuous,” says Fairlamb.
Ukrainian innovation doesn’t stop in the sky. Ground-based drones are becoming essential for evacuating the wounded and transporting logistics into contested areas. One example is the UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) – Termit, manufactured by Tencore, which has proven highly effective even in hostile environments, offering protection against drones and attacks from above. Ukraine has also revolutionized naval warfare, with naval drones like the Sea Baby. Although Russia is rapidly catching up here.
"The speed at which technology is evolving here is terrifying. And the West is simply not moving fast enough," Fairlamb concludes, warning. "The fact that the West is not paying close attention to what is happening here is deeply alarming. The speed at which this technology is evolving, and the fact that the United States, Europe and NATO are so slow, is worrying." Because the war of the future will not be just about stealth aircraft and aircraft carriers; it will be fought by swarms of drones, by systems equipped with distributed intelligence, driven by low-cost mass production. Time to adapt is running out. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Linkiesta"
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