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Field notes from inside Ukrainian defense

Practical breakdowns on how companies get funded, export-ready and scaled, and how foreign capital reads, enters and backs it. From the operator on the ground.

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A Practical Guide to Investing in Ukraine's Defense Market

A practical look at what's actually investable in Ukraine's defense sector right now — the market size, the protections already in place, and the six things worth checking before you commit capital.

1 September 20279 min read
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TestingFeatured

Technical Due Diligence for Defense Hardware

A specification states an outcome and leaves out the conditions behind it. Three methods put a number on the claim before a round closes: a desk read of the bill of materials, a measured test against a defined figure, and a readiness level assessed against the environment the system will work in. What each settles, what each costs in time, and where an engagement record has to stand in for a test.

Artur Fedorenko
Artur Fedorenko
Founder & CEO, Wiseboard
31 August 202611 min read
Due diligenceFor investorsValidationTestingTRL
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Adopt

The Adoption Evaluation Brief

Money is not what allied forces report as the constraint on an unmanned capability, and instruction has stopped being scarce: Ukraine trains bilaterally, NATO and Ukraine run a joint centre in Poland, and the European Defence Agency delivered its first EU-wide strike and interception course in June 2026. What decides whether a programme can be scoped now sits with the receiving force. Seventeen scored checks across the six things a supplier cannot settle for you.

24 August 20269 min read
AdoptCapability transferTraining
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Validate

The Testing-Readiness Brief

Makers who stall on the way to an evaluation in Ukraine almost never stall on the hardware. They stall on two permissions granted by two different states — their own government's temporary-export instrument and a Ukrainian temporary-import conclusion — plus a handful of things that were never written down: which build is being tested, what the test is supposed to prove, and who may see it. Fifteen scored checks across those preconditions.

23 August 20269 min read
ValidateTestingExport control
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Scale

PR for a Defense Company: Where Publicity Meets Export Control

Export-control law defines “technical data” broadly enough that ordinary PR content — a control-panel screenshot, a technical webinar, a partner manual — can legally fall under the same category the state regulates for hardware exports. Here's where the line runs, what publishes freely, and how to check a draft before it ships.

14 August 20268 min read
ScalePRCommunications
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Market entry

The Ukraine Defense Market-Entry Checklist

Most foreign suppliers who fail to enter Ukraine's defense market do not fail on the product. They fail on a perimeter of six things checked before anyone looks at the equipment: who owns you, what you are selling, whether your own government will let it leave, whether the buyer-side paperwork exists, whether the money funding the contract can legally reach you, and how much of a local footprint the deal needs. An eighteen-point scored self-assessment across that perimeter.

3 August 202610 min read
Market entryProcurementExport control
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For investors

Tax for Foreign Investors in a Ukrainian Defense Deal

How a foreign investment into a Ukrainian defense company is taxed — the 18% corporate rate, withholding on what leaves, the Diia City and Defence City regimes, capital controls and exit tax. A structuring view, as of August 2026.

1 August 202610 min read
TaxFor investorsDefence City
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For investors

The Due-Diligence Checklist for a Ukrainian Defense Company

The investor-side list for diligencing a Ukrainian defense company — six domains, a war-risk register and the two red lines that end a deal, as an interactive checklist you can score and download.

1 August 20268 min read
Due diligenceFor investorsBeneficial ownership
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Testing

Combat Validation as a Due-Diligence Input

Almost every Ukrainian defense company describes its product as combat-proven, and in the ordinary sense almost all of them are right — the thing has been to the front. That sentence still tells a diligence team close to nothing on its own. This is how to grade the claim: the five levels of evidence that can sit behind it, the questions that move a claim between them, why validation decays in months rather than years, and why a system validated in Ukraine is still not qualified for your own procurement.

1 August 202611 min read
TestingDue diligenceValidation
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Localization

The Rheinmetall Model: What Localizing in Ukraine Looks Like

Rheinmetall announced four factories in Ukraine; one is running. That gap — not the headline — is the instructive part. The venture as public record: the 51% split with Ukraine’s state defence holding, the maintenance centre that opened in eight months, the artillery plant that has not broken ground and the Lynx contract — set against the 15-to-18-month plants Rheinmetall builds elsewhere in Europe, and what the sequence tells a manufacturer planning its own footprint.

31 July 202611 min read
LocalizationRheinmetallJoint venture
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Adopt

How to Build a Drone Force: Ukraine's Playbook

Most allied forces now have a budget line for unmanned systems and a mandate to spend it. Very few have a drone force. The gap is not money and it is rarely equipment — it is instructors who have flown against a peer enemy, a training system matched to the platforms the force will actually field, and doctrine for organising, tasking and sustaining units whose equipment turns over in months. The playbook for closing it: what has to be acquired, in what order, and what can only be transferred by people who have done it under fire.

30 July 202611 min read
AdoptDrone forceCapability transfer
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Acquire

How to Acquire a Ukrainian Defense Company

The asset in a Ukrainian defense acquisition is a production line already cleared to export, a product iterated against a peer adversary, and a team that has done both under pressure — and all three are held together by permissions that attach to one specific legal entity. Buy the plant without the entity and the export position goes with it. The buy-side route at process level: what you are paying for, share deal versus asset deal, the approvals that gate closing, how price is set where domestic pricing is regulated, and what has to survive the first year.

30 July 202612 min read
AcquireM&AUkraine
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Localization

Defence City, Explained: Ukraine's Regime for Defense Manufacturers

Defence City has no territory. It is a legal status a Ukrainian company acquires by passing one revenue test — at least 75% of income from defence goods — and holding it through an annual audited compliance report. In force since October 2025, open to applicants since January 2026 and running to 2036, it had 45 residents and over UAH 93.5bn of qualified income by July 2026. The reference version: the test, the fourteen disqualifiers, what the tax and export benefits actually cover, how the process runs, and what the regime means for a foreign manufacturer, buyer or investor.

30 July 202612 min read
LocalizationDefence CityUkraine
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Dual-useNewsletter

Ukraine's $35B Dual-Use Shift: How IT Companies Become Defense-Tech

What a warehouse IoT dashboard and a drone targeting system have in common, and why that overlap might already include your company.

30 July 20267 min read
NewsletterDual-useDefense-tech
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Localization

JV or Contract Manufacturing in Ukraine: Which Structure Fits

Contract manufacturing buys output; a joint venture buys a share of the operation — and every other difference follows from that. This is the comparison across control, intellectual property, speed, capital and exit, grounded in what the market has actually done: Rheinmetall’s 51% venture with the state-owned Ukrainian Defense Industry at one end, KNDS’s wholly-owned subsidiary at the other. It closes on the contract-first, equity-second sequence most programmes end up running.

30 July 202611 min read
LocalizationJoint ventureContract manufacturing
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Testing

How to Test Your Defense System in Ukraine

A field guide to proving a foreign defense system in Ukraine, end to end: what to lock down before anything ships, the two export-control approvals that set your timeline, how a proving range and the front each earn their place, and how to turn the result into a paper a board or an allied buyer will act on. Teams underestimate the licensing every time — and that is what moves the date.

30 July 202614 min read
TestingT&EExport control
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Procurement

The First Foreign-Buy Case: Procuring at Scale from Ukraine

On 1 July 2026 Ukraine issued its first export permit for finished combat drones, and the buyer was the United States Department of War. F-Drones shipped 2,000 F10 strike quadcopters under the Drone Dominance programme, five months after placing sixth of 25 vendors at the Gauntlet I trials. This is that transaction read as a procurement case — the requirement, the route, the clearances, the calendar, and the parts of it a second buyer can copy.

29 July 202612 min read
ProcurementCase studyExport mechanism
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Procurement

Buy Ukrainian Drones: the Drone Deal Off-Take, Explained

The Drone Deal is what puts a partner state on Ukraine's eligible-buyer list and lets a purchase skip the Interdepartmental Commission. Nine states had signed as of 8 July 2026, each for ten years, with more than 20 preparing to. What the framework covers, what is actually exportable — 413 systems approved for service in 2026, FPV capacity above 8 million a year, 100,000 interceptors built in the past year — and how an off-take gets contracted from a first call to delivery.

29 July 202612 min read
ProcurementDrone DealUAV
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Procurement

How to Procure Ukrainian Defense-Tech: the 2026 Export Mechanism

On 1 July 2026 Ukraine opened a written channel for allied states to buy the systems its industry proved in a peer war. Resolution No. 875 names the permitting authority, puts a 30-day ceiling on the decision, sets a UAH 15 million floor on finished goods and makes the Foreign Ministry's partner list the gate. This is the buyer's path through it, in order: define the requirement, find and vet the supplier, run the permit, and write a contract that survives a domestic-priority claim.

29 July 202613 min read
ProcurementExport mechanismDrone Deal
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Testing

What Battlefield Testing Proves

A range proves repeatability against a specification; a front proves survival against an opponent who is changing the specification. RUSI recorded one precision munition losing most of its practical effect in three years without changing at all — the environment adapted around it. This is what each testing environment establishes, what combat use does not prove, and the six things that turn a deployment into evidence a procurement board can defend.

28 July 202612 min read
TestingT&ECombat validation
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Market entry

How a Foreign Supplier Gets Paid in Ukraine

Materiel destined for Ukraine is funded from five distinct pools — the state budget, the Danish model, allied purchases of Western equipment, EU industrial instruments and the private supply chain — and each has its own rule about who is eligible to receive the money. Two of the largest are written specifically for manufacturers producing in Ukraine. This is the map of which pool can pay your company, and what has to be true in the contract before it does.

28 July 202612 min read
Market entryProcurementDanish model
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Market entry

NATO Codification for a Foreign Supplier: NCAGE and NSN

Codification is the free administrative step that turns one Ukrainian contract into an item every NATO ally can identify, stock and reorder by number. It runs on two codes — NCAGE for your company, an NSN for each item. This is what they are, how a non-Ukrainian company obtains them, and where they sit on the path from a first Ukrainian order to alliance-wide procurement.

30 July 20269 min read
Market entryNATO codificationNCAGE
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Adopt

What NATO Militaries Are Learning From Ukraine's Drone War

The alliance built the institutions to learn from this war — JATEC in Bydgoszcz, a counter-drone experimentation campaign fed by Ukrainian threat data, and exercises where Ukrainian crews fly as the opposing force. At Hedgehog 25 and Aurora 26 those crews dismantled allied formations in hours. What the results show is a doctrine cycle measured in years observing an adaptation cycle measured in weeks, and what closes that gap is transfer rather than observation.

28 July 202610 min read
AdoptNATODrone warfare
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Market entry

How to Enter Ukraine's Defense Market: The Operator's Guide

A $35B, combat-proven industry opened to foreign capital and export in 2026 — but the door has a specific shape. The seven steps a foreign defense company actually takes to sell, get procured and localize in Ukraine: front-line demand, the DPA single window, NATO codification, export control, and the Defence City tax regime.

Updated 1 September 202613 min read
Market entryProcurementDPA
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Testing

Independent T&E vs Brave1 “Test in Ukraine”: Which Do You Need?

Ukraine has two ways to prove a defense system against the real threat: Brave1's state “Test in Ukraine” platform and an independent test & evaluation you commission. They answer different questions — who the validation is for, and who owns the result. Here is how to choose.

27 July 20268 min read
TestingT&EBrave1
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Market entry

Invest, Validate, Localize, Acquire, Adopt or Procure: The Six Ways Into Ukraine's Defense Market

There is no single way into Ukraine's defense market — there are six: invest, validate, localize, acquire, adopt or procure. Each is a different mandate with a different owner and destination. The fastest way to choose is to ask what you want to walk away owning.

27 July 20267 min read
Market entryUkraineDefense-tech
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Strategy

The Future of Ukraine's Defense Industry: Prepare Now

Ukraine’s defense industry grew on wartime domestic demand — and that demand will not hold. When the war’s active phase ends, home orders fall, product goes into surplus, and Ukrainian systems have to compete on the open market. The companies that come through it are the ones preparing now: for export, a move up the value chain, a clean corporate structure and customers abroad.

24 July 202613 min read
StrategyExportCapital
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Compliance

13 Legal Risks for a Defense-Tech Company: Product, Payment, Team

One unnoticed legal risk costs more than it looks — a blocked export, a frozen payment, a leaked technology, personal exposure for the director. Here are the 13 risk categories for defense-tech and dual-use manufacturers, prioritized STOP · SCALE · SUPPORT: the five that stop a business first, the triggers behind each, and a risk-check for your company. Also the map a foreign investor runs in due diligence.

23 July 202612 min read
Legal riskComplianceExport control
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For investors

Is Ukrainian Defense-Tech Investable? The Objections, Answered

Yes — but not for the reason the headlines give. The state already buys tens of billions from companies that took under $60M of private venture. Here are the five objections foreign capital raises — war, ownership and getting money out, governance, the exit, “too early” — plus the one nobody wants to answer: what if the war ends.

21 July 202612 min read
InvestabilityDefense-techWar-risk
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Capital

How to Value a Ukrainian Defense-Tech Company (2026)

What is your defense company worth? A transparent method: a base from sector and stage, revenue multiples (1.2–8×, depending on whether it's software or hardware) and the factors that move the number up and down — codification (+22%), clean IP (+18%), sanctions exposure (−45%). With two worked examples and a link to the calculator.

21 July 20269 min read
ValuationDefense-techRevenue multiples
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For investors

How to Invest in the Ukrainian Defense Industry: The Routes In

How to invest in Ukraine's combat-tested defense industry — who actually invests, the five routes in, and what a deal requires, from cross-border structure to the export path that carries the multiple. Ukraine built a ~$35B-a-year industry in four years while disclosed private venture stayed near $57M: the gap, and how foreign capital is now closing it.

Updated 25 July 202611 min read
Foreign investmentDefense-techVenture capital
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For investors

How Foreign Capital Legally and Securely Enters a Ukrainian Defense Deal

How the money actually and legally lands in a Ukrainian defense deal — the layer beneath the cross-border holding. The instrument it travels in (a priced round, a convertible or a SAFE), the registration exemption it closes under (Reg D, Reg S or an EU placement), the escrow that releases it, and the sanctions and foreign-investment screens that decide who is even allowed to wire. Something to take to counsel; it is not legal advice.

30 July 202610 min read
Foreign investmentDeal structuringSecurities
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For investors

Who Invests in Ukrainian Defense-Tech: The Funds on the Ground (2026)

Who invests in Ukrainian defense-tech in 2026 — the specialist funds (MITS Capital, Green Flag, Front Ventures, NUNC, Verne, and more), the €1B NATO Innovation Fund, the strategics buying capability, and the Brave1 platform underneath. A named, sourced landscape — plus the first two exits on the record.

Updated September 1, 20269 min read
Foreign investmentVenture capitalDefense-tech
Read
For investors

Is It Safe to Invest in Ukraine's Defense Industry? The War-Risk Question

The #1 objection, answered in full. The war is a real risk — but a separable and increasingly insurable one. How a deal isolates company risk from country risk, where the structure and production sit, the DFC/MIGA war-risk cover now on the market, and what a ceasefire actually does to the thesis.

26 July 202610 min read
War-riskForeign investmentPolitical-risk insurance
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For investors

How to Exit a Ukrainian Defense-Tech Investment: The M&A & IPO Map

How do you get out? The committee's last question, answered honestly. The first realized VC exit is now on the record (TAF Industries → Phantom Technology; Resist.UA fully exited), Swarmer opened the Nasdaq door, and strategic M&A is the credible route — plus what makes a company acquirable and how to structure the exit in from day one.

26 July 20269 min read
ExitM&AForeign investment
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For investors

How to Invest in Ukrainian Drone & UAV Makers

Drones are where most foreign capital enters Ukrainian defense-tech, and where the costliest mistake is treating the word as one asset class. The buy-side guide to the segment: the five sub-segments and how each prices, what the March 2026 comparables proved about liquidity, how to value an order book, and the five structural risks that break the thesis.

31 July 202611 min read
DronesUAVFor investors
Read
For investors

What Returns Can You Expect in Ukrainian Defense-Tech?

What a buy-side investor can actually make in Ukrainian defense-tech, quantified. The case rests on buying a proven supplier to a ~$35B state customer at seed prices, then widening the multiple through three levers — codification, export and consolidation. Inside are the 2026 comparables, and how the return models out under both continued war and a ceasefire.

26 July 20269 min read
ReturnsValuationForeign investment
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For investors

Ukrainian Defense-Tech Investment, by the Numbers (2026)

The reference sheet for Ukrainian defense-tech: demand (~$35B→$55B capacity), disclosed private capital (~$57.2M across 28 deals), entry tickets, state grants, investor de-risking and the first exits — every figure dated and sourced.

27 July 20267 min read
DataForeign investmentDefense-tech
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For investors

The Cross-Border Holding, Explained: Foreign HoldCo, Ukrainian OpCo

When foreign capital backs a Ukrainian defense company, it rarely buys the Ukrainian entity directly — it buys a holding company abroad that owns it. What a cross-border holding is, why defense deals use one, the choices it forces, and why a defense asset makes it harder.

27 July 20268 min read
Cross-border holdingDeal structuringForeign investment
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For investors

Ukraine vs Israel, the US & Europe: Where to Deploy Defense Capital

The four markets that absorb defense capital in 2026, read side by side: a ~$1.05T US budget at $30.5B marks, Europe's 5%-of-GDP pledge on a procurement clock, Israel's record $19.2B export machine already repriced, and Ukraine's ~$35B of capacity still priced at seed — plus what the Ukrainian discount is paying for.

27 July 202610 min read
ComparisonForeign investmentDefense-tech
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Export-ready

The New Defence-Tech Export: Fast-Track, Drone Deal & the 3 Filters That Decide It

On 1 July 2026 a fast-track appeared for exporting defence and dual-use goods. Here it is without the myths: what actually changed, who clears the three filters (WHO · WHERE · WHAT), what it costs (20%/30%), why applications are refused — and what to do now so you don’t lose the contract.

Updated 1 September 202615 min read
Export controlFast-trackDrone Deal
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