Reference

Defense-capital glossary

The working language of getting a Ukrainian defense company funded, export-ready and combat-validated — plain-English definitions of the terms investors, primes and founders actually use.

Capital & investment

For investors →Capital →

Due diligence: The verification an investor runs before committing — company, financials, counterparties, IP and supply chain. Getting genuinely diligence-ready is where most raises are won or lost.
Cap table: The capitalization table: who owns what share of a company. A clean cap table is a precondition for foreign investment.
Valuation: What a company is worth for a raise, anchored to comparable deals and disciplined multiples — so you raise on your number, not a discount.
Term sheet: The (usually non-binding) document that sets the key terms of an investment before final contracts — valuation, amount and rights.
Data room: The organized set of verified documents — financials, IP, contracts, compliance — an investor reviews during due diligence.
NATO Innovation Fund (NIF): The €1bn multi-sovereign venture fund backed by NATO allies, investing in deep-tech and defense startups across the alliance.
Programs of record: Officially funded, budgeted defense procurement programs. Reaching one turns a product into durable, recurring government revenue.
SBIR / STTR / OTA: US non-dilutive funding and contracting vehicles that pay for defense technology without taking equity — a path to US government revenue.
De-risking: Structuring a deal so its risks — legal, IP, war, execution — are separated, priced and mitigated, rather than averaged into a single number.
Brave1: Ukraine's government defense-innovation cluster: it validates, grants and connects defense-tech companies, and runs Brave1 Market, a procurement marketplace. 2,300+ teams and ~5,000 developments have passed through it.
Prime / strategic acquirer: A large defense contractor (prime) or platform company that buys capability and technology to fold into its own systems — a primary exit path.
Cross-border holding (holdco): A holding company outside Ukraine that owns the Ukrainian operating entity and its IP — the structure a foreign investor can legally hold, govern and exit through. The first thing that separates company risk from country risk.
Political-risk insurance (DFC / MIGA): War- and political-risk cover that turns Ukraine risk into a priced line item — from the US DFC and the World Bank's MIGA, plus private war-risk facilities. About $848M has been written since 2022.
Capital controls / repatriation: Ukraine's wartime limits on moving dividends out of the country — the reason deals are structured so investor cash flow reaches them through export revenue, IP and the offshore holding.
Foreign traction: Confirmed demand or contracts outside Ukraine, even small ones — the proof-point that a product lives on more than temporary domestic wartime demand.
SAFE / convertible: Money now, shares later — a SAFE or convertible note defers the valuation to the next round. A common instrument for early defense-tech rounds; not to be confused with EU SAFE.

Western procurement & opportunities

Opportunities →

OTA (Other Transaction Authority): A prototype-first US contracting vehicle that skips traditional procurement — open to non-traditional performers and awarded in months. It is how new tech reaches the US force fastest, and the spine of the Opportunities board.
OTA consortium (NSTXL): NSTXL manages the US Department of War's OTA prototyping consortia — S2MARTS, SpEC, TReX and JDEC, plus the Microelectronics Commons. Membership is how a company sees and bids the prototype solicitations.
Non-traditional performer: A company that hasn't recently held standard US defense contracts — exactly who OTAs are built to bring in. A Ukrainian firm usually qualifies through a US entity or a prime.
CSO (Commercial Solutions Opening): A streamlined solicitation for commercial and dual-use technology, run outside the traditional FAR process — a common front door for new entrants.
BAA (Broad Agency Announcement): An open R&D solicitation across a topic area; companies respond with a white paper first, then a full proposal if invited.
TRL (Technology Readiness Level): The 1–9 maturity scale from concept (1) to a system proven in operational use (9). Programs gate eligibility by TRL; combat use pushes a product to the top of the scale.
DIU (Defense Innovation Unit): The US DoD's bridge to commercial technology — it buys via CSO and prototype OTs, then scales what works into production contracts.
DIANA (NATO): Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic — NATO's programme of grants and test centres for dual-use deep tech across the alliance.
EDF (European Defence Fund): The EU's multi-billion collaborative defense R&D fund — consortium-based and member-state led, a primary European funding route.
APFIT: Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies — a US DoD program that funds procurement to carry a proven prototype across the 'valley of death' into fielding.
DD2345: The Militarily Critical Technical Data Agreement — the US certification that lets an entity receive controlled US technical data. A common gate on US-domestic OTAs, alongside a US entity and onshore labor.
Prototype OT → Production OT: The OTA pipeline: a successful prototype Other Transaction can flow to a follow-on production contract without re-competing — the reason a prototype award matters far beyond its own value.

Market entry & institutions

Enter Ukraine →Localize →

Defence City: Ukraine's residency regime for defense manufacturers (laws 13420/13421, in force since October 2025 / January 2026): tax relief, lighter regulation, reserved staff and an export exemption — the framework a foreign partner underwrites when localizing production.
Diia.City: Ukraine's special legal and tax regime for tech companies — a predictable framework foreign investors and partners can underwrite. For defense-tech it is usually paired with Defence City.
DPA · DOT · Prozorro: The three doors into Ukrainian state procurement: the DPA (Defense Procurement Agency) buys armaments through a single-window portal, DOT (State Rear Operator) buys rear and non-lethal, and Prozorro is the open e-procurement platform underneath.
DOT-Chain Defence: Ukraine's front-line procurement marketplace: units ordered and delivered in about nine days, and where makers get vetted and volume-tested. Hundreds of thousands of systems moved through it in 2026 from 200+ makers.
Drone Deal: Not about drones as products — the intergovernmental agreements that put a partner country on Ukraine's simplified export track for unmanned systems. Nine signed and about twenty in progress, updated quarterly.
Danish model: Allied capital that pays Ukrainian factories to build, rather than buying finished kit abroad — about $6bn of demand in 2025. A direct funding channel for Ukrainian production.
Critical-infrastructure status / staff reservation: The status that reserves a defense company's key specialists from mobilization (бронювання) — the mechanism behind team continuity for a company under contract.
Buy from · Build with · Build in Ukraine: The three ways a foreign player engages Ukraine's defense industry: buy the finished product, co-produce it in a JV or under licence, or build a plant in-country. They map to Wiseboard's Acquire, Adopt and Localize routes.
Joint venture (JV) / co-production: A local production partnership: Ukraine supplies design, know-how and people; the partner supplies capital, plant, certification and market access. The Rheinmetall 51/49 JV is the localization benchmark.

Export & compliance

Export-ready →

Export fast-track (Resolution No. 875): Ukraine's 2026 export fast-track (Cabinet Resolution No. 875, in force 8 July 2026): export-licence review cut to 30 days for already-registered exporters with a certified internal control unit, running in parallel with the older regimes.
Dual-use: Technology with both civilian and military applications. Dual-use goods fall under export controls and a specific licensing regime.
NATO codification (NCAGE / NSN): An NCAGE code for your company and NATO Stock Numbers on your products, so an allied force can legally procure and stock what you build.
ITAR / EAR: US export-control regimes — ITAR for arms, EAR for dual-use — governing what defense technology can be exported, and to whom.
EU Dual-Use Regulation: The EU rules controlling export of dual-use items across member states — the European counterpart to ITAR / EAR.
End-user certificate (EUC): An official document certifying who the final recipient of exported defense goods is, and how they will be used — required to clear an export.
Держекспортконтроль: Ukraine's State Export Control Service — the authority that licenses defense and dual-use exports from Ukraine.
AQAP: NATO's Allied Quality Assurance Publications (AQAP 2110 / 2210) — the quality standard that is often a precondition to bid in NATO and MoD tenders.
Critical-goods list: The list that gates an export: off it, the standard procedure applies; on it, export is still possible but only through the interagency commission, with real refusal risk. Updated quarterly.
Silent approval: Export clearance where a non-response from the security services within the set period counts as approval by default — a deadline that works in the exporter's favour.
EU SAFE (Security Action for Europe): The EU's €150bn defense joint-procurement instrument — a channel Ukrainian industry can supply into as a (sub)contractor. Distinct from a financing SAFE.
NSDC (National Security and Defence Council): Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council — the authority behind key defense-export decisions and the source for Drone Deal and export-permit figures.

Testing & validation

Testing →

Test and evaluation (T&E): The structured process of testing a defense system and evaluating how it performs against real requirements — the evidence buyers and engineers act on.
Combat-proven / battlefield validation: Evidence a system works in real combat conditions, against real threats — the standard the Ukrainian battlefield sets that a lab or a range cannot.
White paper (validation report): A structured report of a system's capabilities, limits and failure modes, translated through NATO doctrine into terms engineers and procurement can act on.

The terms are the easy part.

Putting the capital, the export rights and the battlefield proof behind them is the work — that's what Wiseboard does.

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