Speed & Scale: Managing Defense Technology Innovation in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has catalyzed one of the most significant transformations in battlefield technology development and procurement since the Second World War. The Capstone team was tasked with the examination of innovations in the processes by which new technologies are being identified, fielded, and improved upon in Ukraine, to extract lessons for the United States. As such, the team studied Brave1, a Ukrainian government-backed defense innovation organization that facilitates a broad array of defense procurement needs, that evolved since 2022 to meet the demands of the modern battlefield.

The study focused on mapping the relationships, feedback loops, decision-making pathways, and institutional incentives that enable rapid adaptation under wartime conditions. The team prioritized primary-source collection through structured interviews conducted across the Ukrainian defense innovation ecosystem and relevant U.S. defense innovation stakeholders. This interview-based approach was supplemented by a systematic review of secondary-source material, including Ukrainian government publications, defense policy reporting, think-tank analyses, and open-source material related to procurement reform, battlefield adaptation, and defense technology scaling.

First, the team found that Brave1’s accessibility depends on a deliberately permissive classification posture structurally incompatible with current U.S. practice. Second, battlefield data automatically drives procurement decisions, enabling demand-responsive acquisition at speed. Third, Ukraine’s binding constraint is not industrial capacity but financing.

This report recommended that the Defense Innovation Unit establish a single integrated marketplace for approved commercial-off-the-shelf equipment, develop operator feedback training standards, and adopt elements of Brave1’s ePoints prioritization system.