An end to the war in Ukraine is still nowhere in sight, but weapons developers on both sides of the front line already have their eye on the next fight—not for territory, but for money and global influence. Nearly five years of relentless combat have turned Russia and Ukraine into rival laboratories for drones, electronic warfare and precision weapons, developed and refined under the most unforgiving real-world conditions imaginable. When the bombs stop falling, the factories, engineers and technologies forged by the war won't simply disappear.
Nor will the demand from foreign militaries eager to get their hands on cutting-edge, battle-tested weapons. Moscow and Kyiv will eventually stop shooting at one another, at least for a while. Yet any reprieve in front-line warfare will allow defense companies to shift their focus from arming their own soldiers to arming the rest of the world.
When war grinds to a halt, the business of it will boom. Russia was once the world’s second-largest arms exporter. Decades of Cold War innovation and Soviet-era relationships helped Moscow sell everything from jet fighters to tanks, missiles, and air-defense systems to dozens of countries.
Russia’s share of global major-arms exports collapsed from 21 percent in 2016-2020 to 6.8 percent in 2021-2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The reason for this steep deterioration is, of course, the war in Ukraine—Russian defense equipment that may have been destined for export could no longer be spared. Now, that same conflict, and the rapid innovation required to maintain an edge in it, is seen as a vehicle to revitalize Moscow’s defense exports.
At a gathering of Russian financiers, politicians and defense industry chiefs late last month, Andrei Bezrukov, chairman of Russia's Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies, laid out an ambitious vision. Winning the war is the immediate priority for Russia's drone manufacturers, but securing Russian technological leadership by 2050 is the ultimate goal. To get there, he said, developers need more flexible government contracts, opportunities to compete with one another and, crucially, the ability to sell their products overseas.
Alexey Chadayev, head of the Ushkuynik drone development center, warned that Western investors would inevitably back startups employing Ukrainian weapons developers after the war. Russian firms, he said, should prepare now to compete for customers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, turning their battlefield experience into a commercial advantage. But attracting private investment would require state defense contracts to offer profit margins of at least 15 percent, Chadayev added.
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