Markets at War: the Procurement of Ukrainian Drones

Abstract The 1990s and early 2000s saw a set of public service reforms in the UK and elsewhere under the label of ‘the new public management’. A key element of this was the introduction of so‐called quasi‐markets into social services such as education and health care, where users were given the power to use government funds to purchase the service concerned from competitive independent providers. Inspired by these ideas, Ukraine in 2025 applied them in its armed forces, specifically to the procurement of drones. This led to a dramatic increase in the speed which the army was able to access drones—from six to nine months to nine days in one estimate—and was arguably a major factor in Ukraine's remarkable successes in drone warfare in 2025 and 2026. In this article, one of those involved in developing the quasi‐market idea and one involved in its application to Ukrainian drone procurement explain its history and the new system, and discuss whether there may be useful lessons to be learnt for military procurement in the UK and other NATO countries.