Ukrainian and Russian forces have both shown remarkable ability for battlefield supply and rapid innovation of drone technology – through necessity and survival they have both become true leaders in modern warfare techniques.
The conflict has already yielded significant advancement of uncrewed aerial systems, munitions delivery via glide systems, explosive first-person view (FPV) drones and fibre-optic cable-enabled targeting.
These lessons can be transferred from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and their domestic manufacturers to Australia, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko.
“What we are now seeing is if you don’t have nuclear weapons, you’re vulnerable. What’s the fate of your countries here in the region in the Pacific? I mean, they have no chance,” Myroshnychenko says during a recent podcast with Defence Connect at the Australian Space Summit & Exhibition 2025 in Sydney.
“You cannot defend yourself if America abandons Europe. If America abandons you, who’s going to protect you? You don’t have any sovereign defence capabilities, but we can help you.
“Ukraine wants to help Australia to build your sovereign defence capabilities based on our experience, based on the lessons learned from the war.
“We are very thankful to the Australian government for support … but you know, three years later, now we can help you because [of] what we have.
“There’s the battle experience there [and] the industry we know that Ukraine has their Brave1 manufacturing hub which can deliver equipment to units and things like that.
“War is a mother of innovation … We take the technology from you, you helping us, we send it to the battlefield, we see what works, we see what doesn’t work, and then we improve things which work.
War is a mother of innovation … We take the technology from you, you helping us, we send it to the battlefield, we see what works, we see what doesn’t work, and then we improve things which work.
– Ambassador of Ukraine to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko
“The innovation cycle is now six to eight weeks. In all these, autonomous systems is six, eight weeks. It changes very quickly. And now there are only two countries in the world who have the capabilities which are the best in the world. It is Russia and Ukraine.”
In a straight out-of-the-box example, the Ukrainian government previously launched the first of its kind “Brave1 Market” online platform earlier this year to bridge the gap between military units and defence industry products.
The secured website allows Ukrainian military units to directly contact manufacturers and purchase drones, robots of various types, AI-based modules, electronic warfare and electronic warfare devices, as well as other components that will be useful to the military in carrying out their missions.
Brave1 has announced it will integrate combat points (e-points) earned by military units for verified enemy target destruction to be made usable for future marketplace purchases.
Defence companies are required to pass compliance checks before being able to sell defence technology and equipment on the market. The marketplace also features reviews for defence industry products for quality control purposes.
In addition, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has presented a new drone procurement model for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The new model is designed to establish a transparent, competitive and predictable domestic market to ensure stable and timely delivery of military equipment to front-line troops.
Key procurement mechanisms introduced included direct contracts for unique drones, framework agreements enabling competitive procurement of FPV drones, mandatory verification of suppliers (affiliation, production capacity and finance) and use of a DOT-Chain Defence digital marketplace where military units independently select the equipment they require.
US defence expert Erik Prince has spoken about the value of innovation and speed of acquisition being undertaken in the Ukraine–Russia war during a recent Shawn Ryan Show podcast published on 17 June.
Prince, a former US Navy SEAL soldier and founder of private military company Blackwater, has significant ties to the US industrial and political base as a vocal advocate for privatised military operations and deregulation.
“I would argue the explosion of drone technology has been so pervasive in air, ground and even maritime lessons learned from the Ukraine war that the real ninja move would be to push procurement decisions down to a destroyer squadron level or to the brigade level if you’re a combatant commander,” Prince says in comments advocating to “democratise the defence industry supply chain”.
“What we have now is a super hierarchical talk about a program of record that is taking Washington forever for them to decide and instead if you give it to the brigade commander or combatant commander to say, ‘Here’s money, we’re entrusting these 10,000 or 50,000 American lives to your responsibility. Oh, by the way, now you can buy their stuff that they’re going to use.’
“The 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii is probably not going to go appear on the same battlefield that the First Armoured Division is from Texas. Fine, let them buy different stuff.
“Yes, it will cause permutations of hell for resupply but the half-life of this kind of innovation is so much faster … You can buy it cheaper if you buy it at a lower level faster versus these programs of record which add so much cost and so much nonsense.
“The innovation speed in Ukraine is a guy gets an idea because they’re getting their ass kicked on the battlefield, he comes up with a prototype in the garage, tests it in the battlespace over the next two weeks [to see] if it works and they get a contract. That is the shortest compression of flash-to-bang in warfare today.
“[The USA] we’re a thousand times that long on the best day now and 10,000 times the cost. It’s controversial, but it’s necessary because the current paradigm is that we’re absolutely destined to fail if we get into a conventional conflict with China right now, we will suffer calamitous levels of casualties.
“[We see] the salami slicing that you’ve seen them (People’s Republic of China) do with the South China Sea. [They’re] building islands where there were no islands, moving boundaries now with a, with an oil rig just off of Korea and maybe Indonesia, those waters are next.
“The amount of air incursions where they fly Chinese PLA air force aircraft into Taiwanese airspace … That’s my frustration with INDOPACOM (US Indo-Pacific Command) or the Taiwanese leadership.
“Be innovative, plack off an IED (improvised explosive device) in front of that Chinese squadron of aircraft, not shoot it down, but there’s a way you could build effectively an airborne IED and put a cloud of grit up in front of those engines so that every one of those Chinese fighters has to be overhauled and replaced by the time I make it home.
“You can really up the cost of their nonsense if you’re innovative. But if you depend on Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop and Boeing, you’re screwed and you’re going to pay a hundred times as much and not have the effectiveness.”
