Bureaucratic Delays in Kyiv and Rigid Western Thinking Are Hobbling Ukraine's Arms Production, Report Finds

A new report from the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS) at King's College London concludes that a mix of slow-moving regulatory processes in Ukraine and inflexible institutional attitudes among Western militaries is stalling joint weapons production at a time when it is urgently needed. The findings, reinforced by experts who spoke with Al Jazeera, suggest that these obstacles are not only hurting Ukraine's performance on the battlefield but also leaving Europe's own armed forces ill-prepared for the character of modern warfare.

For roughly two years, Kyiv has pursued a strategy of inviting Western defense partners to invest in new production facilities on Ukrainian soil. The arrangement is designed to be mutually beneficial: Ukraine receives a steady supply of weapons, while its Western partners gain invaluable know-how from testing equipment under real combat conditions. This formula has produced at least 180 business-to-business partnerships between Ukrainian and foreign firms, according to the report, which is titled "Beyond Aid: Making Ukraine Defence Cooperation Work."

However, the same report reveals that 22 percent of those partnerships have stalled, meaning nearly one in four joint ventures is not delivering as intended. That figure represents a significant loss of potential output for a country fighting a war of attrition against a larger adversary with deep reserves of manpower and materiel.

One of the most prominent examples of a stalled project is an artillery shell factory that German defense giant Rheinmetall announced a year ago. The facility was expected to be operational by now, yet construction has not even begun. The reasons are bureaucratic: Ukrainian authorities delayed the necessary permits, and the government subsequently relocated the planned site of the factory. Such holdups illustrate how mundane regulatory problems can have outsized consequences when speed is of the essence.

Intellectual property rules present another layer of difficulty. Chris Pool, a visiting fellow at the CSNS, explained to Al Jazeera that the process of registering intellectual property in Ukraine is lengthy, and that the rapid pace of wartime innovation means what gets registered and protected is often already obsolete by the time the paperwork is complete. Former CIA Director General David Petraeus recently highlighted the extraordinary speed at which Ukrainian drone manufacturers operate, noting that they can make software changes once a week in response to Russian countermeasures and hardware changes every three or four weeks. By the peacetime standards of Western militaries, that tempo is dizzying.

The question of ownership becomes especially complicated when frontline units modify equipment themselves. Pool raised the issue of what happens when a product reaches a Ukrainian brigade and that brigade then adapts it to new developments: who owns the intellectual property in the improved version, and does the Ukrainian state have a stake at that point? Such unresolved questions can deter foreign investment and slow the integration of Ukrainian innovation into broader supply chains.

Export rights are a further obstacle. The report notes that while focusing exclusively on the Ukrainian market may be viable during the initial stage of a venture, the absence of a clear export mechanism may later constrain companies' ability to integrate Ukrainian-based facilities into wider international supply chains. Without a predictable path to selling abroad, Western firms have less incentive to commit to long-term production inside Ukraine.

The problems are not confined to Kyiv's bureaucracy. Pool, who has spoken with Ukrainian teams seeking Western partners, says European militaries often display a rigid approach to land warfare that borders on dismissiveness. Ukrainian teams have reported being told that their methods are interesting but ultimately not relevant to the British Army, and were encouraged instead to partner with established defense contractors like BAE Systems or Babcock—firms with which Western militaries are already accustomed to dealing.

That attitude may prove costly. In 2022, both Russia and Ukraine fought in a largely conventional manner, relying on classic battlefield artillery and heavy armor. Ukraine managed to defeat Russia's initial attacks through effective use of defensive weapons. But when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in 2023, it could not match Russian scale and production capacity, and was forced to adapt quickly.

Ukraine's adaptation took the form of cheap, long-range drones and missiles designed to interdict Russian weapons and fuel flowing to the front and to strike Russian refining capacity. It also began producing first-person view (FPV) drones to serve as a form of artillery. According to the report, Ukraine invested $1 billion in drone warfare in 2023—ten times what it spent in 2022. A New York Times video analysis found that Ukraine struck as many Russian armored vehicles in three months this year as it did in all of 2022.

Production numbers tell a similar story of rapid escalation. Ukraine produced one million FPV drones in 2024, more than three million in 2025, and is projected to produce an estimated eight million this year. That output amounts to sixteen drones for every ten that Russia fields, giving Ukraine localized air superiority in some areas. These new weapons have been accompanied by new tactics and new command structures.

Konstantinos Grivas, who teaches advanced weapons systems at the Hellenic Military Academy, told Al Jazeera that the most important element of Ukraine's approach is decentralized command, which Ukraine has implemented more than anyone else. Units do not wait for orders from upstairs; they gather their own information and make their own decisions. That model, however, requires highly capable junior commanders—something that runs counter to classic military hierarchies and tactics.

The gap between Ukraine's decentralized, fast-iterating approach and Western military orthodoxy was on display in wargames. In exercises dubbed Combined Resolve in August, Ukrainian drone operators destroyed a US tank brigade by simulating their tactic of dropping armor-piercing artillery directly onto tanks. They achieved the same result against a British brigade in February.

Pool said that when Western officers are confronted with teams presenting new technology or navigation systems that do not rely on GPS, there is often a lack of curiosity about what is happening and how it could be adapted. Western militaries, according to Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former senior adviser to Ukraine's Ministries of Defense, have not even begun to shift all land forces units into drone infantry. The implication is clear: by failing to learn from Ukraine's battlefield innovations, Western armies risk being unprepared for the wars they may one day have to fight.