Inside Ukraine’s Innovation Under Fire

Cipher Brief exclusive: Retired CW5 Joey Gagnard details how Ukrainian commanders are rewriting the rulebook on tech, tactics, and survival.

EXPERT Q&A —This week, after the Russian drone incursions into Poland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will train Polish representatives on the counter drone tactics that it has developed in the war.

Retired Chief Warrant Officer (CW5) Joey Gagnard, was on the ground in Ukraine this week and talks with Cipher Brief CEO and Publisher Suzanne Kelly about Ukraine’s ability to continue to innovate under fire. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Cipher Brief: You’ve been different parts of Ukraine this week and have spent some time along the front lines, talking with Ukrainian military leaders. What are they telling you about how this battle is progressing, how are things on the ground?

Gagnard: I’ll tell you that the battle is progressing exactly in the way that it has previously. As the Ukrainians make advances in technology, the Russians are adapting. They’re adapting their techniques and tactics for trying to impose costs against Ukrainians and vice versa. It still remains something of a rat race of technological development here in Ukraine. A lot of the commanders are super frustrated with the resource constraints that they have, but they’re doing the best they can. And I can tell you that the main thing that many Ukrainians have told us is that their biggest benefit – their biggest strength – is that morale remains high, and based on our own observations during our travels, I’ll tell you that that’s exactly the case.

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The Cipher Brief: The Cipher Brief was with you in Ukraine this past May, and there was a lot of focus on innovation and technology and getting information as quickly as possible from the battle space to the commanders and integrating that into the intelligence stream quickly. Have you seen anything during this visit that marks a significant change or a progression in that since May?

Gagnard: There are some significant advances that have been made here. Since we were here before, the Ukrainians have sped up the information flow from the front lines all the way back to the command centers where they’re making decisions on use of some of their weapon systems.

Unfortunately, some of the constraints that they have logistically, some of the weapon systems that they’re receiving – continue to run short. They’re still very dependent on Western support for some of the weapons systems that they don’t have, that they need in order to impose more costs against the Russians. But they’re making tremendous advances in terms of how they use information and the speed at which information is going from the point of capture back to the command centers.

The commanders are very aware that the way they were trained to do business is not going to be sufficient, and they’ve made adaptations to align more with NATO standards that they’ve obviously become aware of through their relationships with the different people here in country. I’m super impressed with the adaptations that the Ukrainian commanders continue to make, breaking away from the training and the doctrine that they were steeped in whenever they were coming up as young officers and young soldiers. Those commanders that do have military experience, you can see that paying dividends for them.

The most effective units seem to be adopting some different tactics, looking critically at the battle spaces that they’re operating in and at some of the technologies that they have at their disposal and they’re making maximum use of them. It’s extraordinarily impressive to watch what they’re doing with the resources they have.

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The Cipher Brief: We hear a lot about the challenges they’re facing. What opportunities do you see for the military in the next several months?

Gagnard: The Ukrainians are doing a phenomenal amount with the limited technology that they have. For the Ukrainian theater, the technology that they’ve developed during this conflict is absolutely the best thing out there, the best thing anywhere in the world right now, for this theater.

A lot of American companies are making great technology that is focused on different priorities. I think there are some real opportunities to invest in some of the tactics and some of the things that the Ukrainians are doing to better understand that in the West, especially with some of the policies that are coming out of the Pentagon, we are trying to make our defense industry more agile and more nimble.

I think there’s some real opportunities to foster those relationships with the Ukrainians and see how they’re doing business, see how they’ve tied industry into their defense ecosystem. I think that’s a major opportunity for us.

Similarly, some of the things that they’ve done with open source information presents real opportunities for our defense enterprise to take lessons from, frankly.

Aside from that, I’m still a huge advocate for having closer military integration, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Ukrainian Armed forces here in Ukraine. I think that that would make an outsized impact if we could somehow get combat soldiers involved with Ukrainian Armed Forces in any capacity. I think it would be welcomed and I think it would have an outsized impact on all of our strategic interests.

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