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
- 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. 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.
Export & compliance
- 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.
- Diia.City
- Ukraine's special legal and tax regime for tech companies — a predictable framework foreign investors and partners can underwrite.
Testing & validation
- 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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