Does Ukrainian weaponry have an advantage over Western weaponry, and what does battle-proof have to do with it?
Kyiv • UNN
Ukrainian weaponry is being tested by real war and rapidly adapting to electronic warfare, air defense, and the enemy’s new tactics. Why battle-proof is becoming a competitive advantage for Ukraine’s defense industry in Europe.
Europe is investing hundreds of billions of euros in rearmament, but money cannot buy the experience of modern warfare or the daily adaptation of weapons to electronic warfare, air defense, and the enemy’s new tactics. UNN examined what the main advantage of Ukraine’s battle-proof capability is.
Details
Europe’s preparations for war extend beyond military headquarters. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen noted, countries must be prepared for hybrid Russian attacks. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the country’s intelligence indicates that Russia is preparing attacks using drones or missiles against NATO countries that support Ukraine. Germany’s Foreign Ministry, for its part, speaks of a “long series” of attempts by Russia to destabilize, intimidate, and attack Europe.
In Denmark, the situation escalated into a dangerous incident: in September, a Russian warship fired flares toward a Danish military helicopter that was photographing the vessel in international waters. Copenhagen subsequently accelerated another military aid package for Ukraine.
At the same time, NATO said at the end of August that it currently saw no threat of an actual attack. Nevertheless, on the Alliance’s eastern flank, countries are investing increasingly in preparations for a potential war.
And these preparations are becoming increasingly concrete. Germany is working on a scenario under which, in wartime, it may need to treat up to 1,000 wounded military personnel a day, and is preparing evacuations by rail, bus, and air. In July, Poland held nationwide ALARM-26 drills to test warning systems and sirens. Ten countries in Northern Europe and the Baltic region have already agreed to jointly plan the cross-border evacuation of civilians in the event of a major crisis or war. Lithuania, meanwhile, is building a fortified power substation near the Suwałki Corridor, with its key equipment protected from potential drone strikes by reinforced concrete structures.
Germany and Sweden conduct the Silver Wotan exercise on Gotland20.09.26, 20:28 • 4440 views
Clearly, Europe is preparing for a security reality that is new to it and is ready to invest hundreds of billions of euros in this effort. With that money, it is possible to build factories, purchase equipment, expand armies and ammunition production, and finance new developments. But there is something that cannot be bought even with an unlimited budget: the experience of real high-intensity warfare.
Ukraine already has this experience. This concerns not only military personnel who have been fighting one of the world’s largest arsenals for more than four years, but also Ukrainian weapons manufacturers.
Battle-proof
Their developments are tested every day not on training grounds, but amid real opposition from Russian electronic warfare, air defense, and reconnaissance, as well as the enemy’s constantly changing tactics. It is precisely this experience that today forms one of the main competitive advantages of Ukrainian defence-tech: battle-proof.
Andrii Yakovchuk, co-founder of Fly Group Ukraine, TM Contra Drone, explains that the simplest indicator of genuine combat hardening is a repeat request for the weapon from military personnel.
Genuine battle-proven status is determined not by a note in a press release about “testing at the front,” but by a steady organic demand from the military themselves—when units systematically return with the request: “Give us more of this exact product
Moreover, a weapon must not only perform its stated function, but also operate within a real combat ecosystem: integrate with situational awareness and communications systems, withstand field conditions, be quickly repairable, and have a cost appropriate for a war of attrition.
That is why Ukrainian experience today consists not only of data on the range, accuracy, or speed of weapons. It includes thousands of minor factors that cannot be fully modeled at a testing ground: operation under real electronic warfare conditions, the enemy changing frequencies, weather conditions, operator errors, repairs in field workshops, the interaction of different systems, and the constant emergence of new countermeasures.
How the Front Changes Weapons
Anton Zemlianyi, a senior analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, calls the extremely short distance between a problem at the front and the engineer tasked with solving it the main advantage of Ukraine’s defense industry.
When we take a product and test it under real combat conditions—in countering electronic warfare, air defense, or other enemy capabilities—we get the shortest possible link along the line of "manufacturer - front - response - feedback - manufacturer again." On the basis of combat experience, Ukrainian manufacturers can constantly strengthen our combat capabilities and improve their weapons
The problem for the traditional defense industry is that the pace of technological change in modern warfare has in some cases become faster than the traditional weapons development and procurement cycle.
According to Zemlianyi, for certain systems, especially unmanned aerial vehicles, the relevance of a particular technical solution can be lost within as little as three to six months.
A modernization cycle is constantly underway: countermeasures emerge, and the weapon must be modernized again. Within this cycle, Ukrainian systems are improved and their resistance to countermeasures increases
As an example, he cited the American Switchblade. When these unmanned aerial vehicles first appeared in Ukraine, they were among the technologically advanced tactical strike systems in their class. However, according to Zemlianyi, the real war revealed problems, particularly with navigation. This is precisely where the line lies between a well-designed product and a system capable of surviving in a technological race with the enemy.
Switchblade 600. Image from open sources
When the real front generates new nonlinear threats every month, the life cycle of any technological solution is reduced to a matter of weeks, and the key competitive advantage becomes not the perfection of the initial design, but the speed of the feedback loop
This is the model that Ukraine could potentially sell along with its weapons. Not merely a drone, an electronic warfare system, or an interceptor, but the ability to continuously update it as the conditions of use change.
Yakovchuk compares this to defense DevOps: the customer effectively receives not "hardware" whose specifications will remain unchanged for ten years, but a system designed for regular evolution.
The Frequency War: How Ukrainian Electronic Warfare Systems Adapt
This process can be traced through the example of electronic warfare. According to Andrii Yakovchuk, Ukrainian manufacturers have already realized that systems with fixed frequency bands may lose their effectiveness even before a batch has been fully delivered. Therefore, the industry is transitioning to modular SDR architectures and rapidly changeable frequency modules that can be promptly adapted to new enemy systems.
The hardware has already learned to be adaptive, but turning it into a coordinated digital spectrum-management system is precisely the experience that we have yet to transform into a generally accepted technology
Therefore, the mere fact that a weapon is used at the front does not yet make it battle-proof. The key question is whether the manufacturer can quickly turn military personnel's feedback into serial technical changes.
Image from open sources
Europe Needs Not Only Ukrainian Weapons, but Also Experience in Using Them
European countries are increasing defense budgets and production, but combat experience cannot be quickly replicated even with substantial investment.
Even with unlimited financial resources and by hiring the best Ukrainian minds, no Western defense giant would be able to artificially recreate a physical presence on the line of contact
This concerns knowledge that is difficult to acquire at a training ground: how equipment behaves after nearby explosions, in freezing temperatures, dust or under the influence of electronic warfare, how easy it is to repair directly at positions, and how quickly the enemy finds a countermeasure to a new solution.
That is precisely why, according to Anton Zemlyanyi, foreign partners increasingly need not only a Ukrainian product but also experience in using it.
Partners are interested not only in obtaining the drones themselves, but also in understanding the ecosystem—how to use them, deploy them and establish this process
Ukraine as Part of the European Defense Industry
Ukrainian defence-tech is already expanding beyond its domestic market. Fire Point’s subsidiary is building a solid-fuel rocket engine plant in Denmark covering more than 120,000 sq. m and costing over €150 million. The facility’s capacity will range from 800 to more than 4,100 rockets per year. This is the first case in NATO in which an Alliance member has allowed a Ukrainian defense company to establish such production on its territory.
At the same time, Ukraine is developing the Freyja anti-ballistic shield project jointly with its partners. Ten countries and more than a dozen European defense companies have already joined the program. The project is built around the Ukrainian FP-7.x interceptor missile, while European manufacturers provide the system’s other elements—radars, sensors and components.
Andriy Yakovchuk calls this very model the most promising one: Ukrainian combat experience and speed of adaptation are combined with the industrial base, standardization and financial capabilities of the European defense industry.