Traditional defense procurement systems couldn’t save Ukraine when Russia invaded in February 2022. It built a different one based on rapid iteration, frontline demand, verified performance, and competition. In First Breakfast’s latest interview, UFORCE co-founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy explains how Ukraine shifted from buying hardware to buying battlefield outcomes—and how his drone company is scaling Ukraine’s most effective tech and bringing it to the West. Traditional defense programs spend years moving from requirements to production. Ukraine asks users what they need, fields an imperfect system quickly, gathers combat data, and improves it. Rogynskyy argues that future weapons may never reach maturity at the level of an Abrams or F-35: by the time a system approaches “perfection,” the battlefield will have made it obsolete. Ukraine’s acquisition system turns frontline performance into demand signals. Units earn points for verified kills and spend them through the Brave1 Market, where they can compare products, check inventories, read reviews, and request rapid delivery. The government then uses this data to identify successful systems and place larger orders. This is the meritocracy of the battlefield: equipment that works earns its place on the front line. Equipment that fails disappears. Competition produces many options, while operational data helps users and officials separate effective systems from the rest. UFORCE is now trying to bring combat-proven Ukrainian technology—including MAGURA unmanned boats, Nemesis bomber drones, and Liut ground vehicles—to Western markets. After years of stress-testing its products in the most ferocious combat zone on Earth, UFORCE’s new challenge is persuading Western buyers to think more like their Ukrainian counterparts. Will it succeed?

Drones are forcing a fundamental reordering of combined-arms warfare. America’s response must reach beyond production and procurement to the way its military organizes, trains, and fights. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces was built from the ground up for the new way of war. @DanFMadden and Dom Ventimiglia of @squadra_vc trekked to USF's operations center to see how it works. They met Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, whose unit—the Birds of Magyar—integrate reconnaissance drones, FPV strike drones, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, and battlefield analytics into a single combat system. The results are lethal. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces achieve 33% of the country’s military’s effects with fewer than 3% of its personnel. In NATO exercises, small Ukrainian unmanned units have obliterated conventional formations, including American armored forces. This lethality is the result of an organizational approach that connects battlefield operations directly to technical talent and industry. Commanders use operations research to assess effectiveness. Engineers iterate capabilities. Verified strikes earn units “ePoints” that they can spend on preferred systems through an Amazon-like procurement platform, creating a feedback loop between battlefield performance and capability development. These arrangements present difficult tradeoffs; they can’t simply be copied by larger forces with global interests, like our own. But they demand urgent study and adoption on our terms. The newly announced AUTOWARCOM shows the United States is moving to develop unmanned forces suited to its own strategic priorities, strengths, and operational challenges. But this is only the beginning of the age of autonomy—a revolution in warfare as far reaching as the longbow and the cannon, and as Ukraine shows more lethal.

.@GlennNye recently returned from a trip to war-torn Ukraine. Today, he shares what he saw with First Breakfast: Ukraine’s battlefield advantage depends on more than the drones it builds. It depends on how quickly soldiers and manufacturers can improve them together. More than four years into Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukrainian forces are locked in a relentless cycle of adaptation. Capabilities that work today may need to be redesigned tomorrow—or replaced with something entirely new. In this cycle, dynamism and innovation are survival skills; standing still kills. This life-or-death cycle has given rise to a defense production ecosystem that the West must study and emulate. Thousands of Ukrainian suppliers compete to meet needs communicated directly from the field. Military brigades have meaningful budget autonomy to choose equipment. Ukraine’s Brave1 marketplace connects those buyers with producers, helping product development respond to operational results. The resulting innovation loops can close in days. The United States can’t merely copy Ukraine’s model. Our circumstances and interests are different; and for now, thankfully, we lack the urgency of existential war. But Ukraine’s approach nonetheless raises a pressing question for American defense reform: how much faster could our industrial base adapt if more military units had the authority to buy, test, and reward the equipment that delivers results? For American policymakers and industry leaders, the challenge extends beyond identifying promising Ukrainian technologies. It means examining the purchasing authorities, incentives, and relationships that allow improvements to reach soldiers while they are still useful. Importing a successful drone design offers a temporary advantage. Building an ecosystem that continually produces better designs could offer something far more durable.

As America reindustrializes, industries that are starved for technical talent should study the U.S. Navy’s nuclear training pipeline. Under Admiral Hyman Rickover, the Navy proved that ordinary recruits can transform into elite technical operators through rigorous academics, hands-on qualification, relentless standards, and real responsibility. The Navy nuclear model is simple yet demanding. Students first master fundamentals: math, physics, reactor theory, thermodynamics, electrical and mechanical systems, chemistry, and radiological controls. They must explain, calculate, defend, and prove understanding. Then they move to real nuclear plants, where theory becomes action through oral checkouts, evaluated watches, drills, and qualification under pressure. This rigorous training works because of the culture of excellence instilled by Rickover himself. “Good enough” is not good enough. Competence is built through repetition, ownership, hard study, and instructors who know both the equipment and how to develop people. Qualification is only the beginning. Continuous training, audits, daily drills, critiques, and root-cause analysis keep standards from decaying. Civilian industry can’t simply copy the Navy. Companies can’t compel their employees the way the military can. But they can adapt the principles: paid intensive training, labs, simulations, mentored on-the-job qualification, clear standards, frequent evaluation, strong instructors, career ladders, and retention incentives tied to real advancement. Manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, defense production, data centers, and advanced nuclear all need this mindset. If these industries want workers, they will have to grow their own. Rickover’s legacy is about more than nuclear submarines. It is proof that excellence can be engineered. If America wants to rebuild its industrial strength, it must stop waiting for talent to appear and start replicating the pipelines that can produce it.

Read the full article from @glittle2026 and Ian Crone: firstbreakfast.com/p/combat-…

In 1980, Detroit thought it was losing to Japan on fuel economy and labor costs. It was actually losing on something far more consequential: the Toyota Production System. Toyota had integrated workers, suppliers, engineers, logistics, and quality control into a continuously learning enterprise. By the time Detroit understood what was happening, it had fallen far behind. Something similar is happening now with America’s defense industrial base. The U.S. still has extraordinary advantages: world-class engineers, innovative companies, leading research institutions, unparalleled allies, and more. But these strengths are treated as a collection of programs rather than as a system that adapts and improves over time. Program offices optimize individual weapons. Contractors optimize contracts. Suppliers optimize schedules. Each performs its assigned mission while the ecosystem underperforms. Leaders can see which ships are where but the supplier bottlenecks that are constraining an entire portfolio of missiles are invisible. Meanwhile, China is operating an integrated industrial system: large, well-coordinated, adaptive, and inherently dual-use (drones, ships, autos, etc.). The solution is treating industrial power as a systems problem. We call this War Machine. Artificial intelligence and modern software can now create what the defense ecosystem lacks: visibility across the fragmented base, feedback loops connecting operators to factories to suppliers, and the speed to identify constraints before schedules slip. The goal is not a better dashboard but a shared operating picture connecting demand with production capacity, workforce, supplier risk, and delivery timelines. Detroit's mistake was believing it was competing car against car when it was competing system against system. America can’t afford to repeat the error in defense today, when the stakes are higher and the margin of error narrower.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released “Science: A New Golden Age,” a comprehensive R&D roadmap that represents the most significant rethink of American science and innovation since Vannevar Bush wrote “Science, the Endless Frontier.” The report challenges how the federal government funds research. And it could shape where American innovation happens. Here’s how. THE PRIMACY OF PEOPLE Instead of channeling money through universities, it proposes directing resources directly to scientists with grants that are portable if recipients move institutions or start companies. It advocates for longer funding horizons and empowers program managers to make substantial bets on breakthrough research, similar to DARPA's portfolio approach. The report argues that the old, institutional model of R&D is bloated and unsuited to developing long-term talent and commercial breakthroughs. Universities extract significant overhead while relying on temporary PhD candidates for core research. Academic incentives prioritize publications over genuine exploration. This model, the report argues, undermines long-term knowledge retention and risk-taking. PROVING GROUNDS FOR INNOVATION Beyond funding, the report emphasizes that innovation requires ecosystems for testing and tinkering. It highlights the importance of testing infrastructure like the proving grounds that developed American aerospace in the last century. New public-private research organizations, mission-focused consortia, and tight integration between scientific breakthroughs and domestic manufacturing capacity are equally essential. PRODUCTION POWER The report also stresses the importance of linking innovation to production. Too often, the United States has invented cutting-edge tech only for foreign countries to scale and produce that tech. American taxpayers ended up funding the prosperity and power of other countries. The lesson is clear: American innovation must translate to American production. The report is sure to provoke the administrators and institutions who depend on the old model of science and innovation funding. But a new era of technological competition calls for new approaches, and this report deserves serious attention from policymakers, researchers, and regional leaders. Read @ThomasLDay’s full assessment of the OSTP report and the opportunity for regional innovation. 👇

Daryl Wieland: Get the allies involved.

Chase Dalton: Send a *real* demand signal by putting a price on the wartime outcomes you want.

.@vc: Launch the materials Manhattan Project