Ukraine’s wartime technology sector is moving beyond the battlefield, as the government looks to turn advances in defence tech, AI and digital infrastructure into exports, investment and international industrial partnerships.
On 30 September, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Oksana Ferchuk, said the country intends to significantly expand its high-tech exports by drawing on expertise developed in military technology, artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. During a visit to Washington, she discussed potential cooperation with US officials, the World Bank and other international partners.
“Military technologies now can speed up development in the high-tech segment,” Ferchuk told Reuters.
More than four years of full-scale war have dramatically accelerated Ukraine’s technology-development cycle. The question now is whether capabilities created out of military necessity can be transformed into a sustainable export industry capable of attracting investment and competing internationally.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, independent Ukraine inherited a substantial engineering and industrial base. A World Bank assessment describes a Soviet legacy spanning heavy engineering, metallurgy, shipbuilding, aerospace, energy equipment and other industrial sectors.
Over the following decades, a sizable digital-services economy developed alongside these traditional industries. According to the IT Ukraine Association, Ukrainian IT exports reached around $6.6 billion in 2025, equivalent to 41.6 per cent of the country’s total services exports.
The sector has continued to generate foreign revenues during the war. Data from the National Bank of Ukraine, cited by the association, show that computer-services exports reached $3.343 billion in the first half of 2026, up 4.1 per cent year-on-year.
Ukraine’s technology economy, therefore, did not emerge in 2022. The war instead accelerated engineering and digital capabilities that had been developing for decades.
Since February 2022, the demands of the battlefield have compressed the conventional technology-development cycle. Ukrainian companies can develop products, test them under operational conditions, receive feedback from military users and modify them at a pace rarely possible in peacetime markets.
The scale of this ecosystem is reflected in Brave1, Ukraine’s state defence-technology cluster. Brave1 currently lists around 2,500 companies and more than 5,000 products, including more than 500 UAV manufacturers, over 300 electronic-warfare and signals-intelligence developers, and approximately 200 companies working on AI products.
Innovation now extends from drones and autonomous systems to electronic warfare, AI-enabled battlefield technology and cybersecurity. The experience has also influenced civilian digital resilience. Ferchuk told Reuters that Ukraine has kept digital services operating despite Russian strikes through redundant systems and the relocation of some infrastructure underground.
Wartime innovation has consequently become more than a defence capability. It is also a body of technological expertise that Ukraine is increasingly seeking to commercialise.
The next challenge is converting battlefield-tested technology into products and partnerships that can compete abroad.
Several models are emerging. Ukrainian companies can export drones, autonomous systems, cybersecurity tools and AI products directly; develop technology jointly with foreign manufacturers able to provide capital and production capacity; or export expertise in areas such as digital resilience, counter-drone systems and cybersecurity.
The Ukrainian government is beginning to create a formal framework for this internationalisation. In June 2026, the Cabinet of Ministers established Brave International, creating common rules for international defence-innovation programmes. According to Brave1, the combined budget of the first programmes and support instruments already exceeds €100 million, with the initiative intended partly to integrate Ukrainian defence technology into global markets.
In July, Brave1 and NATO also opened applications for UNITE – Brave NATO, a joint programme pairing Ukrainian developers with companies from NATO member states. Its first competition focuses on counter-UAS technologies, with selected systems required to undergo testing in Ukraine.
Government policy is therefore beginning to turn national-security innovation into international industrial partnerships.
Battlefield performance alone, however, does not guarantee commercial success.
Ukrainian defence-tech companies still require foreign capital, manufacturing capacity, skilled workers, intellectual-property protection and predictable access to international markets.
Investor interest is already visible. In June, Brave1 brought ten Ukrainian companies with battlefield-tested technologies to Britain to meet venture-capital investors and strategic partners. The programme was supported by organisations including the London Stock Exchange, Palantir and TheCityUK.
Commercialisation also creates a tension between economic opportunity and national security. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence now provides export routes for defence products, components and technologies, but critical items remain subject to additional scrutiny. Under the standard procedure, some applications can take up to 90 days.
Reuters reported in July that Ukraine’s emerging export framework also includes protections for Ukrainian intellectual-property rights and controls over the subsequent use and re-export of transferred technology.
The central question is whether foreign partnerships can help Ukrainian companies scale without shifting the core technological and future commercial value of those businesses abroad.
The longer-term test will be whether Ukraine can sustain its technological momentum as the conditions that produced such rapid innovation begin to change.
Success will be measurable: growth in high-tech exports, private capital raised by Ukrainian companies, international manufacturing partnerships, intellectual property retained in Ukraine and the country’s ability to keep skilled engineers within its economy.
Ferchuk’s September announcement suggests the government is already seeking to turn wartime technological capacity into long-term economic policy.
Ukraine has demonstrated that it can innovate at exceptional speed under extreme pressure. Its next challenge is to turn battlefield experience, engineering talent and rapid development cycles into businesses and products capable of competing beyond the wartime economy.
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Andriy Dovbenko is a Ukrainian-born, London-based entrepreneur who works extensively across the UK and Ukrainian defence.
A former politician who held a number of senior roles in the UK Parliament over a decade, Brooks is now Founder and Chairman of Trypillian, a British-Ukrainian defence
