Pentagon officials visited Ukraine last week to push drone deal talk
Illustrative photo: Pentagon representatives visited Ukraine last week (Getty Images)
Pentagon representatives visited Ukraine last week to continue work on a plan to use Ukraine’s experience in combating drones, reports Politico.
Iran’s attacks using cheap drones exposed weaknesses in the defenses of the United States and its allies, the media says.
“But even as Trump needled Zelenskyy, several Ukrainian officials confirmed that the interest in their drone interceptors — from the US and several Arab countries caught in the line of fire — is growing,” journalists emphasize.
The threat from Iran is pushing the Pentagon to accelerate a deal with Ukraine on interceptor drones.
According to Politico sources, Pentagon representatives visited Ukraine last week on an unofficial visit. The main goal is the purchase and joint production of cheap interceptor drones that Ukraine has successfully used to destroy Iranian Shahed drones.
The problem Washington faced is that during recent attacks in the Middle East, American forces and their partners in the Persian Gulf spent Patriot (PAC-3) missiles worth more than $13 million each to shoot down Iranian drones whose price does not exceed $20,000–$30,000.
Ukrainian developers offered a solution: interceptor drones costing about $2,500. These devices, equipped with artificial intelligence for self-guidance, are capable of catching up with and destroying Shaheds, completely eliminating the enemy’s price advantage.
The Pentagon is considering deploying these systems to protect critical infrastructure in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and ships in the Red Sea.
According to the article, Kyiv is ready to share the technologies and scale up production specifically for US needs, but it has put forward a countercondition.
Since Russia has intensified attacks on the energy sector, Ukraine is demanding guarantees of uninterrupted supplies of scarce anti-aircraft missiles.
Interceptor drone deal
The United States and at least one other Persian Gulf country are negotiating the purchase of Ukraine’s interceptor drones to counter Iranian Shaheds.
The reason for such interest is that Patriot system missiles costing more than $13.5 million each are used to shoot down an Iranian drone worth about $30,000.
Ukraine was the first to widely use mass-produced interceptor drones, costing only a few thousand dollars, to destroy Russian Shahed-type drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that the United States asked Ukraine for help in defending against Shahed-type drones in the Middle East.
Zelenskyy also offered Ukrainian interceptor drones to Persian Gulf countries, but cooperation with partners is possible only without harm to Ukraine's own defense capability.
