The U.S. official charged with helping Ukraine recover economically from its war against Russian invaders on Wednesday said the government will establish a “deal team” to help U.S. companies quickly strengthen Ukraine’s defense sector.
The Ukrainian Deal Team is where “U.S. industry can turn to for a one-stop shop when you encounter regulatory bumps in the road when looking to invest in Ukraine’s defense industrial base,” Penny Pritzker, the Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery, said at the Ukraine Defense Industrial Base Conference hosted by the U.S. Commerce Department in Washington, D.C.
The new team includes representatives from the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State and will assist any size company, Pritzker said. Another element of the growing U.S. help for Ukraine’s defense and overall industrial capabilities will be the positioning of an adviser in the Ministry of Strategic Industries to “support reform, accelerate Ukraine’s transition to western interoperability, military force, and transparency, and attract foreign investment in critical industries,” she said.
The new adviser position in Ukraine will require congressional approval, she said.
Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, at the outset of the conference asked U.S. and Ukrainian industry to work together and find ways to collaborate. The Commerce Department will “help you break down barriers, enable communication, enable those partnerships, so that we can actually produce what we need to produce, which is an even stronger, more resilient Ukrainian defense industrial base,” she said.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security has been helping U.S. companies do defense business in Ukraine by prioritizing export licenses, Raimondo said.
The U.S. has been a major donor of weapons and related security assistance to Ukraine, providing more than $44 billion for the country’s defense since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Pritzker highlighted Ukraine’s pre-war status as an arms exporter, ranking in the top 20 of countries globally. The country boasts more than 500 defense companies that employ “hundreds of thousands of people” and growing.
Ukrainians have been producing unmanned air and sea drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and to strike targets with munitions. Pritzker said that the country is also expanding its cyber technologies and is working on 3D printing of parts and defense production.
Ukraine is also moving further away from state-owned defense companies to private sector companies, which will make up “the lion’s share” of the defense industry when the war is over, she said.
Soon, there will be more than 10 Ukrainian defense companies that are valued at over $1 billion, which are considered “unicorns,” Pritzker said, citing Ukrainian government estimates.
The Ukrainian Deal Team will help U.S. companies participate in Ukraine’s modernization of its defense and military, Pritzker said.
“For these reasons, we want to hit the accelerator button on our U.S.-Ukrainian partnership to build capacity and strengthen the trajectory of Ukraine’s defense sector,” she said.
The two-day conference is being attended by 350 industry and government officials, a National Security Council official said. A press pool report said that some of the defense industry attendees on Wednesday morning included Ted Colbert, president of Boeing’s [BA] defense segment, Linden Blue, vice chairman of General Atomics, Heidi Grant, president of business development for Boeing’s defense and global services segments, Eric Fanning, CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, and Chris Brose, the chief strategy officer for Anduril Industries.
Bill LaPlante, the Defense Department’s top acquisition official, and Doug Bush, the Army’s chief weapons buyer, were also in attendance, according to the pool report.
Currently, Ukraine’s defense market “has a lot to offer Western defense companies,” and longer-term, Ukraine will begin to eat into Russia’s share of the global weapons market, Pritzker said. This will provide more opportunities for U.S. defense companies doing business in support of Ukraine, she said.