What happens on the battlefields of Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. As the Spanish Civil War was a laboratory for the Second World War, so the current war in Ukraine prefigures technologies to be used in the next one. The US and its allies – Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, the Baltic States and Poland, among others – should be taking note.
I recently attended a conference in Kyiv hosted by Brave1, an accelerator platform for the Ukrainian defense tech sector sponsored by the government, military, business, and academia. General David Petraeus said at the conference that he was optimistic about Ukrainian industry’s future: “Given the extraordinary development of Ukraine’s defense industries over the past several years, especially in unmanned air, ground, and maritime systems, Ukraine will emerge from the war – assuming an enduring ceasefire – as a key military industrial location in Europe.”
International attendees included mainly Europeans and Americans with a few from South Korea and Japan. There was an exhibit hall with at least 50 companies demonstrating cutting-edge technologies. Most of these companies were not in the defense space three years ago, and many have gone through two, three, or four iterations of their technologies within the last 24 months. This sort of innovation and adaptation is unheard in peace-time United States where the Pentagon goes through a 10-year procurement cycle, which often ensures that “yesterday’s technologies are purchased for tomorrow’s wars.”
Some interesting albeit unsourced statistics were heard from the stage.
Ukraine’s tech sector comprises 5,000 private companies, 300,000 employees, and about 5 percent of the GDP. About 200 companies in Ukraine research and develop artificial intelligence.
In Ukraine’s defense tech sector, there are 1,200 companies. Several in the sector said less than $100 million has been invested in the defense sector to date— a shockingly small number considering the impact the defense tech sector has had on the war.
A dramatic expansion of drone production in Ukraine: from 300,000 drones in 2023 to 1.6 million drones in 2024, with an estimated 4.6 million drones in 2025, of which Ukraine will use 2 million in 2025.
Ukraine’s drones are working to be “China free”. China restricted its export of long-range drones to Ukraine in 2023, then restricted the export of even drone components to Ukraine in 2024; further restrictions are anticipated in 2025. In response, if Ukraine wants to continue using drones, it has no choice but to China-proof its supply chain for drones.
Undersea drones in Ukraine have enabled a strategic victory. Undersea drones costing hundreds of thousands of dollars have sank at least two dozen large Russia naval vessels each worth hundreds of millions of dollars each. Russia’s entire Black Sea fleet has had to flee to the eastern part of the Black Sea becoming a useless asset in this war for Russia, allowing for Ukrainian grain to flow out through the Black Sea.
There are significant efforts being made to develop counter drone technologies. One strategy is the use of “drone vs. drone” drone swarms that target incoming aircraft in a bee-like wave, with another approach using targeted lasers. There are enormous challenges behind countering drones and Ukraine is focused on this issue.
Many of the technologies discussed in Kyiv require a person to staff each individual drone and robot. But advances in automation using artificial intelligence and other technologies can reduce the number of people controlling drones and robots, and there is the concept of moving from “man in the loop” to “man on the loop.” Another series of challenges Ukraine is working on include advances in robots for various military and civilian tasks, and alternatives to GPS for navigation systems. (I heard from a reliable source that several thousand tractors automatically driven by GPS recently went off course around the world at the same time because of a sunspot interference in GPS navigation.)
One of the near-future issues for Ukraine’s defense sector is how and under what circumstances should it export its drones and other technologies? The Ukrainian people will have a hard time understanding why drones are being exported when there is a war going on. At the same time, if Ukraine makes more than 4 million drones in 2025 and only expects to use 2 million of them in 2025, what should happen to the surplus?
Partnering with Ukraine’s defense tech sector is a promising business and security opportunity for the United States and its allies. By some estimates, Taiwan is going to need tens of millions of drones to defend itself from a land invasion or a sea-based embargo by China. US companies are already finding ways to “field test” their technologies in partnership with Ukraine.
As with Ukraine’s critical minerals, its defense tech sector will be valued in the billions of dollars in the not-too-distant future. A strategic partnership with Ukraine on defense tech, as with critical minerals, would make the United States “safer, more prosperous, and more secure.”
