Competition in Ukraine's largest 155mm shell contract delivered 16% in savings, the Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov says. The Defense Procurement Agency "State Operator of Rear" signed contracts with six manufacturers for the largest batch of long-range shells in the agency's history.
The competitive process with multiple participants, identical rules for all manufacturers, and transparent conditions led to saving millions of dollars.
One of front's biggest requests
The Defense Procurement Agency, known by its Ukrainian acronym DOT, signed contracts with six manufacturers for the 155mm long-range artillery shells, described by Fedorov as "one of the front's biggest requests."
The savings from the competitive tender will fund additional tens of thousands of shells beyond the original planned quantity. Fedorov did not name the six winning manufacturers.
What comes next?
Fedorov said the next category for competitive-procurement scaling is FPV, mid-strike, and deep-strike drones — the categories at the center of Ukraine's ongoing campaign against Russian oil and chemical infrastructure.
From this summer, Ukraine is transitioning to tender procedures across all available defense procurement, with portions of the process running through the Prozorro electronic transparency platform. Security constraints around defense-industry contractors will shape what runs publicly and what does not, Fedorov said.
Reform context
The competitive-procurement framework was developed in part as a response to documented corruption in Ukrainian defense procurement, including schemes involving food rations, dynamic armor, anti-drone arches, and other components, totaling billions of hryvnias across the 2022-2026 period, and ongoing investigations by Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies.
Fedorov framed the new system as a way to reduce dependence on a single supplier and to distribute large purchases among multiple manufacturers.
The 155mm contract is the first test of the model at scale; whether the savings, the speed, and the six-manufacturer distribution translate into front-line capacity will be measurable when the shells reach delivery and use.
