Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's 2020 decree envisaged the creation of a Defense Technology Agency, similar to the US DARPA. However, the Cabinet of Ministers has yet to implement this decree, according to Valentyn Badrak, director of the Center for Army, Conversion, and Disarmament Studies, Espreso reports.
According to him, the absence of a unified center has caused Ukraine to lag behind Russia in critical defense technologies.
“Bottom-up” initiatives and ministry efforts
Since the start of the full-scale war, various ministries and agencies, including:
- Ministry of Digital Transformation
- Security Service
- Ukrainian Defense Intelligence
- The State Special Communications Service have actively contributed to the development of defense technologies.
Some projects emerged as individual elements of the national system, while many solutions were proposed by “bottom-up” initiatives from enterprises.
Examples include: “Army of Drones,” which supplied drones to over 200 units, the state platform Brave1, and the Drone Hackathon competition, launched in 2023, allowing industry to work on a DARPA-like principle, says Badrak.
Challenges and priorities for the future agency
However, due to the absence of a unified system, Ukraine's technical progress, the key to success against the adversary that is superior to the country's troop size, has not been perfect.
According to Badrak main tasks of the new agency would include:
- identifying priority weapon systems
- unification and standardization
- managing intellectual property
- attracting public and private funds
- securing foreign investments.
The expert emphasizes the importance of the human factor: the idea should be implemented by practitioners, such as Mykhailo Fedorov, who developed Brave1 and the hackathons, or an experienced professional from the defense industry. As Badrak notes, “personnel decide everything.”
