Ukraine is showing the free world how to innovate and sustain the fight in a long war. Our ‘peacetime procurement’ approach needs to catch up… ⬇️
It isn’t just the level of innovation that Ukraine has achieved to sustain its fierce resistance against Russia’s invasion, it is the way it has leveraged start up culture to cut through bureaucratic bravo sierra to get the consumables of combat into the hands of the warfighter sooner.
UNITED24 is Ukraine’s crowd funding platform for its military campaign.
This initiative of the President of Ukraine leverages crowd funding, gives tangible fundraising goals and themes to attract donations and build international awareness. UNITED24’s goal is ‘to increase donations to Ukraine and ensure the efficiency and transparency of their distribution’.
Current campaigns include ‘Allies of steel’ – focusing on procuring ground lifesaving robots and ‘Silent sentinel’ – rolling out an AI controlled air defence turrets across the homeland.
BRAVE1 is a direct action market place – bridging the gap between start ups and industry and the Ukrainian military. BRAVE1 defines priority verticals and seeks to create an eco system of Defense tech stakeholders who benefit from exchanging expertise and opportunities. As Defence Connect reports:
“The first-of-its-kind ‘Brave1 Market’ online platform was launched at the start of this month to allow Ukrainian military units to directly contact manufacturers and purchase drones, robots of various types, AI-based modules, electronic warfare and electronic warfare devices, as well as other components that will be useful to the military in carrying out their missions.”
Boyd’s famous OODA loop (Observe, orient, decide & act) was all about generating temp and seizing and retaining the initiative. In a lot of ways an OODA loop is directly applicable to the type of thinking we need to seize in order to inculcate innovation into Defence tactics, techniques and procedures and reform our procurement approach to be combat ready.
If we asked the Australian warfighter what would the priority innovation themes be? Funds to the frontline could be an interesting way to get bottom up innovation and fast feedback on what really makes a difference to enabling our soldiers, sailors and aviators to be future ready. What is clear is that we need to be more like Ukraine and less mundane!
Food for thought as always!
📷 via UNITED24 – links to UNITED24, Brave1 and the Defence Connect article mentioned are in the comments