“Yes, we build them ourselves. We have no other choice.” Three of us—all American veterans—stood spellbound inside a repurposed potato shed as an elite Ukrainian drone team explained how they hand-make their own explosive payloads for the drones that have been instrumental in forcing the Russian war machine into a grinding slog.
A lanky soldier with dirty fatigues and a curled mustachio grins and explains: “We usually take apart Soviet antitank mines and boil out the explosives. We 3D print our own casings, fill them with explosive charges and shrapnel, then arm them with our own handmade detonators.” He lightheartedly tosses a brick of raw explosive our direction. We cringe and shake our heads.
As American warfighters, we’ve been brought up within a culture of war that views combat operations through a combined arms lens that leans heavily on air supremacy and a logistics system of unparalleled proportions. The idea of frontline units literally building their own weapons is as foreign to us as Cyrillic.
And yet that is precisely what is happening at the front lines of the war in Ukraine these days. Ukrainians are building purpose-made precision munitions from scavenged weapons, developing an astonishingly effective resistance in a spontaneous, bottom-up process that is scrappy, ingenious, and above all fluid. Inside the shed, we watched our hosts tear down a malfunctioned NLAW, removing the expensive guidance package to get at the explosives inside. The payload would be refitted that night to destroy the kind of armored target it was designed to kill but riding on a $300 drone instead of a $33,000 single-use launch tube. Ukrainians are evolving the modern battlespace at warp speed, holding back one of the largest conventional militaries on earth, largely through their own resourcefulness.
During their recent Oval Office showdown President Donald Trump repeatedly told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.” While it is certainly true that Ukraine benefits substantially from US arms, it is also true that Ukraine has grown out of its wholesale dependence on them. The fundamental misperception held by many outside observers does not appreciate the dramatic steps Ukraine has made toward providing its own defense capability domestically over the war’s three years.
Currently, one-third of the weapons used on the battlefield are produced domestically, and an additional 30 percent are supplied by Europe. The capabilities of the Ukrainian defense industry have grown astronomically over the three years since the large-scale Russian invasion—from $1 billion in 2022 to $35 billion in 2025. In some areas, Ukraine has completely covered its own needs, particularly in unmanned platforms—not only drones, but also unmanned ground vehicles and naval systems. According to the commander of the Ukrainian military’s Unmanned Systems Forces, 100 percent of the drones attacking Russian military targets are of Ukrainian manufacture.
We witnessed this self-reliance firsthand: for the drones, everything down to the chips and flight controllers can be made in Ukraine, backing up existing but tenuous Chinese supply channels. Ukraine is at the forefront of introducing innovations such as laser technology, AI, and drone swarms on the battlefield—capabilities that even NATO lacks. It plans to manufacture up to four and half million military-use drones in 2025. Additionally, Ukraine produces armored vehicles, artillery systems, mortar shells, and other ammunition and has launched domestic production of long-range missiles. The battlefield is no longer defined solely by Western weapons.
With additional financing mechanisms established to support the Ukrainian defense industry—such as the utilization of $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, which some countries have already begun using—and substantial financial commitments from European nations, including tapping sovereign wealth funds as seen in Norway, the absence of American support would not be nearly as catastrophic as it would have been at earlier stages of the war.
Ukraine is transitioning from reliance to self-sufficiency, but the process isn’t instant and still requires specialized Western input. The reliance on American materials, technology, and support remains high, to be sure, but is not indispensable. While Ukraine can (and will) slog on regardless of the degree of US backing, the fact is that the job will be far easier with the right tools.
The drone team we met will continue building their lethal payloads and killing aggressors daily. Whether it will be enough is anyone’s guess. President Trump is right—Ukraine is not in a “good position.” But any observer who fails to fully appreciate the significance of Ukraine’s capability to adapt will inevitably underestimate a fundamental truth: Ukraine has many cards to play yet. And the way it has played its cards over the past three years—namely, fostering frontline innovation and dramatically boosting its industrial capacity—offers deeply meaningful lessons for any military preparing for large-scale conflict and the realities of the modern battlefield.
Dr. Paul Schwennesen is director of Global Strategy Decisions Group and a defense analyst for Geopolitical Intelligence Services. He recently returned from a seventh mission to the Ukrainian front lines. He was awarded the Verhkhovna Rada medal by Ukraine’s parliament for “Merit to the Ukrainian People,” and coordinates ongoing training and equipment programs there.
Dr. Olena Kryzhanivska is a Ukrainian policy analyst and senior editor at the NATO Association of Canada. She provided expert analysis for the Norwegian embassy in Turkey and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. She maintains the weekly report “Ukraine’s Arms Monitor.”
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: mil.gov.ua
