Former UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace believes that UForce’s main value for foreign customers is not in individual drones, but in Ukrainian combat experience, which the company can turn into ready-made defense solutions for Western markets.
Former UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace believes that UForce’s main value for foreign customers is not in individual drones, but in Ukrainian combat experience, which the company can turn into ready-made defense solutions for Western markets.
According to Forbes Ukraine, Wallace, who joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian-British defense tech company UForce as an independent director, believes that in the West it is no longer enough to simply sell a single drone or other piece of equipment. According to him, buyers need not one-off products, but a complete package: hardware, software, integration into units, training and further adaptation to the battlefield.
This is where, according to Wallace, Ukrainian companies have an advantage. UForce can rely not only on products like Magura, Nemesis, ground robotic platforms or combat control systems, but also on a practical understanding of how these solutions work in real war. He says bluntly that the Western market has for many years been buying expensive specialized systems that do not interact well with each other, while the war in Ukraine has shown the value of open architecture, rapid integration and a constant cycle of updates.
Separately, Wallace emphasized that it is combat testing of technologies that can help UForce compete with large Western manufacturers, which often have stronger marketing and lobbying capabilities. According to his assessment, foreign customers are increasingly less willing to buy beautiful presentations without proven results and are increasingly looking for solutions that have already caused real damage to the enemy and can be quickly integrated into the defense of a particular country.
UForce announced the raising of $50 million in a seed round at a valuation of over $1 billion in early March 2026. The company was founded by Oleksiy Honcharuk and Oleh Roginsky, and its goal is to enter Western markets not as a manufacturer of individual drones, but as a supplier of complex combat systems of Ukrainian origin.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how a British company with Ukrainian roots, UFORCE, showed off a new attack drone «Bucha» with a flight range of up to 200 km.
