10 Ukrainians Humbled Two NATO Battalions. When Will NATO Wake Up?

Last May, NATO invited 10 Ukrainians to act as an opposing force during Hedgehog 2025, one of NATO’s largest exercises in the Baltics. The Ukrainians successfully simulated the destruction of 17 armored vehicles and conducted 30 strikes in half a day, effectively neutralizing two NATO battalions before dinner...

...As soldiers rotate off position, they provide feedback to engineers who immediately modify designs. This cycle cannot be replicated by NATO’s centralized procurement...

...Nearly a decade after Delta won a NATO hackathon, America’s equivalent — Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control — struggles to make meaningful progress because of top-down data integration strategies. Delta’s bottom-up origins enabled continuous battlefield refinement, extending decision windows and enabling software updates for commanders’ evolving needs.

These differences reveal tensions between peacetime and wartime innovation structures. NATO’s procurement system prevents waste, increases interoperability, and maintains civilian oversight, which are reasonable in peacetime but cause friction when rapid adaptation is existential. Ukraine bypasses traditional acquisition through compressed decision cycles and flattened hierarchies. Soldiers became drone engineers because there was no time for defense contracts. Procurement timelines measured in years are irrelevant when innovation timelines are measured in weeks...

...Whether through NATO membership, bilateral security guarantees, or another framework, it is strategically indefensible to treat Ukraine as peripheral rather than integral given Ukraine’s capabilities...

...Ukraine is the most combat-experienced, doctrinally up-to-date, and innovative partner in the Western world...