A year and a half ago, Ukraine was told it didn't have the cards. At this month's NATO summit in Ankara, we couldn’t find anyone who agreed with that sentiment. Radar, sensors, interceptors, and four years of combat knowledge nobody else possesses were in high demand. Then a political crisis at home put the question of who runs the war to the streets of Kyiv. Let's dig into it!

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THREE THINGS TO KNOW
If you read nothing else

On 15 July, President Zelensky dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, architect of the Drone Deal and much of what this newsletter covers. By morning, thousands were in the streets of Kyiv and cities nationwide with two demands: remove Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi, and bring Fedorov back. Six days later Syrskyi was out, replaced by Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, a commander the troops actually respect. One demand met; the other open, with escalation promised from 24 July.

Important: read past the palace intrigue; this was never really about two men. A society four years into an existential war took to the streets not over peace terms or mobilization, but over which theory of warfare it believes in: the old guard of massed ground assaults and Soviet-era hierarchy, or the new guard -- a drone-first, software-defined force built by a younger generation. The street picked the new guard. Ukraine has, definitively, turned its back on the old way of fighting.

And that verdict holds no matter where any one official lands. Fedorov may or may not return; it almost doesn't matter. The message to Zelensky was received - forward, not back - and the institutions that message built are already permanent: Brave1, the Drone Deals, and e-points are law, budget lines, and signed international agreements. Innovation is the flywheel now. [DeepState's June data shows why the fight got this loud: 84 sq km gross for Russia, and possibly negative net for a second straight month.]

→ The Counteroffensive (21 July) | NPR (16 July)

When we first started tracking this story to share with you, only six Drone Deals were signed. By 9 July it was nine, and as of this week Zelensky claims 27 partnership agreements in motion, 15 with NATO members. The first wartime export permit went out on 1 July to F-Drones, which has shipped 2,000 F10 strike drones to the US under its Pentagon Drone Dominance win. The caveat comes from the industry's own council: if even a few hundred manufacturers file, the licensing office drowns unless it staffs up. The bottleneck may be a far more common one - an overwhelmed administrative office.

→ Flight Global (1 July) | Aviation Week (9 July)

On 6 July, Russia struck Kyiv with 29 ballistic missiles; none were intercepted. On 8 July at the Ankara summit, Trump announced the US would license Ukraine to produce Patriot air-defense systems. By 20 July, Lockheed Martin and RTX confirmed early-stage discussions with the US government on how and where production could be established; industry sources expect initial output in Germany, with transfer to Ukraine after the war. Separately, Lockheed announced the PAC-3 ACE, a lower-cost interceptor targeting less than half the price of the PAC-3 MSE, built from simpler components for production in partner nations.

Our assessment: a license does not solve the near-term interceptor deficit. Supply chains and assembly lines take years, and Russia plans to produce up to 700 Iskander ballistic missiles in 2026. What changed is direction. The US is transferring production rights for its premier air-defense system, and its manufacturers are now designing cheaper interceptors for distributed production. Both moves acknowledge the problem Ukraine's domestic interceptor makers have been solving all year at $3–5K per intercept: cost per shot decides air defense.

→ AP (10 July) | Aviation Week (10 July)

THE VIEW FROM ANKARA
Firsthand from the NATO Summit

GP Justin Zeefe attended the summit in Ankara as part of the German Marshall Fund's Defense Tech Task Force, where he moderated a session on "Battle Labs of Today, Lessons for Tomorrow."

Highlights: The alliance is genuinely waking up, and real money got allocated: $50B in procurement, $40B for autonomous systems. But the spending logic still lags the war Ukraine has been teaching since 2022. I wrote up the three lessons I'd put in front of every procurement official, investor, and budget-writer in the alliance: shelf life (capacity beats inventory), razor blades (attritable warfare kills the sustainment tail, and the neo-prime math doesn't survive it), and microwaves (the foundry's best products won't be the cannons). Full argument at the link. Disagreement welcome; it was in Ankara, and that was the healthiest thing in the room.

→ READ: Three Lessons from Ankara [LINKEDIN ARTICLE]

SECTOR SIGNALS & EVOLUTION
What we see across the board

Global

Europe

Ukraine

FROM THE ROOMS WE’RE IN
What we hear that's not in the press

NOTABLE MEDIA
What we’re reading, listening to, and watching

Yaroslav Trofimov's WSJ analysis is the best front-line read this cycle: European chiefs of defense openly debating whether this is evolution or a gunpowder-scale revolution. The detail worth your time - Ukraine's "e-points" system, which lets brigades convert verified strikes into purchasing power and buy directly from manufacturers through a classified marketplace. Weapons as a subscription, procurement as a feedback loop. When the debate itself features that many four-star participants, the debate is the datapoint.

→ WSJ, Trofimov (6 July)

Mick Ryan's Lowy Institute paper is the uncomfortable inverse of the piece above: the evidence from Ukraine is fully visible, so why aren't Western institutions acting on it? His answer - promotion systems, risk-averse bureaucracies, procurement lag (the Pentagon's first inquiry into Ukrainian interceptor tech came 18 months behind the battlefield). His recommendation is one we've made ourselves: copy Brave1. Long, and worth it - even if already a few weeks old.

→ Lowy Institute, Mick Ryan (1 June)

FROM KYIV WITH LOVE
Ground level perspective

At Lyceum 237 in Kyiv, the ninth-grade prom went on as planned. The group waltz went on as planned. At its center, a boy named Yehor danced alone.

His partner, Masha Polska, fifteen, had rehearsed that dance for weeks. She was killed with her father and grandmother when a Russian missile struck their apartment building the night before the final rehearsal. When the school offered Yehor a replacement partner, he refused. He danced her part opposite an empty space while a recording of Masha rehearsing played behind the students.

We write in this newsletter about interceptor economics and export mechanisms, and we will keep writing about them, because they are how this ends. But the arithmetic of the war is not measured in cost-per-effect. It is measured in a fifteen-year-old's place in a waltz, held open by a boy who would not let it close. The dance went on. That is not a metaphor either.

→ NYT, O'Grady & Sholudko (30 June)

The pattern this issue is one-directional and unmistakable: primes moving in, exports moving out, banks moving up the stack, and a front line that has stopped moving at all. Four years ago Ukraine asked the world for closed skies. This month it walked into a NATO summit as the vendor. The window where this is still called an emerging market will not stay open long. We are on it. Climb aboard.

— the GFV Team