Ukraine reveals its key advantage on the global arms market
Photo: FPV drones (Getty Images)
The main competitive advantage of Ukraine’s defense industry on the global market is not the scale of production, but the speed of technology development and unique combat experience, according to an RBC-Ukraine article.
Advantages of Ukraine’s defense industry
The competitive advantage of Ukraine’s defense industry lies not in the scale of production, as there are larger players in the world. The main advantages are speed and combat experience, which no one else has.
“This is not a temporary wartime boom. This is the birth of a new industry with competitive advantages that no other country has: combat testing of technologies, a short development cycle (weeks instead of years), a direct feedback loop between the front line and production,” Oksana Furchuk assured.
European partners also recognize this advantage. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, commenting on the launch of the EU-Ukraine Drone Deal in July 2026, emphasized that Europe does not have the combat experience and expertise that Ukraine has earned.
From combat experience to technological products
This advantage is already being transformed into high-value-added products. This is not simply about assembling drones, but about software and technological platforms.
An example is Swarmer, the first Ukrainian DefenseTech company to go public on Nasdaq in March 2026.
Its platform allows one operator to control a swarm of 25 drones based on artificial intelligence trained on data from more than 100,000 combat missions.
The company’s model involves licensing the technology to drone manufacturers around the world. This approach provides a much higher margin than simply producing hardware.
A similar path is being followed by naval drones. Magura drones from UForce – a company that brought together nine Ukrainian defense manufacturers and became the country’s first defense “unicorn,” valued at more than $1 billion – have hit more than 12 Russian ships in the Black Sea. At the same time, Ukrainian interceptor drones are already shooting down up to 70% of Russian attack drones in the skies over Kyiv.
“A drone consists of a battery, a magnet, a board, a chip, and explosives. Almost everything in our drones is imported. When someone says, ‘Our product is 90% localized,’ they are taking advantage of the fact that people do not understand what a drone is made of,” explained Oleksandr Borniakov, chairman of the supervisory board of the Brave1 cluster.
As previously reported, Britain and France agreed to provide Ukraine with a license for its own production of Storm Shadow/SCALP. Unlike anti-missiles for air defense, Ukraine already has the technological base to assemble Storm Shadow and SCALP.
