Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.
This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.
Resin 3D printing has opened up a whole new scale of resolution for hackers, but the technology can go still finer; commercial micro-SLA and two-photon polymerization printers can print items with sub-micron feature sizes, but the machines are well out of reach for hackers. There’s more than one way to get such high resolution, though, as [Diffraction Limited] demonstrated with his micron-scale resin printer.
The printer builds on [Diffraction Limited]’s previous micro-manipulator and fiber-coupled laser. The micro-manipulator holds the end of the optical fiber just in front of the build plate, which is coated with resin. A 405-nm laser shines through the fiber, curing the resin in a narrow cone in front of the fiber’s core, which the micro-manipulator can trace in a pattern to build up objects, much like an FDM printer. Since the fiber’s inner core is only three microns across, the cured resin shears cleanly away from it when the fiber moves. Since the principle is so similar to an FDM printer, a standard slicer could be used to generate the tool paths.
Early testing proved that the principle worked, but the resin wasn’t absorbent enough for very high resolutions; UV light passed through previously cured resin too easily, limiting the minimum layer height. A UV-absorbent dye dissolved in the resin solves this by limiting the light’s penetration depth. [Diffraction Limited] found that curcumin, the natural dye responsible for turmeric’s bright yellow colour, worked well for this; as an added bonus, alcohol easily extracts it from turmeric powder. This solved the resolution issues well enough for [Diffraction Limited] to print a series of Benchies 150 µm long, a Stanford bunny dwarfed by a human hair, and a few other microscopic pieces. Conveniently, the curcumin dye leaves the printed objects slightly fluorescent under UV light, making them easier to pick up under a microscope.
Australian researchers have built a 3D-printed titanium structure that floats in water and keeps floating even after significant damage, according to a study led by RMIT University. The material is a lattice made of hollow, interconnected titanium struts filled with polyurethane foam. Researchers said it withstands seawater exposure and is stronger than the stainless steel […]
Manufacturing company Quickparts announced a nearly $6 million investment in its Seattle Aerospace & Defense Center of Excellence, adding 12 Stratasys NEO 3D printing systems across its facilities in the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, the company said Tuesday. The deployment is the company’s second major capacity investment in 18 months, following […]
An artillery shell won’t explode without one small part screwed into its nose or tail: the fuze. The U.S. Army just signed a $712.5 million contract to keep a steady supply of them coming. Action Manufacturing Co., based in Bristol, Pennsylvania, won the contract to build, inspect, test, package and deliver M739A1 point detonating and […]
From left, Marc Cummings, Life Science Washington; Snehal Patel, Sana Biotechnology; Joe Horsman, Madrona Venture Group; Rebecca Bryant, Fred Hutch Cancer Center; and Alex Zanghellini, Arzeda, at a Seattle forum hosted by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photo / Sydney Jackson)
Arzeda designs enzymes for products ranging from laundry detergent to stevia. But when it comes time to manufacture at commercial scale, the Seattle-based startup often has to look overseas.
That’s why, when a federal biotechnology commission visited Seattle on Tuesday, the industry came forward with a problem: They have the science, but lack the infrastructure and workforce pipeline to keep innovation on U.S. soil.
Arzeda’s designs reach an estimated 1.8 billion consumers worldwide, and the company has spent the better part of two decades building its technology. The company’s enzymes, sometimes designed in days rather than weeks thanks to AI, are largely manufactured in Western Europe and India — with one U.S. contract manufacturing partner in Wisconsin.
Finding domestic manufacturers with the expertise and capacity to make these specialized proteins has been difficult, CEO Alexandre Zanghellini said. And for a company trying to commercialize new biotechnology, he added, manufacturing delays can be “catastrophic.”
The federal group visiting Seattle — the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology — was created by Congress to address these kinds of problems. Since 2022, the team of 11 bipartisan experts have examined how biotech intersects with national security, and what the U.S. needs to do to remain competitive with China.
Last year, the commission drafted a report to Congress with 49 recommendations spanning at least $15 billion in federal investment over five years, with policies to get more private capital into biotechnology, build domestic manufacturing capacity, strengthen the workforce and reduce vulnerabilities in the supply chain.
Now, with the commission sunsetting in December, its members are taking their case around the country.
The science is here, the infrastructure isn’t
In Seattle, the urgent matter is finding a way to keep biotechnology breakthroughs in the United States. Alexander Titus, a commission member who has headed AI-focused biotech initiatives in Seattle and nationwide, said Washington stands out for its early innovation and research.
National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology commissioners Alexander Titus, left, and Paul Arcangeli speak with attendees at a Seattle biotech forum on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photo / Sydney Jackson)
“Companies like Arzeda are having pretty serious leadership roles in the AI and bio space,” he told GeekWire. “A lot of the work we have done in the commission has revolved around helping the U.S. meet the moment when it comes to this nexus.”
Institutions like the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Allen Institute have helped build a deep life-sciences ecosystem in Washington. UW’s Institute for Protein Design, led by 2024 Nobel Prize winner David Baker, has spun out more than 20 companies.
One is Arzeda, which has an increasingly fast agentic workflow that can fine-tune a model, suggest the next experiment, and allow researchers to test thousands of sequences in a single round. The company’s first AI-designed commercial product was a stevia ingredient launched in 2024; it’s now negotiating a $44 million contract with the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency related to biothreat response.
While technology is moving quickly, the infrastructure needed to commercialize it is not — creating what Seattle biotech leaders called a “valley of death” between research and manufacturing.
The U.S. has federal funding for basic research, as well as a venture-capital system that can finance early-stage discoveries. But once a company needs to build or access physical infrastructure for commercial-scale manufacturing, the financing becomes much harder. Venture capital investors don’t see the returns attractive enough, Zanghellini said. Banks aren’t eager to finance them, either.
The pull of overseas manufacturing
Meanwhile, China has spent two decades making biotechnology a strategic priority, and its 2026 Five-Year Plan doubles down on areas including biomedicine, biomanufacturing, pharmaceuticals and brain-computer interfaces. For U.S. companies in the race, that can create an uncomfortable incentive: If the infrastructure is cheaper and faster somewhere else, that’s where the work often goes.
Last year, Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology canceled plans for a manufacturing plant that was supposed to employ hundreds of workers in Bothell, Wash., instead opting for a contract manufacturer elsewhere to cut costs. Snehal Patel, the company’s executive vice president and chief technical officer, said on Tuesday he’s optimistic the Seattle area could compete on speed and cost with China’s fully integrated supply chain — with the right resources.
Ideally, manufacturing facilities in the U.S. would offer flexibility and knowledge in different products and processes, while ensuring trade secret protection.
The commissioners recognize this need; among their recommendations for Congress is a nationwide manufacturing network for precommercial, bioindustrial product scale-up. That could address the problem Seattle companies face: a startup shouldn’t have to choose between sending manufacturing overseas or trying to build an entire facility itself.
The commission has also recommended requiring companies to disclose points of supply-chain vulnerability in foreign countries of concern. If a geopolitical conflict disrupts the supply of medicines or other biological products, Titus said, the consequences can reach Americans far from any battlefield.
“Being able to keep and maintain our leadership in certain industries allows us to have the edge in any given situation,” he said. “We want our industries to be able to produce here…it’s truly national security in the broadest sense at this point.”
Building the workforce pipeline
To accomplish this, companies need a stronger industrial biomanufacturing workforce.
Rebecca Bryant, Fred Hutch’s director of government relations and a former staffer for Rep. Adam Smith, said while Washington trains well for research, there’s no equivalent pipeline into entry-level biomanufacturing jobs. Titus sees the issue as part of a broader problem of “bioliteracy” — that biology should be a basic problem-solving tool in the same way that engineering, chemistry and computing are, rather than a specialized field understood by few.
In Washington, the Hutch Advance partnership with Shoreline Community College trains and places lab technicians, while Sana Biotechnology has worked on a model for moving workers into biomanufacturing. Seattle industry leaders suggested a state or federally-supported workforce consortium to bolster the effort. Meanwhile, the commission has urged Congress for more biomanufacturing training support.
According to the commission, the next three years will determine whether the U.S. remains the global leader in biotechnology or cedes the future to China. Of the commission’s 49 recommendations, Titus said, 26 have been written into law in some capacity. The next step is in the hands of Congress, federal agencies, states and the industry itself.
An undisclosed pharma company signed a 21-year lease for the former Seagen property in Everett. Photo via Breakthrough Properties.
A bio-manufacturing facility in Everett, Wash., which was built by Seattle biotech giant Seagen but never opened under its Pfizer ownership, is getting a new lease on life.
Breakthrough Properties, a life sciences real estate company, said Friday that it has acquired the 270,000-square-foot facility at 215 Shuksan Way for $78 million and leased the entire campus for 21 years to an unnamed global biopharmaceutical company.
Seagen invested approximately $350 million to build out the facility, which was designed for drug manufacturing, quality-control labs, warehousing and distribution. But the company never moved in after drug maker Pfizer acquired Seagen for $43 billion in 2023.
“Pfizer regularly evaluates our manufacturing network to ensure capacity is effectively utilized based on projected product demands,” the company said in a statement to GeekWire in 2024. “After careful evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to wind down construction of the site.”
The facility sits about 25 miles north of Seattle along the I-5 corridor and is Breakthrough Properties’ first investment in the Puget Sound region.
The deal comes as pharmaceutical companies increase investment in U.S. manufacturing capacity. Breakthrough said major drugmakers have announced more than $600 billion in recent commitments to expand domestic production and strengthen supply chains.
The Everett facility was part of Seagen’s broader manufacturing expansion before the company was acquired by Pfizer for $43 billion. GeekWire previously reported on Seagen’s plans for the 270,000-square-foot Everett facility.
Breakthrough Properties is a joint venture between global real estate company Tishman Speyer and biotech investment firm Bellco Capital. A spokesperson for the company, which owns and develops life sciences properties in the U.S. and Europe, declined to provide details on the new tenant or the move-in date.
Over the last decade, global food brands have shifted from selling in India to manufacturing there, and those that moved early are seeing margin and supply chain advantages. Whether it is PepsiCo installing a flavor manufacturing plant in Ujjain or General Mills establishing a new production and distribution line in Nashik, global brands are keen to invest in and explore opportunities in food manufacturing in India.
India has changed from being a large consumer market into a global manufacturing powerhouse that can fundamentally change a brand’s COGS, supply-chain risk, and speed to market. This can be observed in the way multiple consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands view this tropical nation.
As the global supply chain rewires for resilience and cost efficiency, India has emerged as a strategic production base that improves profit margins for global brands without compromising product quality, safety, or consistency. This rare combination is transforming India from the “World’s Farm” into the “World’s High-Tech Kitchen.”
While we will discuss the reasons behind why global brands are opting to manufacture food in India, government policies such as 100% Foreign Direct Investment under automatic routes and the development of Mega Food Parks for contract manufacturing are significantly lowering the entry barriers into manufacturing.
5 Reasons Why India is the World’s Rising Food Manufacturing Capital
India is no newcomer in food processing. From refining sugarcane juice into granulated sugar crystals and executing the historic White Revolution, India has historically been at the forefront of food innovation and industrialization. Today, the Indian market is the primary focal point for CPG brands, food innovators, and private-label entrepreneurs due to its strong domestic demand and export capabilities.
Reason 1: The Source of Abundance
With almost 15 unique agro-climate zones, India offers consistent sourcing availability of diverse high-quality raw materials right at the factory door. From spices and vegetables to pulses and dairy, India’s agricultural scale is unmatched, bypassing import dependency drastically.
Capitalizing on this advantage and sourcing directly at the origin eliminates international freight costs for raw ingredients, mitigates seasonal supply disruptions, and guarantees farm-to-pouch freshness.
#1 Producer: Milk, Pulses, Spices, and Sugar.
#2 Producer: Fruits and Vegetables (F&V), Rice, and Wheat.
Global Millet Leader: India produces over 40% of the world’s millet, leading the “superfood” consumer race.
Few countries offer this level of vertical integration from farm to factory. Whether an innovator plans to make a global flavor profile or develop snacks, cereals, and health foods, manufacturing closer to the source can mitigate a large share of total production costs.
Food production often requires a mix of automated processing, quality control, manual handling, packaging, cleaning, maintenance, and warehouse operations. Amidst all these processes, India’s biggest food manufacturing advantage lies in its skilled and semi-skilled labor.
Manufacturing Food in India provides a real opportunity with lower wages when brands are increasingly looking for reliable productivity at competitive cost. With a large workforce, expanding technical training, and growing experience in modern food processing environments, brands can take advantage of lower per-unit costs, dramatically reducing the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for food processing.
Here is a table explaining why food manufacturing in India often reaps benefits that are found nowhere else in the world.
By processing at the origin, brands can realize better pricing for processed goods. Food manufacturers in India have favorable conditions for areas like;
Facility Operations
Secondary Packaging
Warehousing Support
Quality Inspection Labor
Maintenance and Plant Services
Certain Back-Office and Compliance Functions
These savings compound across the value chain and collectively create a major margin impact.
Reason 3: The Logistics Miracle: Retort Packaging:
The food supply chain in India has historically been fragmented. With a heavy reliance on road transport and underdeveloped port infrastructure, logistics cost as high as 14% of GDP, which is approximately 30% to 40% higher than global benchmarks. A significant factor in these rising costs was post-harvest wastage and under-optimized cold chains and storage infrastructure.
Under the latest initiatives, the Indian government has focused largely on reducing logistics costs to less than 10% of GDP with the introduction of new rail lines, highways, ports, and sea protocols. Furthermore, advanced technology like high-pressure processing, modified atmosphere packaging, and retort technology is reducing wastage significantly.
Retort technology in particular is turning out to be an ultimate logistics advantage for cross-border trade. With a three-step process, the retort packaging ensures food remains shelf-stable for 12–24 months without a fridge.
Clean Label Advantage: Because the process sterilizes the product within the package, no preservatives or artificial additives are required, meeting the global demand for “Clean Label” ingredients.
No Cold-Chain Dependency: Eliminating the need for refrigerated shipping and storage removes the highest risk and cost factor in global logistics.
Reason 4: Global Regulatory Compliance
Today, food manufacturing companies in India are building for global shelves, not just local markets. Top-tier Indian manufacturers adhere to “gold standard” certifications, providing the safety proof required for Tier-1 global retailers.
BRCGS & US FDA: Compliance with the world’s most rigorous safety and quality benchmarks.
Halal & Kosher: Essential certifications for capturing global ethnic and specialty markets.
Reason 5: Agility in Innovation & Government Backing
Fast-growing brands are trapped. The market demands agile innovation and healthy options, but traditional Western manufacturing penalizes agility with prohibitive costs and rigid structures. Launching a new SKU in the U.S. can easily take more than 6 months. However, India works with agility.
The modern food manufacturing landscape in India offers low minimum order quantities (MOQs) for rapid R&D and market testing. This innovation is fueled by unprecedented government support, including the ₹10,900 crore Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and 25 operational Mega Food Parks, providing the physical and financial infrastructure to support global scaling. Ultimately, government support lowers barriers to entering India’s manufacturing ecosystem.
These five advantages make India a strategic food manufacturer. For brands looking to reduce manufacturing costs without compromising on quality, safety, or scalability, partnering with the right food manufacturer in India can create a significant long-term competitive advantage. The shift is already happening. The only question is: who moves first?
Why Contract Manufacturing is the Way Forward
Choosing India for manufacturing is just the beginning for global food brands; the main challenge lies in leveraging India’s advantages without the complexities of facility ownership. Here, contract manufacturing serves as a strategic solution, allowing brands to partner with established manufacturers rather than investing in infrastructure, equipment, and regulatory compliance.
A collaboration enables brands to concentrate on marketing and market expansion while their partners handle product development, production, and logistics. This allows access to experienced capabilities without the responsibility of factory ownership. For brands seeking a reliable food manufacturer in India, with speciality in Ready-to-Eat and Ready-to-Cook products, Regal Kitchen Foods brings the expertise to the table.
Partnering With Regal Kitchen Foods: A Global Shelf-Stable Convenience Platform
For food innovators and entrepreneurs, matching authentic regional flavors with Western palates is a real challenge that can only be solved with partnership. Here, Regal Kitchen Foods does not serve merely as a manufacturer; it functions as a global brand platform that leads brands that are looking to navigate India’s manufacturing engine.
Institutional Expertise: Regal Kitchen Foods is a private label food manufacturer in India, specializing in Ready-to-Eat (RTE) and Ready-to-Cook (RTC) solutions.
With a presence across 50+ countries, we blend authentic flavors with advanced food innovation. Regal Kitchen is a trusted RTE contract manufacturer for mainstream retail, private label, and food service.
Global Flavor Profile: Mastery in Mexican, Spanish, Italian, Thai, and Indian Cuisines
Clean Label Promise: No artificial flavors, additives, or preservatives
Rapid Prototyping: Translate kitchen concepts into commercial realities swiftly and accurately.
Turnkey Private Labeling & Multi-Niche Brands: Regal Kitchen’s portfolio demonstrates its versatility across categories:
Eat Regal: Global convenience staples.
Regganic: Organic and “better-for-you” solutions.
Pasta Zing: Fully cooked pasta convenience.
Grainico: Specialized grain and pantry staples (rice, lentils, and pulses).
Meals Delight: Indian ready-meals and meal kits.
Packaging Scale: With multi-line retort capacity, Regal Kitchen Food offers industrial scale across pouches, trays, and cans, reducing the risk for brands to test new concepts without spending millions of dollars on their own sterilization infrastructure.
The 5-Step Strategic Roadmap for Contract Food Manufacturing in India
Launching a cross-border line with RKFL eliminates the complexity of international business through a five-step strategic roadmap:
Concept Brief & Benchmarking: The first step is to align taste profiles, nutritional targets, and shelf-life requirements with specific target markets.
Innovation Center R&D: Creating small-batch samples with prototyping, recipe matching, and clean-label formulation for approval, ensuring the recipe is perfected before full production.
Agile Test Batching: Low MOQ production rounds for market testing and validation.
Packaging & Compliance: A rigorous “Double Check” of labels to ensure 100% compliance with the regulatory requirements of the destination country
Quality Clearance & Shipping: Final laboratory testing followed by direct delivery to your warehouse, ready for the retail shelf.
Conclusion
Scaling a modern food brand no longer requires the liability of owning a factory; it requires a partner with the right certifications, technical infrastructure, and direct access to raw materials. For brands evaluating their next manufacturing partner, the question is no longer simply whether India can manufacture at lower cost. It is whether the right food manufacturing partner can deliver the quality, compliance, and speed required for global shelves.
Food manufacturing in India is the sunrise sector for the global food industry. The ethos here is ‘Zero Effect, Zero Defect ’, which combines rigorous international audits with fully digitized traceability from farm to global shelf.
Partnering with Regal Kitchen Foods provides Risk Mitigation. By leveraging India’s raw material and cost arbitrage along with Regal Kitchen’s retort technology and global quality assurance, new brands can achieve unbeatable ROI.
Ready to scale your packaged food line or bring a new RTE concept to life?
Contact Regal Kitchen Foods today to begin the discovery process and secure your place in the future of the global food economy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an FSSAI state license mandatory for food manufacturing in India?
Yes, every food business needs a license from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to operate legally. A business may also need a “state” license depending on the food and business they make per annum.
What are the benefits of contract food manufacturing in India?
With contract food manufacturing in India, several big advantages like lower costs, fresh and abundant supply of raw materials, and high-tech tools follow. These factors allow a business to focus on marketing and innovation while experts handle the production, making your food supply chain much easier to manage.
Can food manufacturers in India develop products specifically for international markets?
Yes, they can! Many food manufacturers in India are shifting their focus towards Indian food exports. With advanced R&D, modern manufacturers are making products with specific tastes, colors, and health rules of different countries.
Can Regal Kitchen Foods develop customized recipes for international markets?
Yes, Regal Kitchen Foods has a special “Innovation Center” where authentic global flavors like Mexican, Spanish, Italian, Thai, and Indian Cuisines are formulated.
What certifications does Regal Kitchen Foods have for global food manufacturing?
They have many world-class safety and quality badges, including BRCGS, USFDA, Halal, Kosher, USDA Organic, and ISO. They also follow strict “Good Manufacturing Practices” to ensure everything is clean and safe.
Which international markets does Regal Kitchen Foods currently serve?
Regal Kitchen Foods currently serves more than 50 countries. This includes major markets like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
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This is the final article of our Drone Warfare series on Ukraine’s rise as a drone powerhouse. But Ukraine’s success story is not one it achieved alone. The country’s drone industry was built with the support of partners from around the world who helped Ukraine during its most difficult times. Here we look at Ukraine’s export strategy and how it can serve as a way to give back by sharing hard-earned battlefield experience and technology with the nations that helped make this success possible.
Battlefield Experience
For most of the war, Ukraine’s drone sector existed on the demand side of the defense market. The country needed huge volumes of FPV drones, interceptor drones and reconnaissance systems simply to keep pace with the battlefield. By 2026, that position began to change. Ukraine started to present itself not only as a state that needed drones, but as a state that could supply them, co-produce them, and teach others how to use them. In March 2026 President Volodymyr Zelenskiy discussed joint arms production with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten and said Ukraine was ready to export interceptor drones that are not needed on its own battlefield.
Interceptor drones and the latest AI developments. Source: Ukraine’s Arm Monitor
Ukraine is not trying to sell a platform developed in peacetime and polished for foreign buyers. It is offering weapons and systems that were shaped by daily combat against a technologically capable enemy. That gives Ukrainian exports a different value proposition. They are presented as battlefield-tested tools that have already survived the hardest possible proving ground.
The Export Model
Ukraine’s export strategy depends on the fact that it is producing more than it can immediately absorb on the front line in certain categories, especially interceptor drones. In June 2026 Ukraine said it could produce 2,000 interceptor drones per day, with about half potentially available beyond domestic needs, and that it could supply at least 1,000 interceptor drones a day to allies facing Shahed attacks if investment improves. That is the logic behind the export conversation. Ukraine is not opening the floodgates on every weapon it makes. It is identifying categories where production has moved beyond immediate domestic consumption.
Business Insider also reported that Ukraine wants to protect its own security first and only share technologies that do not compromise its battlefield position. That means exports are likely to focus on systems that are already partially superseded on the Ukrainian front, or on systems that can be co-produced under controlled conditions.
Europe
Europe is the most obvious destination for Ukraine’s export strategy because the continent is already moving in Ukraine’s direction. The Netherlands are going to spend €248 million on drones for Ukraine, with production split between the Netherlands and Ukraine. On 17 June 2026 the Netherlands pledged another €500 million for drones and air defense equipment. These are signs that European governments are beginning to fund drone production as an industrial activity.
The Drone Squad Fury unmanned aerial platform developed by OM Defense Systems on display at the Eurosatory defense exhibition in Paris, June 2026. Source: Militarnyi
The broader European defense picture points the same way. It was reported that G7 countries and the United States had agreed to allow Ukraine-based and European firms to produce long-range missiles and air defense systems under license. Europe is no longer only buying Ukrainian results, it wants to buy into the production model behind them.
Source: Airbus’ drone portfolio
The broader European defense market is also moving in Ukraine’s direction. For instance, Airbus partnered with the French counter-drone startup Alta Ares. Under the June 2026 memorandum of understanding, Airbus will integrate Alta Ares’ AI-guided interceptors, including the Black Bird and X-Lock systems, both combat-tested in Ukraine since 2024, into its Fortion IBMS command-and-control platform, connecting Alta Ares’ targeting software and interceptor drones to Airbus’ battle management systems to create a sensor-to-shooter chain against drone and cruise missile threats.
Middle East
The Middle East is the second major market because it faces a different but equally urgent drone threat. In March 2026 Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready to send instructors to the Middle East and export interceptor drones that are not needed at home. Business Insider added that Ukrainian officials see older Ukrainian counter-drone technology as still useful for allies facing Shahed attacks, even if those systems are already outdated by Ukraine’s own battlefield standards. A weapon does not need to be the newest model to be valuable if the user’s threat environment is less intense than Ukraine’s.
Ukrainian interceptor drone in open terrain (desert-like background works well for the Middle East angle)
That makes the Middle East a natural fit for Ukraine’s export model because the buyer often wants a system, not just a drone. The package includes interceptor drones, training, radar integration, and electronic warfare resilience. Zelenskiy explicitly framed the issue that way, saying that without radar coverage and software that can operate under jamming, an interceptor is not a real defender.
Production
The most interesting part of Ukraine’s export strategy is not the sale itself. It is the move toward co-production. The point of co-production is to make exports more durable and less vulnerable to disruption. It also lets allies develop industrial capacity while Ukraine keeps access to the newest combat-tested designs. The G7 agreement reported by The Guardian shows a model where production can be shifted into partner territory while still drawing on Ukrainian experience and requirements. That approach helps solve three problems at once. It spreads risk away from the battlefield. It makes procurement faster for partners. And it creates a legal framework for sharing sensitive technology without handing over full control of the most advanced systems.
The Financial Logic
The export strategy also has a budget logic. Drone exports and co-production can help bring in foreign money, expand industrial capacity, and reduce pressure on the domestic defense budget. The Netherlands’ funding would support drones and air defense equipment for Ukraine, while Ukraine’s officials see export volume as a way to unlock more production capacity. The practical idea is that external orders help keep factories busy, while revenue and investment help scale the next generation of systems.
Ukraine’s Drone Industry arrives in Düsseldorf. Source: DroneXL
This logic is important in wartime because the domestic state cannot fund every possible expansion on its own. Exports make production more sustainable. They also let Ukraine distribute risk across several partners rather than relying only on its own budget and wartime aid flows. In other words, the export strategy is partly about money, but it is also about industrial resilience.
Main Constraints
Ukraine’s export strategy is still tightly constrained by its own security needs. Ukrainian officials want to keep priority for domestic forces and treat exports as selective. That means the country is not trying to become a free-market weapons bazaar in the middle of a war. It is trying to manage surplus capacity without weakening the front line. There is also the issue of sensitivity. Not every system can be exported, and not every partner can receive the same level of access. Licensed production in allied countries solves part of that problem, but only part. The more advanced the system, the more likely it is to remain under stricter Ukrainian control. That is why the export strategy is likely to be layered. That means some hardware is going to be sold directly, while some systems will be co-produced, some software and training will be shared for integration, and some capabilities will stay in-house.
Strategic Value
Ukraine’s biggest advantage in the export market is not price alone. It is combat credibility. Allies are interested because Ukraine’s drones and counter-drone systems were developed in the harshest possible environment. A state that has spent years fighting under heavy electronic warfare pressure, missile strikes, and mass drone attacks has something to offer that many peacetime defense industries do not. That does not mean Ukraine will dominate global drone exports. Competition is still strong, and certification with production security all remain real obstacles. But the country has already crossed an important threshold, where it’s no longer only asking for help. It is now a partner that can supply systems, share production, and train others to fight the same kind of war.
Conclusion
Europe wants production. The Middle East wants interception. Ukraine wants revenue and industrial depth. That creates a new model built around selective exports and battlefield-tested expertise. Ukraine is no longer only defending itself with drones, but it is using drone expertise to build alliances. That is the meaning of its export strategy today.