From 2024 to 2027, the story is less a wholesale reset than a trajectory, one in which real capability will depend more on organization, training, and sustainment than on headline acquisitions. In Kazakhstan, two threads stand out: the move to formalize a territorial defense framework, and a push to build light, unit-level capabilities, especially through drone-related workshops and training.
A near- to mid-term lens helps separate three levels: what is set in law, what is suggested by aggregated budget toplines, and what can be observed through operational markers, training centers, workshops, exercises, and deliveries.
The institutional pivot: Territorial defense moves from concept to law
Kazakhstan enacted a dedicated territorial defense law dated June 30, 2025, published in the national legal information system, aimed at protecting the population, designated facilities, and the national territory.
For 2026–2027, the significance is structural: it establishes missions, organizing principles, and a basis for implementation documents. Public reporting also implies the framework will be resourced as a necessity, but without enough detail to gauge unit-level effects, stocks, communications, infrastructure, or exercise cycles.
What changes in practice over 2026–2027 will show up in verifiable steps: implementing regulations, the creation of territorial units, exercise schedules, and how regional authorities are integrated, elements likely to surface in official releases and reporting.
Unit-level innovation: Workshops, quality control, and training
A second signal for the 2026–2027 trajectory is the workshop-and-training effort around drones in certain units. A Jan. 22, 2026 dispatch describes a workshop staffed by contract servicemembers, reporting the assembly of a 100th drone, quality-control testing, and plans to launch operator training at a dedicated center “this year.” Follow-on reporting by international outlets echoes the same theme, attributing the effort to air-assault units and describing in-house production and maintenance, again pointing to roughly one hundred drones assembled so far.
The key for 2026–2027 isn’t the number; it’s whether a measurable capability cycle takes hold.
So far, the public record doesn’t always link these announcements to a detailed concept of employment, nor does it show a uniform equipment standard across the land forces. That’s why 2026–2027 should be treated as an observation period: repeated training, exercises, and standardization will matter more than the mere existence of a workshop.
Ground fleet and industry: Industrial signals versus operational availability
On land capabilities, the most reliable public information tends to come from industrial announcements and broad institutional messaging. A recurring feature from earlier periods is the presence of local assembly and production capacity linked to Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering, alongside Paramount Group statements about vehicles produced in Kazakhstan.
Even if many of these data points predate 2024, they highlight a constraint that becomes central in 2026–2027: availability depends less on how many models exist than on the ability to sustain the fleet, spares, tooling, training, and procedures. In the near term, the most credible signals are those that indicate continuity: production, local maintenance, workforce proficiency, and the capacity to absorb new equipment without degrading upkeep of what’s already in service.
The 2026–2027 budget: Useful toplines, too aggregated to prove a land priority
A government communication cites a 2026 allocation of 3 trillion tenge (roughly €5 billion at current exchange rates) for the “security and defense sector,” in the context of broader reallocations. Another article dated Dec. 9, 2025 describes a three-year national budget law and provides overall expenditure figures for 2026, 2027, and 2028.
Taken cautiously, the toplines suggest 2026–2027 is framed as a multi-year effort, which, in theory, favors programs that require sustainment (training and maintenance) over one-off purchases.
But these aggregates can’t, on their own, demonstrate a quantified land-forces priority, since the categories bundle functions well beyond the army. The more meaningful markers to watch will be concrete milestones: the scale-up of drone training (annual throughput and units covered), the continuity of the build–test–train–maintain cycle, and public evidence of deliveries and sustainment, contracts, maintenance facilities, and unit-level allocations that tie industrial activity to operational availability.
