A library of technology, history, law, acquisition, and operational context.
The Field Guide explains the technology, institutions, acquisition systems, history and operating context shaping Ukraine and modern defense. It is editorial and educational content, not investment material, procurement advice, government policy, or evidence that any featured technology is part of Helicon’s commercial pipeline.
Every article identifies its evidence type, primary sources, author/editor, last-reviewed date, and material uncertainty, plus a public correction route. Read the full Field Guide methodology.
Start Here
The most useful pages to read first if this is a new subject for you.
Ukraine 101
A brief orientation to Ukraine as a country, an innovation ecosystem, and a battlefield — before diving into defense-tech specifics.
Read →The war did not start in 2022
The historical continuity most Western coverage skips. Necessary context for anyone deciding what is worth transitioning and why.
Read →Modern warfare technology 101
What has actually changed about warfare in the last five years, and why yesterday’s defense assumptions no longer hold.
Read →The global race to learn from Ukraine
Ukraine is generating the most consequential real-time defense learning in modern history. Adversaries are absorbing that learning faster than democracies. This is what closes the gap.
Read →Defense acquisition & transition 101
How defense capability actually gets acquired — TRLs, primes, program offices, OTA, SBIR/STTR, foreign origin, and what “transition” really means.
Read →Acquisition & transition, part II
A follow-on primer for readers who want the operating detail behind the 101 overview.
Read →Current situation
A short, living overview of the current operational and political situation shaping allied defense transition today.
Read →Technology & Operations
How the systems, sensors, weapons, and decision layers of modern war actually work.
What contested logistics means
Why the ability to move fuel, munitions, spares, medical, and people through contested space is now a first-order operational problem.
Read →What counter-UxS means
Counter-uncrewed systems — drones, boats, ground vehicles — and why layered defeat is now the honest answer, not one magic system.
Read →Electronic warfare in Ukraine
How Ukrainian and Russian EW have evolved into a continuous, adaptive contest — and what that means for any RF-dependent capability.
Read →Resilient PNT & anti-jam
Positioning, navigation, and timing under jamming and spoofing — and why GPS-only architectures are no longer acceptable.
Read →All-domain battlefield awareness
The sensing, fusion, and decision layers that let a force actually see what is happening across land, sea, air, space, and spectrum.
Read →Human-centered AI decision support
Where AI meaningfully helps a human decide, where it does not, and the doctrinal boundaries Helicon respects when it recommends AI.
Read →Why drones changed modern war
How cheap, adaptive, distributed uncrewed systems moved from novelty to persistent battlefield fixture — and what that changes.
Read →How battlefield innovation becomes fieldable capability
The path a battlefield-proven idea travels — and where most fail — on the way to being an acquirable Western capability.
Read →History, Law & Strategic Context
The larger context every serious defense-transition decision sits inside.
Why Ukraine matters
Why the outcome in Ukraine matters to the United States, NATO, Europe, and every allied democracy — strategically, industrially, and morally.
Read →The Budapest Memorandum
The 1994 agreement in which Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, and what its erosion means for allied security guarantees.
Read →International law & war crimes
A serious examination of the international legal framework, obligations, and consequences that apply to conduct in modern armed conflict.
Read →Russian war crimes & the human cost
What is documented, what is contested, and what the human record of this war looks like — without exploitation and without minimization.
Read →Research Library
Full-depth references, source material, video, and terminology.
Deep-dive library
The extended treatment of every subject in the Field Guide — long-form, footnoted, source-linked. Read what you need, when you need it.
Read →Source library
Primary sources, official documents, and referenced material used across the Field Guide, organized for lookup.
Read →Source library — downloads
Downloadable primary documents, reports, treaty texts, and program references, when working offline or citing directly.
Read →Reading list
A curated set of books, papers, and long-form pieces Helicon considers essential background for allied defense transition.
Read →Video library
Selected video briefings, interviews, and field footage that convey what a document cannot.
Read →Glossary
Terms, acronyms, and program names used across defense, acquisition, and Ukrainian-context discussion — defined once, referenced everywhere.
Read →The Field Guide updates as the operating environment changes.
These pages will grow, revise, and reorganize as the technology, the war, the acquisition landscape, and the allied ecosystem evolve. Individual page dates reflect the most recent substantive update. If a claim looks stale, tell us.