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US Needs Ukrainian Expertise to Integrate Drones With Air Defense Radars
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Ukraine is ready to sign a landmark drone-defense deal with the United States, CBS News reported on September 23, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
According to the outlet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is prepared to sign the agreement on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City this week.
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The deal has not yet been signed, however. The outlet's sources indicated it could instead be finalized at a later date, with the timing dependent on when the US is ready to sign.
Over the past year, the US Department of Defense and its Ukrainian counterpart have developed a framework to expand testing and production of Ukrainian defense technology in the US, CBS News reported.
Sources with direct knowledge of the deal described it as going beyond contracts for a handful of Ukrainian companies. It would instead let leading Ukrainian defense firms work directly with American counterparts and the US military.
Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Green Flag Ventures, an American venture capital firm investing in Ukrainian defense technology, emphasized that the deal's value will hinge on transferring Ukraine's operational know-how alongside its hardware.
"It's not just about having the tech. It's about how the tech is used," she told CBS News.
The war with Iran has underscored the value of Ukraine's defense industry to the US and its allies, CBS News noted.
In its first days, Iran began targeting American military installations across the Middle East with Shahed one-way attack drones, the same type Russia has used against Ukrainian cities. Because the US and Gulf states initially lacked cost-effective means of interception, Kyiv sent drone interceptors and pilots to help.
Ukraine has since signed defense agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, matching foreign financing with its growing defense industry.
Zelenskyy has stated that Ukraine aims to produce 10 million drones this year. By comparison, the US Army acquired roughly 50,000 in 2025, according to former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
CBS News also detailed previously unreported episodes from the war's opening days.
In March, then-Army Secretary Dan Driscoll asked Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who founded the US drone company Perennial Autonomy, to supply 13,000 Merops interceptor drones and 10,000 Bumblebee reconnaissance and strike drones to the Middle East.
The drones reached the US military within days but took weeks to become operational because Ukrainian components arrived late, according to multiple sources familiar with the shipments.
According to CBS News, Merops drones use AI beacons manufactured by Ukraine’s Sine Engineering as well as Ukrainian warheads.
Washington's efforts to absorb the lessons of Ukraine's drone warfare have been uneven, the outlet added.
CBS News reported that Ukrainian expertise was also required to integrate the Merops drones into US air-defense radars before they could be used in combat.
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In August, the US Army phased out a drone battalion tasked with studying those lessons, while the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program invited American and select foreign companies, primarily Ukrainian ones, to compete for contracts.
The program aims to buy more than 200,000 drones by 2027, and Ukrainian manufacturer Skyfall won its first round earlier this year.
CBS News stated that it had reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment on the status of the drone deal and on the use of Ukrainian technology to defend bases in the Middle East.
The prospective agreement builds on a run of steps that have already brought Ukrainian systems into the American military ecosystem.
On July 22, Ukraine and the US signed a bilateral statement of intent establishing a framework for the temporary export of Ukrainian unmanned systems to the US for testing by the Pentagon.
By July 31, F-Drones had delivered the first 2,000 F10 FPV drones under the $1 billion Drone Dominance Program, making the F10 the first Ukrainian drone authorized for export to the US under the initiative.
Ukrainian personnel have also trained US service members at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on the Sky Map software, a command-and-control platform used to identify Shahed-type threats and coordinate interceptor drones.
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