Ukraine’s Drone War Has Already Rewritten NATO’s Future

Innovation wins wars. That was the message hammered home at the Kyiv Security Forum Defense Technology Forum. Now the West needs to integrate not just Ukrainian experience, but Ukrainians themselves. Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied UAS (Photo: Kyiv Security Forum) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google At the Kyiv Security Forum, Ukrainian defense entrepreneurs, an Azov commander and a NATO general delivered the same blunt warning that the future war Europe fears is already being fought in Ukraine, and the West is still moving too slowly to learn from it. The “Defence Technology Forum; Innovation Wins Wars,” within the Kyiv Security Forum was a dispatch from the future, delivered by the people who had already lived there and returned with the reality of hard news. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . The panel presentation brought together Ukrainian battlefield commanders, drone manufacturers, defense-tech founders and NATO representatives to discuss how Ukraine’s war has transformed drones, artificial intelligence, procurement, battlefield feedback and industrial cooperation. Its participants included Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder and chief executive of The Fourth Law; Oleksandr Berezhnyi, managing director of Quantum-Systems Ukraine; Col. Mykyta “Raz-Dva” Nadtochii, deputy commander of the 1st Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine; Bohdan Sas, co-founder of Buntar Aerospace; Oleksandr Yakovenko, founder of TAF Industries; Major General Constantin-Adrian Ciolponea, SACT Representative in Europe; and Kateryna Mykhalko, managing director of New Age Defence, who moderated the discussion. Other Topics of Interest Ukraine Implements Mandatory Two-Month Rotation for Frontline Troops The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced a new policy limiting frontline deployment to two months to preserve soldier safety and operational effectiveness. Drones, AI and advanced systems are “changing the rules of war in real time,” while Ukraine is scaling solutions under fire through cooperation between government and industry. What emerged through the discussion was a diagnosis of Western unreadiness. Ukraine’s defense innovators argued that the decisive advantage in modern war is not any single platform, drone airframe, software package, or even battlefield data. It is speed. The speed at which one develops the ability to test, fail, adapt, manufacture and redeploy technology within weeks, sometimes days. The West, they warned, still procures for wars it imagines. Ukraine is building for the future war that now already exists. Mykhalko opened the discussion by asking what real synergy between Ukraine and Europe’s defense industries should look like. Should Europe import Ukrainian experience, copy Ukrainian production lines, or build joint systems with Ukrainian firms? The answer, from almost every speaker, was that copying Ukraine’s products without absorbing Ukraine’s wartime process would fail. Berezhnyi, who leads Quantum-Systems Ukraine, began with the term “the feedback loop,” which has become almost unavoidable in discussions of Ukrainian military technology. The ability to move battlefield lessons directly into production, he said, is “one of the most important things” Ukraine has developed. But he cautioned that European partners often misunderstand what that means. It is not only a matter of learning which drones work. It is learning how to operate an entire company, supply chain and changing production system while under constant threat. “Being constantly under threat of losing your production facility, being constantly under threat of losing R&D capacities,” Berezhnyi said, forces Ukrainian companies to think daily not only about resilience but about “continuity of processes.” European and American partners, he argued, focus heavily on technology transfer. They also need to understand how manufacturing and business administration function under wartime pressure. Quantum-Systems’ joint venture under Germany’s Build with Ukraine program, he said, showed that Ukrainian firms could scale at a pace that surprised German stakeholders. It was not only a company success story. It was, in his words, “a blueprint” for partners who want to make their own production more resilient. Berezhnyi described resilience from the perspective of production, Yaroslav Azhnyuk described it from the perspective of Ukraine’s broader tech culture. Before the full-scale invasion, Azhnyuk was best known as the founder of Petcube, the consumer-tech company that built pet cameras for owners to watch and feed their dogs remotely. Now, as founder and CEO of The Fourth Law, he leads a company focused on drone AI and thermal sensing. He captured the transformation with dark humor: “We basically went from making cameras that fling treats to dogs to making cameras that fling explosives to the occupiers. More or less the same line of business.” Interceptor drone. (Photo: The4th Law) Ukraine’s advantage is not simply engineering talent, battlefield data or ingenuity. “Ukraine, in fact, has one and only one major strategic advantage on the global stage,” Azhnyuk said. “That advantage is the fact that we’ve been in war with Russia for the last 12 years.” It is an advantage no other country wants. “We’re happy to share, by the way,” he joked, “if any takers, please raise a hand.” But this grim strategic asset has produced constant iteration between inventors, engineers, civilians, volunteers and military units that no peacetime militaries can replicate. Azhnyuk, who spent six years in Silicon Valley from 2014 to 2020, said Ukraine is now applying parts of the Silicon Valley playbook to defense technology. But he warned against the fashionable theory that the current defense-tech boom will soon spill back into civilian innovation. “I would warn against such theorizing,” he said. “I think we will have to focus on defense for a while, for at least the next decade. The world is clearly rearming.” Simply buying or copying Ukrainian drones will not be enough. “If you just take a drone interceptor from Ukraine today, bring it to Germany or Canada and start building the same interceptors,” he warned, “half a year from now that interceptor will be obsolete… and you will not even know why.” What matters is not just the product but the institutional DNA. Part of that is how to gather feedback, process it, implement it and iterate quickly. Azhnyuk proposed a new procurement model for countries not yet at war: defense as an insurance subscription. Governments should sign long-term contracts for mixed drone fleets and not from just one designer/manufacturer. ISR drones, interceptors, FPVs, deep-strike systems need to include regular hardware and software updates, training, support and, crucially, a wartime commitment by producers to scale rapidly when conflict comes. He called it “Netflix for drones”: a monthly subscription that gives states a live, evolving capability rather than a warehouse of soon-obsolete hardware. Then came the military voice on the panel. Col. Mykyta “Raz-Dva” Nadtochii, deputy commander of the 1st Corps “Azov” of the National Guard of Ukraine, spoke not as a theorist of tech innovation but with the weight of someone whose soldiers live or die by whether that innovation works. Asked about recent Azov footage showing Ukrainian drones flying over occupied Donetsk and disrupting Russian logistics, he refused to disclose operational details. “For me,” he said, “the point when we can share our experience comes when it becomes a system.” At this stage, he called it “a well-worked-out element of testing in a combat situation.” Strike UAV pilots are targeting Russian logistics deep in the operational rear. Drone units maintain constant surveillance and fire control over all supply routes around Donetsk. Zuhres, Andriivka, Starobesheve, Horlivka, Lysychansk, and the Donetsk Ring Road – sustained UAV activity along these routes highlights the ineffectiveness of Russian airspace control. Until recently, Russian forces operated there with a sense of impunity. That is no longer the case. Any military target moving along roads around Donetsk will be destroyed. There is no safe rear area for the occupiers. There is nowhere to hide and no way to protect themselves. Combat operations over the temporarily occupied capital of Donetsk region continue. In response to the 1st Corps of NGU “Azov” drones, Russians have deployed air defense systems and mobile fire teams. However, instead of protecting their rear, the occupiers themselves have become targets for strikes. In this video – unsuccessful attempts to shoot down Azov drones at night, as well as successful hits on Russian personnel, weapons, and military equipment… Strikes on Russian targets in Donetsk and its outskirts continue 24/7. Nadtochii aimed a blunt warning to Ukrainian manufacturers and foreign partners alike. “While we treat this as business, we will keep losing,” he said. He acknowledged that this was not a popular thought. But from the perspective of a military commander, the purpose of feedback is not commercial improvement; it is enemy destruction. Companies must take military feedback, optimize quickly and make it possible “for us to destroy the enemy.” When the whole country understands that the first goal is not profit but victory, he said, “then we will succeed.” Col. Mykyta “Raz-Dva” Nadtochii, deputy commander of the 1st Corps “Azov” of the National Guard of Ukraine. (Photo: Kyiv Security Forum) Nadtochii was not hostile to industry. On the contrary, he praised manufacturers who no longer speak primarily about money or super-profits. “They want to destroy the enemy just like we, the military,” he said. The right relationship is a symbiosis of soldiers and civilian producers pursuing the same operational goal. But he also warned foreign partners not to extract only Ukraine’s military experience. They should also study Ukraine’s civilian sector, including the mistakes and scams Ukrainian units have had to filter out. Too often, he said, units were offered expensive systems marketed as exceptional, only to discover that better equipment could be bought more cheaply elsewhere. His message to Europe was stripped of diplomatic softness. Russia, he said, will not stop at Ukraine. “What Russia is doing with Ukraine today is like a test bed,” he warned, “to see what is effective today so that they can use the most effective methods of warfare to attack other countries.” European manufacturers should not think only about selling products at the highest possible price. “You’re not just doing this for us, for Ukraine,” he said. “You’re doing this for yourself as well, for other European nations.” Nadtochii repeatedly returned to a point often omitted in discussions about unmanned systems. Drones still depend on people. “People are the most important thing,” he said, “because drones are operated by humans. Without humans, without people, without soldiers, you can’t win the war. You simply won’t fly.” Asked what NATO and the European Union should learn from Ukraine, he answered to work with people, replicate quickly, remove bureaucracy and adapt faster. “We simply cannot afford to wait for decisions to go through all the bureaucratic stages of approval,” he said. Maj. Gen. Constantin-Adrian Ciolponea, SACT (Supreme Allied Commander Transformation) Representative in Europe, approached the same problem from a NATO perspective. He began by expressing admiration for Ukrainians, saying he was “humbled in front of real heroes and people who are producing real tools of this resistance of Ukraine.” Then he offered, “The drone revolution has started, and there is no way back.” Maj. Gen. Constantin-Adrian Ciolponea, NATO SACT Representative in Europe. (Photo: Kyiv Security Forum) Ciolponea said the reverse side of the drone revolution is the counter-drone revolution. “Without counter-UAS technology on all domains of air, land, sea, you have zero chances to survive the drone-saturated environment and EW saturated environment.” Drones have made the battlefield transparent. Live video, thermal signatures, electronic signatures and sensor networks compress the kill chain to less than minutes at the tactical level and perhaps 10 to 20 minutes at the operational level. “In wartime, if you have speed, you might survive,” he said. “If you don’t have speed, the others might be first to strike you.” The general described Ukraine as a laboratory of modern war, but in a respectful rather than exploitative sense. Ukrainians, he said, had demonstrated “local and temporary superiority” with drones against a larger opponent. They had also shown that unmanned systems are no longer limited to reconnaissance and precision strike. Drone missions now include resupply, communications relay, direct fire support, maritime systems, ground vehicles and underwater platforms. “We are facing a robotic wave in about 5 to 10 years,” he said, predicting a mixed force of manned and unmanned systems. Ciolponea also explained why Western defense industries struggle to absorb these lessons. The drone market is crowded, fast-moving and poorly standardized. NATO needs frameworks to assess what works and what does not. Ukraine has Brave1, an ecosystem of testing, points and reviews. “This ecosystem is not replicated in the West,” he said. Western militaries often wait for the market to produce the latest technology, then begin acquisition processes that can take years. Ukraine, by contrast, builds solutions around battlefield problems. Oleksandr Yakovenko, founder of TAF Industries, brought the discussion back from doctrine to production. He had returned to Kyiv only hours earlier from the front, where he had been testing products and gathering feedback from military units. TAF, he said, produces more than 80,000 units a month and is one of the largest FPV manufacturers in Ukraine, though its portfolio now includes UGVs, interceptors and deep-strike drones. The difference between Ukraine and its European partners, Yakovenko said, is the innovation cycle. “We developed our product. We manufacture our product. I go out to test it. I get feedback,” he explained. After the panel, he said, he would go directly back to the manufacturing center to pass on that feedback, and within a month the product would be updated for the Ukrainian army. “This is something our foreign partners cannot do, with all respect,” he said. “We have direct online feedback from the front lines every day.” Western systems that cost $250,000 and carry 20 kilograms (44 lbs.) for 200 kilometers (124 miles) may be matched or outperformed by Ukrainian systems costing around $20,000, carrying 25 kilograms (55 lbs.) for 300 kilometers (186 miles), assembled from consumer components. That, he argued, is the difference between Ukrainian military technology and Western military technology. But Ukraine has weaknesses too. Limited access to deep technologies, including those restricted by ITAR and other regimes is problematic and slows success. The ideal model, he said, is cooperation between European prime contractors and Ukrainian startups. Ukraine brings innovation, scaling, battlefield iteration and adaptation; Europe brings existing deep technology, capital and industrial depth. “You cannot make war with means that were manufactured five years ago,” Yakovenko said. “You cannot make war with something that was manufactured a year ago; particularly drones or any sort of unmanned systems.” The innovation cycle, he said, is now less than three weeks to a month. In asymmetric war, cost per kill is critical. A $500 drone can destroy an expensive system. And any European counter-FPV solution developed over two years may be circumvented by Ukrainians in a month. “Adaptability,” he said, “is one of the key components of hybrid asymmetric war.” His conclusion challenged a common assumption in European debates about buying Ukrainian weapons. “I do not believe in exports of Ukrainian weapon systems,” he said. Not because Ukrainian companies lack capacity, but because Ukrainian weapons without Ukrainian soldiers and tactics “will simply not work.” The issue is integration, training and operational concept. A Ukrainian interceptor delivered to a foreign army may take local forces a year to learn how to use properly. “That’s why,” he said, “we need to be talking about integration and interaction.” UAS Photo: (Kyiv Security Forum) Bohdan Sas, co-founder of Buntar Aerospace, sharpened the warning about extraction and exploitation. He had spent two weeks travelling across the United States and Europe to attract more capacity for building in Ukraine for the Ukrainian army. His company builds reconnaissance drones, and he described a recent mission in which, in five minutes, Ukrainian systems destroyed more Russian-Iranian Shahed attack drones on the ground than the entire US military had destroyed in the Middle East. Demand from the Ukrainian army, he said, is high. But during his travels, Sas said, he had felt something “very strange,” “very unjust” and “very stupid.” Too many companies and governments want to come to Ukraine, learn combat tactics or identify hardware that works, then go back abroad and copy it without Ukraine. This is unjust to the soldiers whose sacrifices produced the knowledge, he argued. It is also foolish, because without Ukraine the questions of lead time, battlefield relevance and adaptation cannot be answered. His alternative was a shift from a product approach to a solution-based approach. Ukraine and Europe should create integrated solutions in which Ukrainian technology, battlefield know-how and manufacturing talent are matched with European resources. Training must be continuous, because the battlefield changes within one or two months. Equipment must be modular, so components such as radio links can be replaced as new threats emerge. “Only together,” Sas said, can we give “good protection for our continent.” UAS (Photo: Kyiv Security Forum) Mykhalko asked each speaker for one message to European partners. The answers they presented were immediate emergency instructions. Azhnyuk was the most direct: “Get prepared for actual war very fast, if you don’t want to have one.” He said the probability of Russia attacking the Baltic states and China attacking Taiwan within the next two and a half years was “incredibly high,” while Europe remains “completely unprepared.” He mocked the complacency of European capitals that celebrate incremental progress: “You used to walk 20 meters [66 feet] a day and now you walk 200 meters [660 feet] a day and you’re bragging for 10x-ing your results. What I’m telling you is that six months ahead, you have a marathon to run.” His practical advice was stark: train FPV pilots at scale, localize supply chains, prepare for simultaneous Chinese and American supply-chain disruptions, and start “actually doing things, not just talking about doing things.” Berezhnyi returned to industrial sovereignty. “Sovereignty on components is the key,” he said. Enemies will try to disrupt procurement, and Europe must invest now in components that are available off the shelf. Without that, there will be no resilience or continuity. Yakovenko’s message was simpler: “We need resource.” Ukraine, he said, protects Europe “by our blood,” and the war is expensive. Ukrainian companies and soldiers have battle-proven experience, but they paid a high price for it. That experience can make European forces stronger, but only through close collaboration. Ciolponea’s message to Ukrainian industry was also practical. Joint production with NATO countries would accelerate market penetration, open access to European funding and help integrate Ukrainian products with inter-operative NATO standards. He called for open architecture in Ukrainian systems and clearer separation between stable components and volatile elements such as software that must be constantly updated. He floated an idea that should be taken seriously in every NATO capital. Establish a UAV and FPV training center in Ukraine for NATO forces, just as NATO countries train Ukrainian soldiers in Europe. Such a center, he said, would allow Ukraine to transmit its experience, knowledge and vision of drone warfare directly into NATO education and training. Col. Nadtochii concluded with, “Let’s learn to be adaptive and flexible… This will give you a chance to buy time, and time matters.” But he reiterated his warning against tech-fetishism. “Don’t think that drones are a panacea,” he said. “Without people, nothing will work out. So work with your people.” He described a recent case in which fog prevented drone observation and strikes against an enemy column. In that moment, technology did not decide the outcome. People did. His closing sentence grounded the whole presentation: “Keep on supporting Ukraine, because one way or another Ukraine is the shield of Europe. By our sweat and blood, we defend our motherland first of all, and we make it possible for European societies to buy time; and give you a chance to learn on our losses.” Maj. Gen. Constantin-Adrian Ciolponea, SACT Representative in Europe; Col. Mykyta “Raz-Dva” Nadtochii, deputy commander of the 1st Corps Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine; Kateryna Mykhalko, managing director of New Age Defence (Photo: Kyiv Security Forum) Ukraine is not asking Europe to admire its innovation. It is warning Europe to absorb it before the war expands. The drone revolution is not coming. It is here. The battlefield is transparent, the kill chain is compressed, software ages in weeks, supply chains are targets, and the difference between survival and defeat is the speed with which whole societies can learn. Europe has resources, capital, factories and deep technologies. Ukraine has the living knowledge of a country fighting a technologically adaptive imperial war. The strategic choice is whether to combine them now, while Ukraine is still holding the line, or wait until the same lessons must be learned elsewhere at an even higher price. Julian Knysh is an Australian-Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist based in Kyiv.