NATO and Ukraine strengthen cooperation on innovation

On Monday (5 August 2024) NATO published a summary of the new NATO-Ukraine Innovation Cooperation Roadmap, previously endorsed by NATO and Ukrainian leaders at the Washington Summit. This agreement is a significant step forward in increasing NATO-Ukraine cooperation in the field of innovation in line with its five key objectives:

1. Ukraine’s ability to rapidly identify, scale and adopt technological innovation—and integrate it with traditional warfighting—is a fundamental pillar to Ukraine’s ability to counter Russia’s conventional military advantages in armour, artillery and manpower. The pace of innovation leveraging new technologies (including Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs)¹, dual-use technologies² and military technologies³) is increasing across the world. NATO, as well as Ukraine, are in a technological race against potential adversaries and strategic competitors. As the operational importance of these technologies is increasing, so is the potential for mutually beneficial cross pollination of technological developments and best practices between the Alliance and Ukraine.

Objectives

2. The aim of this Roadmap is to enhance two-way cooperation between NATO and Ukraine on innovation in a coherent manner, ensuring interoperability and predictability – with a focus both on meeting urgent requirements and ensuring long-term cooperation. Its objectives, therefore, are to:
   1. Support Ukraine’s urgent requirements where innovation can help provide asymmetric advantages and stopgap capability shortfalls;
   2. Help build capacity and resilience into the Ukrainian innovation ecosystem;
   3. Create synergies between the Alliance’s and Ukraine’s innovation ecosystems;
   4. Augment the Alliance’s readiness by promoting opportunities for NATO and Allied adoption of technologies and related doctrine, concepts of operations (CONOPs) and tactics developed in Ukraine, where applicable; and
   5. Help NATO adapt to and streamline its own processes to be fit-for-purpose for the fast pace of military innovation and technological change.

Delivery

3. Delivery of this Innovation Roadmap will be guided by the following principles:
   1. Responsive: focussing on operational needs, with a clear effects-based focus in capability development;
   2. Coherent: maximising common visibility over relevant activities carried out by Allies, Ukraine, NATO and other relevant actors, and on that basis maximising synergies, filling gaps, and reducing unnecessary duplications;
   3. Agile: being flexible and iterative;
   4. Fast: adapting innovation ecosystems to respond to urgent needs, with wartime innovation cycles at top of mind;
   5. Interoperable: building interoperability-by-design into collaborative efforts;
   6. Collaborative: leveraging the unique strengths of all actors within the Alliance’s and Ukraine’s innovation ecosystems;
   7. Responsible: adhering to NATO’s Principles of Responsible Use for EDTs.

NATO-Ukraine Innovation Activities 

4. New NATO-Ukraine activities launched by this Roadmap strengthens collaboration on (1) innovation policy enablers and (2) innovation ecosystems engagement across NATO and Ukraine, both critical to the development, adoption and integration of innovative solutions. These delivery areas will be operationalised by result-oriented (3) pilot activities and underpinned by a continuous exchange of (4) lessons learned.

(I) Innovation Policy Enablers

5. To develop, adopt and integrate EDTs at the speed of relevance in an interoperable way, NATO and Ukraine will closely collaborate on the development and implementation of a policy toolbox and on standardisation efforts.

(II) Innovation Ecosystem Engagement

6. Ukraine’s innovation ecosystem continues to expand, despite the Russian invasion, but lacks access to dual-use markets, risk capital and external expertise. The Alliance’s innovation ecosystem can benefit from lessons learned from Ukraine, notably through the forthcoming work of the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre, to strengthen rapid innovation, iteration and adoption mechanisms.
7. Allies encourage DIANA, as well as the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), to respectively establish links with relevant Ukrainian initiatives, including BRAVE1, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine’s Centre for Innovations and Defence Technologies Development and the Digital Army of Ukraine.
8. NATO and Ukraine will launch joint hackathons, challenges, and/or events together at least twice per year. Ukraine will share advance opportunities for sponsorship of hackathons through NUC(IHC), with requests for how Allies and NATO can participate (e.g., financially, through participating teams).

(III) Pilot Activities

9. NATO and Ukraine agree to launch pilot activities designed to fast track the principles underlying this Roadmap.

(IV) Lessons Learned

10. The implementation of this Roadmap will be underpinned by and feed into a continuous exchange of lessons learned to improve Ukraine’s and NATO’s ability to adopt and augment existing capabilities with EDTs; adapt commercial technologies for operational use; enhance operational experimentation; refine doctrine, CONOPs, and tactics, techniques and practices (TTPs) using innovative capabilities; and foster relationships with civilian companies and industry.

(IV) Coherent Implementation

11. Understanding Ukrainian short- and long-term needs, as well as opportunities for international collaboration, on dual-use technologies and EDTs is essential to delivering on the objectives in this Roadmap.
12. NATO will create and maintain an overview of ongoing international cooperation efforts linked to dual-use technologies and EDTs in support of Ukraine. This common picture will be developed with inputs from Ukraine, voluntary information sharing from Allies, and activities carried out under this Innovation Roadmap.
13. This overview should provide Allies and Ukraine options to enhance cooperation – which can be carried out bilaterally, multilaterally, through NATO when appropriate.
14. Ukraine may use the NATO-Ukraine Council Innovation and Hybrid Committee to communicate Ukrainian new technology needs to Allies. Based on this analysis and ongoing consultations with Allies and Ukraine, NATO would then:
    1. help amplify the Ukrainian demand signals,
    2. identify matchmaking opportunities,
    3. activate support from innovation ecosystems,
    4. leverage innovative procurement mechanisms when possible, and
    5. foster linkages with broader NATO work to support and cooperate with Ukraine.

Footnotes

1. Include transformative technologies that solve important challenges through the convergence of breakthrough science and engineering that have enormous potential for both national security and commercialisation.
2. A technology primarily geared for commercial markets that also has potential defence and security applications.
3. Technologies developed solely for military purposes.