Ukraine’s association with the European Defence Fund (EDF) and the opening of the first UNITE – Brave NATO call mark a good moment to lay out how the country’s defence innovation ecosystem actually works — especially for EU companies looking to enter it.
This overview deliberately leaves aside domestic procurement, codification procedures, state contracting, and other internal mechanisms, which deserve a separate analysis of their own.
BRAVE1: The Central Entry Point
BRAVE1 is one of the key institutions shaping Ukraine’s defence innovation ecosystem, functioning as the central entry point for anyone trying to navigate it.
Its funding logic is built around here-and-now solutions: grants of up to UAH 8 million, with a due diligence and grant-award process that takes up to 1.5 months. The platform already connects around 2,500 companies and more than 5,000 products, making it the largest hub of its kind in the country.
The Infrastructure Around BRAVE1
Three pieces of supporting infrastructure sit around the core BRAVE1 programme:
Brave1 Market — a defence-technology marketplace connecting military units with codified products already available in Ukraine. For an EU company, the Market also works as a practical signal of which technology categories are mature, actively in use, and drawing real demand from military units.
Brave1 Dataroom — a secure environment built for training, testing, and validating military AI models using structured battlefield data. Its initial datasets include visual and thermal materials related to aerial targets, including Shahed-type drones.
Test in Ukraine — a programme letting international developers test systems directly in Ukrainian conditions, or hand a product over to a Ukrainian team and receive a detailed report afterward.
Brave International: Cross-Border Partnerships
At least five country programmes are moving toward implementation or future open calls: Brave Norway, Brave France, Brave Germany, Brave Lithuania, and Brave Netherlands.
Under this model, teams must pair a Ukrainian company with a partner (or partners) from an EU country, with the resulting solution expected to reach high Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). It’s a structure explicitly designed around Ukrainian and EU teams jointly delivering high-TRL solutions, rather than one side simply supplying the other.
What This Gives EU Companies
For EU companies, plugging into this ecosystem opens up four concrete opportunities:
- Partner search — finding verified Ukrainian innovators and teams
- Testing & validation — leveraging real-world testing and proof points
- Battlefield feedback — accessing combat-proven insights and user feedback
- Industrial cooperation — co-developing and scaling solutions together across Europe
Where EU Companies Need to Be Careful
Despite the speed and scale of the ecosystem, a few risks are worth flagging before jumping in:
Bureaucracy remains strong. Ukrainian defence innovation can move extremely quickly at the product level, while administrative, customs, contractual, and institutional procedures may still cause serious delays.
Analyse every potential partner carefully. Not every Ukrainian company is set up to work under a shared project plan, manage milestones and deliverables, or report costs and progress the way an EU partner might expect.
Agree on the partnership structure before applying. Roles, budgets, IP ownership, access to test data, and manufacturing rights should all be discussed early, not worked out after the fact.
Plan for security restrictions. Access to military users, testing locations, battlefield data, and sensitive technical information will always be controlled, and companies should build that into their planning from the start.
The Bottom Line
Ukraine’s defence ecosystem is open to cooperation, and the combination of EDF association and new bilateral Brave programmes gives EU companies a clearer on-ramp than ever before — but making the most of it means understanding both the speed of the innovation side and the friction that can still show up in the administrative one.
