How Ukraine’s defence tech industry is rewriting the rules of modern warfare

After three and a half years of total war, Ukraine’s defence tech industry has become the world’s most active battlefield laboratory. 

It’s producing and deploying defence technologies faster, cheaper, and more creatively than any military in modern history. 

With $43 billion secured for its defence industry this year, over one million drones produced in 2024 alone, and exports of battlefield-hardened robotics waiting on a green light, Ukraine is now the startup nation of war.

This isn’t about holding the line anymore. What’s happening in Ukraine is something much bigger and more unsettling: the entire architecture of how nations fight wars is being rewritten in real time. 

From NATO procurement to battlefield doctrine, from drone warfare to electronic combat, the next decade of military strategy will be shaped in the garages, trenches, and factories of Ukraine.

Can a war-torn nation become the world’s arms factory?

In 2025, Ukraine formally declared its intent to become self-sufficient in arms manufacturing. 

No longer content to rely on dwindling foreign stockpiles, the Zelenskiy administration secured $43 billion in domestic and allied funding to build out Ukraine’s defence industrial base. That’s more than many NATO countries spend annually on total defence.