US should formally partner with Ukraine to build cutting-edge defense technologies 

Ukraine is fast becoming one of the most important defense innovation environments in the democratic world and an emerging pillar of the allied industrial base that is now helping defend against Iran.  

This has become increasingly evident over the past month. Kyiv has now deployed its specialists to five Gulf states to help in countering Iranian drones. Additionally, a delegation of Ukrainian defense entrepreneurs with the Brave1 initiative visited six U.S. cities over the past two weeks, displaying their technologies with an impressive roadshow. Brave1 is challenging the tired Washington paradigm that Ukraine is simply a victim of aggression that begs for U.S. aid.  

The success of Ukraine-linked defense technologies highlights a shift that many U.S. officials, including in the Pentagon, still underappreciate: Ukraine should no longer be seen only as a battlefield, but as an important source of strategic capability for the West. Technologies forged and validated in Ukraine are investable, exportable and strategically relevant, not just wartime improvisations.

Now is the time for U.S. policymakers to formally adopt a “qualitive military edge” legal model toward Ukraine. That means moving from a narrow donor-recipient mindset toward a partnership built around co-development, co-production, testing, procurement pathways, and industrial integration. The U.S. can partner with Ukraine on autonomous technologies of the future much as it has with Israel to build its vaunted three-tiered missile defense system.

Ukraine is unique because over the last four years of full-scale Russian aggression, the country has developed an unusually fast loop between frontline need, engineering adaptation, and deployment. In most peacetime countries, procurement moves slowly, distances engineers from operators, and rewards paperwork over performance.

Ukraine has been forced into the opposite direction. Battlefield products are quickly judged by how effectively they solve real life-or-death operational problems. That pressure has accelerated in drone production, but also in software, electronic warfare, communications, robotics, navigation, and mission systems. This is why Ukraine is on track to build a staggering 7 million drones in 2026 and is rapidly gaining global dominance in this space.  

It’s also why Brave1 and the wider Ukrainian defense-tech ecosystem should matter to U.S. policymakers. They show that Ukraine’s innovation capacity is becoming more organized, more scalable, and more visible to international partners. What outside observers sometimes describe as a collection of wartime startups is in fact a real and maturing industrial and technological base.  

Ukraine also now has something few countries can replicate: a uniquely relevant modern warfare dataset. The combination of real operations, rapid iteration, and practical deployment creates learning conditions that are difficult to simulate elsewhere. In an era when autonomy, targeting, and machine-assisted decision-making will shape military competition, data and testing environments matter as much as hardware. Ukraine has become one of the places where that future is being built under real pressure. 

Ukraine’s defense innovation efforts are also reshaping global geopolitics, particularly amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The deployment of Ukrainian specialists to the region shows that Ukrainian know-how is becoming globally relevant. The expertise Ukrainian companies and frontline operators gained in defending Ukrainian skies is now being widely viewed as a practical necessity for the future of warfare. 

That point should resonate more widely in Washington. For years, the default framework for Ukraine advocates in Washington has been straightforward: Send aid, transfer weapons, sustain Ukraine’s resistance. But this also allowed Ukraine detractors to paint the country as a burden to U.S. taxpayers and a strategic liability. Policymakers can now validly argue that Ukraine can be an equal defense partner to the U.S. — one with whom it can build cutting-edge technologies, as it has with Israel in the last several decades.  

Such a shift would benefit both sides. For Ukraine, it would help convert wartime innovation into long-term economic and industrial strength. For the U.S. and its allies and partners, it would strengthen the democratic world’s defense base with technologies and expertise shaped by the most demanding battlefield conditions in Europe since World War II. It would also help diversify and harden supply chains at a moment when resilience matters more than ever. 

Ukraine is becoming a proving ground for military innovation, a builder of combat-tested systems, and a future pillar of allied industrial capacity. Washington should update how it sees Ukraine accordingly.  

The right long-term policy is to help integrate Ukraine into the production, data and supply-chain architecture that will shape transatlantic security tomorrow — not just to help Ukraine defend itself today. Ukraine is far more than a country at war. 

Volodymyr Berezhniy is a Ukraine-born entrepreneur focused on critical materials, strategic industries, and trusted international networks. Igor Khrestin is senior advisor for global policy at the George W. Bush Institute and visiting fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University.

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