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When you walk into a UFORCE factory, at a clandestine location, you won’t be greeted with folks in lab suits and a quiet atmosphere.
Southern European rap music is blasting, a worker to your left is hammering loudly, while a second is readying a Ukrainian-looking agricultural tractor to pull a UFORCE unmanned surface vehicle to a ramp.
"You absorb this energy — people are doing what they're doing... and they're having fun," said CEO Oleg Rogynskyy.
A Magura USV, from UForce website.
Rogynskyy and his partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, have made waves by leading the company to the first-ever $1 billion valuation for a defense tech company with Ukrainian roots.
I’ve long argued that the Ukrainian defense ecosystem’s secret superpower is found in Zaporozhian Cossack history and culture.
A band of wild, hardened radicals who roamed the lands of present-day Ukraine from the 16th to 18th centuries, they lived in fortifications beyond the Dnipro rapids. Their processes for decision-making: decentralized, less-hierarchical, proto-democratic — all remind me of what I see in Ukrainian labs and warehouses where defense tech is being iterated.
The 19th century painting 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks' shows a group of cossacks haughtily writing an insulting letter to the Ottoman sultan.
When I shared the concept with Rogynskyy, he was quick to see the parallels.
“It kind of feels like Cossacks building boats, you know?” he says, of his company.
Investors in Ukraine are not just investing in company products; they’re investing in Ukrainian processes: the ability to adapt swiftly to changes in adversary technology or tactics.
In that context, workplace culture, vision and dynamics matter deeply.
“We believe we can help prevent World War III — if it hasn't started yet — by making defensive technology much more effective, through multi-domain unmanned highly autonomous systems,” he told The Arsenal. “Proven systems that have a much shorter learning cycle for the operators.”
The company produces USVs, UAVs, and UGVs. It also works from the other side of the issue, building counter-UAS. Beyond that they produce battlefield command and control software and training simulators.
Speed is a key concept in Ukrainian defense technology. UFORCE’s philosophy was pioneered by Honcharuk and his concept of combat hubs — a combat unit, R&D lab and drone manufacturer in one.
"You're no longer fighting for space. You're no longer fighting for square kilometers. What you're fighting for is time," Rogynskyy said, citing his partner’s innovation.
“Whichever team has the processes, TTPs, con ops, etc… a military unit optimized for speed of learning” is the one that will have the advantage, he added.
He recounted the words of a Western client who is about to sign a deal with them, and how the client understands UFORCE’s competitive advantage.
“‘Hey, look, we can buy some drones, sure. But rather we would like to understand how you guys do it with such fast adaptation and see if we can get even remotely there despite us not being in the fight,’'“ Rogynskyy recalled the person saying.
UFORCE’s growth is a case study for promising Ukrainian startups, but also a warning about how rules and culture can get in the way.
The big obstacle for building the first Ukrainian-founded defense tech unicorn was, ironically, to find talent to help it adapt to Western rules of business, financing and fundraising, Rogynskyy said — to become a more Westernized company.
The hiring of him as CEO, with his background as a serial founder in Silicon Valley is one data point, and their hiring of the former NATO DIANA general counsel is another.
“That level of talent, unfortunately, is not available in Ukraine,” he said. “UFORCE was able to tap into the best of the Western talent on top of the incredibly talented but less-experienced-in-these-things Ukrainians.”
Western board, Western lawyers, engineers from Silicon valley, accountants with knowledge of Western accounting standards — those things all cost a lot of money, and the Ukrainian capital and export controls have dampened the ability of other Ukrainian companies to make that leap.
Ultimately, Rogynskyy decided to register UFORCE in the United Kingdom and acquire the Ukrainian entities they wanted to bring together.
He’s cognizant that the aggregated company they’ve now put together are being prepared for a dark future ahead, a world with a lot more violence than we had been expecting 30 years ago.
“The investors who are investing in defense are making a bet that there'll be more war,” he said.
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Our publication will be putting up a paywall AT THE END OF THE MONTH.
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BONUS INFO:
CENTCOM, the theater command of the U.S. military in charge of the Middle East, released a list of the assets they’ve used in the last week and a half of war:
Note the inclusion of LUCAS drones — the Shahed-clone the U.S. military is using. Re: the rest — sounds expensive!
