Ukraine’s effort to bolster its defense through international collaboration is hitting significant roadblocks, driven by a mixture of entrenched bureaucratic processes in Kyiv and a lack of imaginative institutional change among Western military forces. These factors are not only delaying critical production timelines but are also impeding the overall effectiveness of battlefield operations. Mundane regulatory problems in Kyiv and unimaginative institutional thinking in Europe’s militaries are holding up joint weapons production. Kyiv receives weapons, Western partners receive know-how. There are other legal and bureaucratic problems.
A recent report from the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS) at King’s College London, titledBeyond Aid: Making Ukraine Defence Cooperation Workhighlights that while Ukraine has successfully initiated at least 180 business-to-business partnerships with foreign entities, nearly 22 percent of these ventures remain stalled. A notable example is a planned artillery shell factory involving the German firm Rheinmetall; announced a year ago, the project has yet to break ground due to permit delays and subsequent changes to the facility’s location by Ukrainian authorities. Because Ukrainian authorities have delayed permits and the government then moved the factory’s site, yet ground has not been broken on the project.
Bureaucracy remains a persistent challenge. Chris Pool, a CSNS visiting fellow, noted that the intellectual property registration process is exceptionally slow. In a fast-paced environment where drone software can be This creates uncertainty regarding ownership of improved products adapted by frontline units, further complicating the integration of Ukrainian facilities into broader international supply chains. “The process of registering intellectual property is lengthy,” Chris Pool, a visiting fellow at the CSNS, told. “Iteration cycles move so quickly, often what’s registered and protected is obsolete.”. Former CIA Director General David Petraeus recently discussed how Ukrainian drone manufacturers “can make software changes once a week as required by what the Russians are doing to counter their systems. They can make hardware changes every three or four weeks.”.
The resistance to innovation extends to European military doctrines. According to Pool, who has engaged with Ukrainian teams, Western militaries often exhibit a reluctance to depart from classic land warfare tactics established in 2022. During the 2023 counteroffensive, it became clear that Ukraine could not match Russian scale through traditional means alone. Instead, Kyiv pivoted toward decentralized command structures and mass-produced drone warfare. That is a dizzying speed of innovation by the West’s peacetime standards.
By 2024, Ukraine reached a production milestone of one million FPV drones, increasing that figure to over three million in 2025. With an estimated eight million drones expected this year—providing 16 units for every 10 deployed by Russia—Ukraine has successfully achieved localized air superiority. This transformation relies heavily on junior commanders making real-time decisions without waiting for top-down orders, a model that contradicts established Western military hierarchies.
Konstantinos Grivas, an expert at the Hellenic Military Academy, emphasizes that this decentralized approach is crucial to modern survival. However, some Western forces remain dismissive of these tactical shifts. British military officials, for instance, have shown limited interest in adapting to Ukrainian methods, often preferring to maintain existing partnerships with conventional domestic defense contractors. This lack of curiosity regarding new navigation systems that bypass GPS vulnerabilities is a significant missed opportunity for integration.
Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former adviser to Ukraine’s defense and foreign ministries and current expert at the Royal United Services Institute, argues that failure to adopt drone-centric infantry tactics makes traditional units obsolete. He warns that infantry trained solely for assault rifles will struggle against modern drone swarms on the battlefield. Despite the clear evidence from wargames—where Ukrainian drone operators successfully simulated strikes against US and British tank brigades—a shift toward comprehensive drone infantry adoption is still missing in the West.
Financial instability further compounds these operational issues. Following the suspension of US funding last year and growing political resistance within France and Germany, the European Union has become the primary source of support. Kyiv, which overspent in the first half of the year to finance two counteroffensives that reclaimed at least 870 square kilometers of Russian-occupied territory, remains eager for more consistent and agile international backing.
