The Partnership Architecture for Collective Security (PACS) is an open partnership architecture built around three interlocking design choices: joint capability development, a legal framework, and international and cross-sectoral cooperation hubs. Olga Khoroshylova, Sectoral leader for Defence at Ukraine Facility Platform, presented the approach during the closed-door roundtable «The Baltic Format: A Fast-Track Model for Scalable European Defence» at the Kyiv Security Forum.

Ukraine Facility Platform proposes pooling the efforts of the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8), the United Kingdom and Ukraine, since these are the partners that consistently demonstrate the highest level of threat recognition in the region. The idea is for partners to define, develop and field defence capabilities together. A common approach strengthens each nation's posture and scales procurement economics.

The proposed tool addresses the core challenge: making stakeholders work together across their own interests and borders, inside a shared operating logic. Governments, militaries and producers from partner countries should all contribute to its design.

International working groups bringing together representatives of governments, militaries and industry will operate across four tracks: political, military, technological and industrial.

The synergy comes from a closed loop:

  • Frontline demand signals and systematised lessons learned feed into joint capability planning.
  • Government financing flows into procurement and production scaling.

The result: a coordinated build-up of the European Defence Technology Industrial Base (DTIB) – lower prices through scale, joint military training and continuous platform modernisation grounded in real battlefield needs.

Cooperation has to deliver mutual benefit for all sides. Shared values and strategic appeals matter, but they do not hold a coalition together under pressure. NB8 governments, for instance, gain higher security and additional access to EU funds; Ukraine integrates into the European defence architecture; and the European Commission gets working examples of cross-country cooperation and a path to defragmenting Europe's defence system.

The prerequisites for delivering the concept may prove challenging, as decades of practice have entrenched defence and security as strictly national matters.

The next steps are fairly straightforward:

  • Coordination among governments on the legal framework and the establishment of working groups.
  • Building an international expert team through dialogue within the expert community.
  • Industry dialogue as the first stage of market assessment.
  • Engagement of the end-user community to keep capability development anchored in frontline reality.
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The discussion around PACS

Ukrainian and international analysts, military officers, diplomats and defence industry representatives discussed the strengths and gaps of the PACS concept. Their central questions concerned the trade-off between national and shared interests, the slow pace of public-sector procedures, and how the initiative would coexist with NATO principles.

How to find a model of mutually beneficial cooperation when each country puts its own national interest first? The counter-argument: in the active phase of war, what matters is the effectiveness and affordability of defence products. If a domestic producer falls short, it will not get the contract.

Pooling for joint procurement may look attractive as a way to drive prices down. But in the medium term, it makes little sense on its own: what counts on the battlefield is not just the drone, but the digital infrastructure that makes it effective.

On top of that, simply procuring the «perfect drone» cheaply is not enough: defence products have to be continuously adapted to the needs of the troops, otherwise the equipment becomes obsolete within a few months.

This is precisely why PACS proposes pooling not for joint procurement alone, but for broader cooperation. This would allow partner countries to obtain the most up-to-date solutions for the modern battlefield in the shortest possible time.

A recommendation for UAFP as the architect of the concept: bring financial institutions into the picture. They still operate in peacetime mode and are willing to finance dual-use goods at most, but not weapons – and that is a problem.

Political will also has to be cultivated, since only political will can speed up procedures and lay the groundwork for cooperation between private companies.