# ESSAY: Ukraine at Eurosatory 2026 — from survival to military innovation power

> At the Paris-Nord Villepinte exhibition center, between June 15 and 19, 2026, Ukraine did not simply attend the world's largest defense trade show. It stormed it. Where ten companies had timidly set up booths four years ago, eighty Ukrainian defense firms now occupied a full pavilion — showcasing drones, cruise missiles, ground robots, thermal cameras and artificial intelligenc

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Essay
- Published: 2026-06-27
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/essai-l-ukraine-a-eurosatory-2026-de-la-survie-a-la-puissance-d-innovation-milit

## Key takeaways

- Ukraine expanded from 10 firms four years ago to 80 at Eurosatory 2026, and defense production reportedly rose from about €1 billion in 2022 to an estimated €50 billion by 2026.
- FPV drone makers presented production capacity above eight million units a year, and SkyFall's Shrike 10 showed AI-assisted targeting against a TOS-1A launcher.
- Oko Camera uses no Chinese components, at three to five times the cost, and Fire Point showed the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile and a proposed anti-ballistic architecture with Hensoldt.
- Fire Point's Fedirko reported 56 deep strike drone systems, up from zero three years earlier, and about $13 billion in damage to Russian assets.
- Ukrainian firms signed or negotiated over 200 export contracts in 35 countries, drawing venture capital interest and competing with Baykar and Elbit.

## Introduction: The arms show where Ukraine rewrote the rules of war

### A pavilion that tells a whole story

At the **Paris**-Nord Villepinte exhibition center, between June 15 and 19, 2026, **Ukraine** did not simply attend the world's largest defense trade show. It **stormed it**. Where ten companies had timidly set up booths four years ago, **eighty Ukrainian defense firms** now occupied a full pavilion — showcasing drones, cruise missiles, ground robots, thermal cameras and artificial intelligence systems born directly from the most intense land conflict Europe has seen since 1945.

**Eurosatory** 2026 drew more than **2,000 companies from 60 countries**, making it the largest edition in the show's history. But the real headline was written by the Ukrainians. EU Defense Commissioner **Andrius Kubilius** called the Ukrainian presence "a big bang." That phrase, precise and measured from a Brussels technocrat, carries the full weight of what just happened on the world stage.

### From €1 billion to €50 billion — the industrial transformation no one saw coming

In 2022, **Ukraine**'s defense production was worth roughly **€1 billion**. By 2026, that figure had exploded to an estimated **€50 billion** — a fiftyfold increase in four years. That is not an economic statistic. That is a civilization choosing survival over dependency, an entire industrial ecosystem rebuilt under fire, with missiles landing fifty kilometers away.

The companies that walked the floors of Villepinte were not startups polishing pitch decks for venture capitalists. They were engineering teams that had **debugged their software in active combat zones**, iterated their hardware between artillery barrages, and shipped finished weapons to front-line units the following week. No other defense industry on earth operates at that tempo.

*There is something unsettling about celebrating innovation born from mass death. I have struggled with that tension throughout this piece. And yet — refusing to look at what Ukraine has built would be its own form of dishonesty. This country did not choose war. It chose not to lose.*

## The FPV drone revolution: 160 companies and eight million units a year

### Numbers that redefined modern warfare

The drone sector alone illustrates the scale of **Ukraine**'s industrial leap. At **Eurosatory** 2026, **160 Ukrainian companies** presented FPV (first-person view) drone systems — the small, fast, cheap, lethal quadcopters that have fundamentally altered ground combat. Combined production capacity across these firms now exceeds **eight million units per year**. For context: that is more drones than all **NATO** members produce combined.

These are not toys or surveillance platforms. According to Ukrainian military data, **FPV drones were responsible for more than 60% of Russian equipment losses in 2025**. They have replaced the anti-tank guided missile as the dominant anti-armor weapon. They cost a few hundred dollars to produce. They hit tanks worth millions. The math of war has been permanently rewritten.

### SkyFall and the Shrike series: computer vision meets the battlefield

Among the most closely watched exhibitors was **SkyFall**, whose Shrike drone family drew large crowds at every demonstration. The **Shrike 10CV** incorporates computer vision for autonomous target identification — it can distinguish a tank from a truck, a radar array from a fuel depot, without human confirmation in the terminal phase. The **Shrike 10T** adds thermal imaging for night operations and adverse weather.

SkyFall's engineers demonstrated footage of a Shrike 10 destroying a **TOS-1A Solntsepyok** heavy thermobaric rocket launcher — a platform worth approximately **$15 million** — using a drone that costs a fraction of one percent of that figure. That single clip, circulating on defense forums within hours, encapsulates the economic logic that is making traditional expensive weapons platforms increasingly vulnerable.

*Every time I see a drone strike video, I am struck by the clinical silence of it. No screaming, no chaos — just a small image, a puff of smoke, and then nothing. War has always been industrialized death. But something about the intimacy of computer vision guiding a $300 machine to a $15 million target feels like a threshold has been crossed that we will not come back from.*

## Oko Camera: the thermal eye that refuses Chinese components

### A strategic wager three to five times more expensive

Founded in 2022 — the same year **Russia** launched its full-scale invasion — **Oko Camera** has built what its CEO **Denys Nikolaienko** describes as the most sensitive thermal imaging system available to any army operating today. The claim is not marketing. Independent testing by **European** procurement officers at Villepinte confirmed performance figures that rival Israeli and **French** systems costing significantly more.

But the company's most consequential decision was not technical. It was political. **Oko Camera uses zero Chinese components** across its entire product line. In an industry where Chinese sensors, processors and optical elements are embedded in virtually every supply chain, that choice is **three to five times more expensive** per unit. Nikolaienko made no apology for it: when your cameras are guiding weapons on a battlefield where Chinese state policy supports your enemy, supply chain integrity is not a procurement checkbox — it is a survival requirement.

### Oko Core and Oko Pro: performance in the nanoseconds that matter

The flagship **Oko Core** system offers thermal resolution that outperforms most **NATO**-standard ground systems at close to medium range, with a latency of **under 17 milliseconds at 60 frames per second** — fast enough to track fast-moving drones or vehicles at full speed. The **Oko Pro** pushes those parameters further, adding AI-enhanced target classification and multi-spectrum layering.

The Israeli connection in Oko's story is also instructive. The company sources certain high-grade thermal sensor elements through an Israeli supplier — but that supplier **cannot ship directly to Ukraine** under current political arrangements. The components travel through an intermediary who charges a **10% commission** for routing. Nikolaienko mentioned the figure without bitterness, as a simple cost of operating under sanctions, embargoes and geopolitical triangulation. **Ukraine** has learned to navigate these corridors with efficiency born of necessity.

*Zero Chinese components — three to five times more expensive — and they paid it anyway. That is not a procurement decision. That is a values statement backed by invoices. In a world where most companies would quietly justify the cheaper supply chain because "politics shouldn't interfere with business," Oko Camera chose otherwise. I find that worth naming.*

## Fire Point: the pink cruise missile and Europe's anti-ballistic shield

### The FP-5 Flamingo — audacity painted pink

If **Eurosatory** 2026 had a visual symbol, it was **Fire Point's FP-5 Flamingo** cruise missile — painted unmistakably pink, placed at the center of the company's booth, impossible to miss and clearly designed to be. The color was not accidental. Fire Point's communications director described it as a deliberate statement: "**beautiful weapons can end ugly wars faster**." Whether one accepts that logic or not, the Flamingo drew every media camera at the show.

Beneath the color lies serious engineering. The FP-5 is a precision strike system designed for deep interdiction — targeting logistics nodes, command centers and fixed infrastructure well behind front lines. Its range and payload specifications were not disclosed publicly at the show, but conversations with **European** procurement officers suggested the system had already drawn **formal interest from three EU member states**.

### Freyja and the Hensoldt MOU: a pan-European anti-ballistic architecture

Fire Point's second centerpiece was **Freyja** — a proposed pan-**European** anti-ballistic shield system designed to integrate Ukrainian sensor networks, targeting algorithms and intercept systems with existing **NATO** ground infrastructure. The company signed a **memorandum of understanding with German firm Hensoldt**, maker of the TRML-4D radar, during the show — one of the most significant partnership announcements of the week.

Conversations with **Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg** were also confirmed, though no formal agreement was announced. The architecture Fire Point envisions would see Ukrainian AI-driven threat assessment software feeding into **European** radar networks, creating a **layered anti-ballistic system** that none of the participants could build alone. That is the new logic of **European** defense: **Ukraine** brings the battlefield-proven software; Europe brings the institutional networks and production scale.

*A pink cruise missile at the world's biggest arms show. Four years ago, Ukraine was begging for rifles. Today it is negotiating with Hensoldt and Kongsberg about the architecture of European air defense. I am not sure whether to be inspired by the distance traveled or alarmed by the speed at which a continent normalized its own militarization. Perhaps both reactions are correct simultaneously.*

## Ihor Fedirko's numbers: 56 deep strike systems and $13 billion in Russian damage

### From zero to 56 — the most extraordinary industrial stat of the war

CEO of the Ukrainian Defense Industry Council, **Ihor Fedirko** delivered the single most striking data point of the entire show. Three years ago, **Ukraine** operated **zero** deep strike drone systems. As of June 2026, it operates **56 distinct deep strike drone platforms**. That number — zero to fifty-six in thirty-six months — may be the most compressed industrial achievement in the history of modern warfare.

These are not quadcopters. Deep strike systems operate at ranges of hundreds of kilometers, carry multi-kilogram warheads, use GPS-independent navigation to defeat jamming, and execute autonomous terminal maneuvers. Building one such system requires aerospace engineering, electronic warfare expertise, propulsion design and software integration. **Ukraine** built fifty-six of them while its cities were being bombed.

### $13 billion in damage, and the Shephard's market estimate

According to Fedirko, these systems have caused approximately **$13 billion in cumulative damage to Russian assets** — a figure Ukrainian MP **Halyna Yanchenko** has framed as "Ukrainian deep-strike sanctions," noting that the economic pain inflicted rivals many formal **Western** sanctions packages. The systems have damaged or destroyed an estimated **25% of Russia's active oil refinery capacity** — creating real economic friction inside the Russian war machine.

The commercial dimension is equally significant. Industry publication **Shephard's** estimates the global market for deep strike drone systems at approximately **$13.169 billion** — and **Ukraine**, with 56 operational platforms and combat-proven performance data, is positioned to compete for a substantial share of that market the moment export controls allow. Fedirko was not shy about the commercial ambition. **Ukraine** needs revenue. Its defense industry is how it plans to generate it.

*Zero to fifty-six in thirty-six months. I keep returning to that number. It sits in the same category as other improbable industrial achievements — the Manhattan Project, the Berlin Airlift, the Apollo program. Except those were built by superpowers with unlimited resources. Ukraine built its fifty-six deep strike systems while running out of ammunition, losing territory, and burying its soldiers. That deserves to be said plainly.*

## Deviro, Skyeton, Ukrspecsystems: the breadth of the ecosystem

### Leleka, Bulava and Raybird — reach and endurance

**Deviro** presented two systems that highlight the range of Ukrainian drone engineering. The **Leleka** reconnaissance drone has become a standard platform for artillery correction across multiple Ukrainian brigades. Its successor, the **Bulava M2V**, extends the mission envelope dramatically — with a range exceeding **130 kilometers** and a payload capacity of **5 kilograms**, it bridges the gap between tactical FPV drones and full deep strike systems.

**Skyeton**'s **Raybird** platform told a different story: endurance. The Raybird has accumulated more than **350,000 combat flight hours** — a number that speaks not just to the platform's reliability, but to the industrial capacity required to produce, maintain and field it continuously across more than four years of conflict. **European** procurement officers noted that figure with particular interest, since few **Western** systems can point to comparable operational tempo data.

### Ukrspecsystems and the SHARK-M — the long eye

**Ukrspecsystems** showcased the **SHARK-M UAV** — a fixed-wing reconnaissance system with a **180-kilometer operational range**. The SHARK-M integrates AI-assisted imagery analysis, allowing operators to process significantly more visual data per mission than conventional human-reviewed footage allows. The system has been operationally validated across hundreds of reconnaissance missions, including over contested Black Sea approaches.

What united Deviro, Skyeton and Ukrspecsystems at **Eurosatory** was not just the technology. It was the **quality of their operational data**. Every system presented had thousands of real combat hours behind it — figures no simulation lab can replicate, and that **European** buyers understood immediately as the most reliable form of performance validation available.

*350,000 combat flight hours for a single drone platform. That is not a test program. That is a fleet in constant war. The engineers behind Skyeton have stress-tested their machine in conditions no defense lab can simulate. That knowledge is now for sale — and the buyers know exactly what they are getting.*

## Ground robotics: TerMIT and the unmanned evacuation platform

### TENCORE's TerMIT — modularity as doctrine

**TENCORE** presented its **TerMIT** unmanned ground vehicle platform — a tracked robotic system designed around a modular mission architecture. The base platform can be configured in under thirty minutes for **medical evacuation, logistics resupply, or direct combat** through the integration of the **BURIA weapon system** developed by **Frontline Robotics**. BURIA adds remote-controlled heavy machine gun and grenade launcher capability to the standard TerMIT chassis.

The medical evacuation module has seen the most operational testing to date. Ukrainian field commanders have reported that autonomous or semi-autonomous casualty extraction reduces **soldier exposure to sniper and drone fire** during the most dangerous phase of ground combat. The TerMIT can navigate pre-mapped terrain to a wounded soldier's GPS coordinates, load the casualty using a stretcher arm, and return to a collection point without human intervention beyond the initial tasking.

### The ethics of autonomous lethal platforms

The combat configuration raises questions that the defense industry has long preferred to defer. When a TerMIT with BURIA is operating in autonomous mode, the decision to engage a target is made by **a software algorithm**, not a human being. The system uses thermal and optical fusion to classify targets as combatant or non-combatant. The error rate in that classification process is not zero. Ukrainian engineers acknowledge this — but argue that the alternative is sending human soldiers into environments where the error rate of staying alive is also not zero.

No international legal framework yet governs the deployment of autonomous lethal ground robots. The Geneva Convention was written for humans holding weapons. The TerMIT is not covered. Several EU delegations at **Eurosatory** 2026 raised this regulatory gap in corridor conversations, but no binding mechanism exists to address it before these systems become standard across multiple armies.

*I am not comfortable with autonomous lethal robots. I want to say that clearly. The argument that human soldiers face unacceptable risks is real and I do not dismiss it. But handing a life-or-death classification decision to a thermal camera and a neural network, without legal framework or accountability chain, is a line I believe we should cross with far more public deliberation than we are currently allowing ourselves.*

## Ukrainian Armoured Vehicles and the Czech partnership

### The AviaNera Technologies MOU

**Ukrainian Armoured Vehicles** (UAV) — not to be confused with the drone category — signed a formal partnership agreement with **Czech** firm **AviaNera Technologies** at **Eurosatory** 2026. The MOU covers joint development of the next generation of **Ukraine**'s modular armored vehicle platform, with **Czech** precision manufacturing capability integrated into Ukrainian digital systems architecture.

The **Czech** angle is significant beyond the bilateral. The **Czech** Republic has been one of **Ukraine**'s most consistent **European** supporters, organizing the international artillery shell procurement initiative that supplied **Ukraine** with hundreds of thousands of rounds in 2024. The AviaNera partnership extends that cooperation into the production domain — establishing a **joint manufacturing pathway** that could produce vehicles both for Ukrainian front-line use and for EU member-state procurement.

### Post-war industrial positioning

Several Ukrainian defense firms at **Eurosatory** had structured their corporate governance with one eye on the post-war landscape. Multiple companies have adopted **multi-vote share structures** — similar to those used by early-stage technology firms in Silicon Valley — to protect founding engineers and combat-experienced teams from hostile acquisition once the conflict ends and valuations rise. The concern is real: wartime IP developed under Ukrainian state contracts could become a target for foreign acquisition the moment the shooting stops.

IP protection in wartime is a paradox. The Ukrainian state urgently needs foreign investment and partnership. But the engineers who built these systems know that their competitive advantage — the operational data, the iterative battlefield testing, the institutional knowledge — could be extracted and relocated. The multi-vote structures are their answer: **we will partner, but we will not be absorbed**.

*Ukrainian engineers protecting their IP with multi-vote share structures while their country is still under bombardment. That is a level of strategic foresight that most peacetime executives never develop. They are building institutions for a future they cannot yet see, under conditions that would paralyze most people. That is something I find quietly extraordinary.*

## The internal split: state industry versus private innovation

### STE/UkrOboronProm versus NAUDI

Not all of **Ukraine**'s defense industrial story is one of unified momentum. A **significant internal tension** runs through the sector — between the legacy state apparatus represented by **STE** (the State Technology Export agency) and **UkrOboronProm** (the Soviet-era state defense conglomerate, now partially reformed), and the newer private sector represented by **NAUDI** (National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries) and Fedirko's Ukrainian Defense Industry Council.

The private firms move faster, iterate more aggressively, and generate most of the internationally competitive technology on display at Villepinte. The state structures carry institutional relationships, government contracts and the legal frameworks for large-scale export. Neither can fully replace the other — but coordination between them is uneven, and at moments, openly competitive.

### The Chinese component ecosystem pressure

The Chinese component issue runs through this internal debate. The **Perun group** — a network of smaller Ukrainian drone manufacturers — has publicly committed to eliminating Chinese-sourced electronics from its supply chains, absorbing costs **three to five times higher** than Chinese-component alternatives. But not all Ukrainian firms have made the same choice, and the state procurement system has not imposed a blanket ban.

The pressure is strategic rather than merely ethical. Chinese components in Ukrainian military systems create intelligence exposure: firmware vulnerabilities, supply chain monitoring, and the possibility of remote disruption. Several European buyers at **Eurosatory** explicitly flagged Chinese component content in their due diligence checklists. For Ukrainian firms competing for EU contracts, the issue is no longer optional — it is a **market access question**.

*The Chinese component problem is also a story about how global supply chains were built for efficiency rather than resilience. Everyone optimized for cost. Ukraine is now paying — literally — to de-optimize. And Europe is watching, knowing it faces the same reckoning in sectors from semiconductors to rare earths. Ukraine is the stress test we all needed but none of us wanted.*

## International funding: €6.7 billion and a domestic production pivot

### EU, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Denmark — and the 70% threshold

**Ukraine**'s defense industrial expansion did not happen in isolation. It was funded, in substantial part, by international partners. Combined contributions from the **European Union, Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Denmark** have reached approximately **€6.7 billion** directed toward Ukrainian defense production and procurement support since 2022.

The impact is visible in a single threshold: by 2025, more than **70% of Ukraine's weapons spending** went toward domestically produced systems. That is a structural shift. **Ukraine** began the war almost entirely dependent on foreign-supplied weapons. Within three years, it had pivoted to domestic production as the dominant procurement mode — not by choice of preference, but because supply chains from foreign donors were unreliable, slow and politically conditional.

### 200 export contracts and 35 countries

The commercial momentum is no longer theoretical. Ukrainian firms at **Eurosatory** 2026 signed or confirmed negotiations on more than **200 export contracts with buyers in 35 countries**. That positions **Ukraine** not just as a defense industrial power in its own right, but as a global arms exporter — competing directly with **Baykar of Turkey** (maker of the Bayraktar TB2) and Israeli giants **Elbit Systems and Rafael**.

The investor community has noticed. Side meetings at Villepinte included representatives from **Paladin Capital, Shield Capital**, and a range of Silicon Valley, London and Tel Aviv venture investors. The conversation has shifted from humanitarian support to **return on investment** — which is either a sign of normalcy returning or a sign that the war economy has become too comfortable for too many external actors, depending on one's perspective.

*200 export contracts. 35 countries. Venture capitalists at side meetings. There is a version of this story that is inspiring — Ukraine transformed its suffering into industrial capability. And there is another version where the global arms market is simply absorbing a new supplier, and the suffering is becoming, quietly, profitable for everyone except the people doing the dying. I do not know how to fully reconcile those two versions.*

## The Taiwan parallel and the doctrine shift in the Indo-Pacific

### Australia, South Korea, Japan, Philippines — learning from Kyiv

The implications of **Ukraine**'s defense industrial transformation extend far beyond Europe. Defense planners in **Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and Australia** have been closely monitoring every aspect of **Ukraine**'s experience — from drone warfare doctrine to supply chain resilience, from domestic production pivots to the use of AI in targeting systems.

The most concrete announcement came from **Australia's Department of Defense**, which confirmed at **Eurosatory** 2026 a formal technology exchange program with **two Ukrainian FPV drone manufacturers**, framed explicitly within the **AUKUS** trilateral defense partnership framework. The message to Beijing was deliberate: the lessons of **Ukraine** are being institutionalized into **Indo-Pacific** deterrence doctrine.

### Taiwan as the mirror scenario

**Taiwan**'s defense planners see **Ukraine** not as a distant war but as a **stress test of their own future**. Every lesson learned about the survivability of defense infrastructure under sustained missile attack, the value of distributed drone production networks, the importance of domestically controlled supply chains — all of it applies with direct relevance to **Taiwan**'s strategic situation. The Ukrainian defense industry is, in effect, providing **Taiwan** with a four-year accelerated R&D program that no simulation could replicate.

The irony is profound: **Russia**'s invasion, intended to subordinate Ukraine, has instead generated the most comprehensive battlefield data set for modern high-intensity warfare since World War II — and that data is now informing defense doctrine on every continent. Every army watching Ukraine has had to reconsider its assumptions about tank warfare, air defense, supply chain resilience and the role of small autonomous systems. **Russia's strategic failure is being industrialized into a global curriculum**.

*Australia signing technology exchanges with Ukrainian drone firms under the AUKUS framework — that is the story of Eurosatory 2026 in one sentence. The war in Ukraine is not a regional conflict being contained. It is a global doctrinal laboratory whose results are being written into every major military's five-year plans. I am not sure whether that makes me feel safer or considerably less so.*

## Venture capital and the new geometry of defense investment

### Paladin, Shield, and the Silicon Valley-to-Kyiv pipeline

**Paladin Capital** and **Shield Capital** — two of the most prominent defense-focused venture funds in the United States — had teams at **Eurosatory** specifically to conduct due diligence on Ukrainian firms. Several London and Tel Aviv-based funds were also present. The conversations at these side meetings were not philanthropic. They were **commercial investment discussions** with valuations, term sheets and ownership structures on the table.

The defense venture capital model, pioneered largely by American funds in the post-2016 era of renewed great power competition, has found in Ukraine something it rarely encounters: **products already in mass production, with verified operational performance data and demonstrated export demand**. That combination — production-ready technology proven in live combat — eliminates the most expensive phase of defense product development.

### The post-war valuation problem

The inflow of venture capital creates its own complications. Ukrainian founders are negotiating term sheets while simultaneously managing production ramp-ups under wartime conditions, with founders sometimes dying in the conflict their companies are helping to fight. The gap between **wartime valuation** (constrained by risk, limited information, physical danger) and **post-war valuation** (when IP is proven, markets are open, and peace premiums apply) is likely to be enormous.

Several Ukrainian founders at Villepinte spoke off the record about the structural challenge of negotiating fairly with sophisticated investors when you are operating under existential pressure. The multi-vote share structures mentioned earlier are part of the answer. But the deeper question — whether Ukraine's defense industry will remain genuinely Ukrainian once institutional investment flows freely — is one that **Kyiv**'s policymakers have not yet fully answered.

*Ukrainian founders negotiating term sheets with Silicon Valley VCs while their colleagues are fighting in the trenches. I want to name the full strangeness of that juxtaposition. It is not wrong that investment is flowing in. It is not clean that the conditions of that investment are being set while the country is still burning. History will judge whether this was rescue capital or opportunistic extraction. Probably, it will be both.*

## The competition: Baykar, Elbit and the geometry of a new arms market

### Baykar and the Bayraktar legacy

Ukraine's rise as a defense exporter does not happen in a vacuum. Its primary competitors in the drone market are **Baykar of Turkey** — whose Bayraktar TB2 was the symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the war's early months — and Israeli firms **Elbit Systems** and **Rafael**, which dominate mid-tier drone and precision munitions markets globally.

The relationship with **Baykar** is complex. Turkey supplied Ukraine with the TB2 drones that halted early Russian armored advances. But **Baykar** is also **competing for the same export contracts** as Ukrainian firms — in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. The Ukrainian drone industry, born partly from operational experience with **Baykar**'s technology, now threatens to displace it in several key market segments, particularly short-range tactical drones where Ukrainian production costs are significantly lower.

### Israel: partner and competitor simultaneously

The Israeli dimension is more politically sensitive. **Elbit and Rafael** supply systems that Ukrainian forces use, through circuitous channels that both governments officially don't discuss. At the same time, both companies compete with Ukrainian firms for European and **Indo-Pacific** procurement contracts. The Oko Camera story — Israeli thermal sensor supplier, unable to ship directly, 10% intermediary commission — illustrates the **productive friction** of an arms market where allies are simultaneously suppliers, competitors and geopolitical constraints.

What **Eurosatory** 2026 made visible is that **Ukraine is no longer a customer in this market**. It is a supplier. That transition — from arms recipient to arms exporter — is one of the most significant strategic shifts in European defense since the end of the Cold War. Its implications for **NATO** burden-sharing, EU defense autonomy and the global arms trade will unfold over the next decade.

*Ukraine went from asking for Stingers in 2022 to competing with Elbit and Baykar in 2026. That sentence still surprises me every time I write it. The story of this war is, among other things, the story of a country that refused to accept the identity of victim — and built an arms industry to prove it. I find that worth bearing witness to, even amid all the moral complexity it carries.*

## AI, computer vision and the autonomous threshold

### The automation of target selection

Across the Ukrainian pavilion at **Eurosatory** 2026, one theme recurred with the frequency of a structural pattern: **artificial intelligence integrated into the targeting chain**. Computer vision systems that automatically detect and classify military targets. Neural networks that assess thermal signatures and identify platform types. Autonomous terminal guidance that operates without radio communication — making electronic jamming irrelevant in the final meters of a strike.

These are not experimental prototypes. They are production systems with field deployment data. The Shrike 10CV, the Oko Pro, the SHARK-M — all incorporate AI-driven automation at different points in their operational loops. The trend line is clear: **every generation of Ukrainian drone and ISR system is more autonomous than the last**, and the speed of that automation increase is driven by battlefield necessity rather than academic research timelines.

### The accountability gap and the legal vacuum

No international treaty currently governs the deployment of AI-guided autonomous weapons systems in active conflict. The **Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)** has discussed the issue since 2014 without reaching binding consensus. Meanwhile, Ukraine has deployed dozens of systems that meet the functional definition of autonomous lethal weapons — and multiple other countries, watching Ukraine's results, are accelerating their own programs.

The accountability chain breaks precisely at the most consequential point: the moment of lethal decision. A human operator tasks the system. An algorithm executes the terminal engagement. When the algorithm makes an error — targeting a civilian vehicle, misclassifying a hospital as a command post — the legal framework for assigning responsibility is **genuinely unclear**. Military commanders, defense contractors, software engineers and procurement officers all have partial responsibility and full deniability. That is not an acceptable state of affairs. But it is the current one.

*We are building autonomous lethal systems faster than we are building the legal frameworks to govern them. That is not a unique observation. But watching it happen in real time, on a battlefield, at scale, with venture capital flowing in and export contracts being signed — the gap between the technology and the ethics feels wider than I have ever seen it. I do not think we are taking that gap seriously enough.*

## Conclusion: Eurosatory 2026 and the world Ukraine is building

### What eighty firms in a pavilion actually mean

Eighty Ukrainian defense companies at **Eurosatory** 2026. Fifty-six deep strike drone systems. Eight million FPV units per year. Two hundred export contracts. Forty-five billion euros of industrial growth in four years. Those are not statistics about a war. They are the profile of a country that chose, under the most adverse conditions imaginable, to become something it had never been before: **a global military technology power**.

The world that emerges from this war — whenever it ends, on whatever terms — will include a Ukrainian defense industry that cannot be unmade. The engineers, the IP, the operational data, the international partnerships, the export contracts: they exist now. They will continue to exist. The question is whether Ukraine will retain sovereign control over what it has built, or whether the post-war investment wave will gradually transfer ownership of the war's industrial legacy to external actors with different interests.

### The moral weight of what we are witnessing

There is a version of the **Eurosatory** story that is straightforwardly inspiring: a democratic country, under existential assault, transformed its industrial base and proved that innovation thrives under pressure. That version is true. There is also a version where the global arms market absorbed Ukraine's suffering as product development cost, and where the ethical questions about autonomous lethal systems, Chinese component dependencies and venture capital extraction were deferred until the moral urgency of survival had passed.

Both versions are true simultaneously. The duty of honest reporting — and honest reading — is to hold them both, without collapsing the complexity into a simple narrative of triumph or tragedy. Ukraine at Eurosatory 2026 was extraordinary. It was also unsettling. Keeping both those responses alive seems, to me, the minimum that the weight of the occasion requires.

*Ukraine at Eurosatory 2026 is not a story about war. It is a story about transformation — survival elevated to competence, necessity converted into industrial excellence, desperation turned into global expertise. Every drone that works, every radar that survives a jamming attempt, every autonomous system that functions as designed under fire is proof that a nation, when its existence is threatened, can discover capabilities it did not know it had. That is the lesson of Eurosatory 2026. And it changes everything about how we think about defense innovation.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Censor.net — Eurosatory 2026 results for the Ukrainian defence industry — June 2026](https://censor.net/en/news/4010364/eurosatory_2026_exhibition_results_for_the_ukrainian_defence_industry)

- [TechTimes — Eurosatory 2026: largest defense exhibition in history opens in Paris — June 15, 2026](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318374/20260615/eurosatory-2026-largest-defense-exhibition-history-opens-today-paris.htm)

- [Army Recognition — Ukraine expands Eurosatory 2026 presence from 10 to 80 defense firms — June 2026](https://www.armyrecognition.com/archives/archives-defense-exhibitions/2026-archives-news-defense-exhibitions/eurosatory-2026/ukraine-expands-eurosatory-2026-presence-from-10-to-80-defense-firms-amid-war-with-russia)

### Secondary sources

- [Le Monde — Ukrainian defense manufacturers seek their footing as headliners at Eurosatory — June 19, 2026](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/19/ukrainian-defense-manufacturers-seek-their-footing-as-headliners-at-eurosatory-arms-fair-in-paris_6754659_4.html)

- [EU Perspectives — Paris saw the future of defence: can Europe keep pace? — June 2026](https://euperspectives.eu/2026/06/paris-saw-the-future-of-defence-can-europe-keep-pace/)

- [Milmag — Ukrainian SkyFall drones at Eurosatory 2026 — June 2026](https://milmag.pl/en/ukrainian-skyfall-drones-at-the-french-eurosatory-2026-trade-show/)

- [UNN — From armaments to cyber-defense: Eurosatory 2026 kicks off — June 2026](https://unn.ua/en/news/from-armaments-to-cyber-defense-the-largest-defense-exhibition-eurosatory-2026-kicks-off-tomorrow)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/essai-l-ukraine-a-eurosatory-2026-de-la-survie-a-la-puissance-d-innovation-milit