And just like that, day one of CEL 2025 has come to a close. Attendees were lucky enough to hear from both sides of the innovative coin that is Ukraine’s military industrial complex: featuring Sergeii Vysotskiy who represented Ukraine’s highly innovative industry and Colonel Oleksandr Korotchenko who in turn represented Ukraine’s highly adaptive military.  

Sergii Vysotskiy from the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries gave the audience an incredibly detailed lowdown on the continual game of technological conflict with Russia, which is defined by sometimes instantaneous implementation of a system and then its counter. This technological conflict Vysotskiy believed is well represented through the use of wire-guided FPV drones. 

While these drones are unable to be downed by conventional jammers, the Ukrainians have found other innovative ways to cope with this new introduction to the battlefield. Some counters that have proven effective against this innovation include putting drone nets above roads, developing new radars to detect these UAVs, and then sending Ukrainian FPV drones to destroy these assets before they do serious harm to Ukrainians. 

Representing the adaptive military, Colonel Korotchenko set out the tall task the country has in front of it in its third year of war. Not only were the daunting tasks set out for the audience, but a tremendous amount of progress has been made since the full-scale invasion in 2022. 

Before 2022, the Ukrainian State Special Transportation Service only had 50 demining specialists in its ranks: now that number is around 5,000 experts. And this amount of progress is indicative of just how much Ukraine has adapted to new developments in the war. Additionally, the country has made a Herculean effort by building hundreds if not thousands of concrete bunkers, reinforcing countless existing trench lines with reinforced metal walls, and draping them with drone nets.