Ukraine's drone war is coming to American factories

KYIV, Ukraine — Modern wars are won by those who can turn battlefield lessons into mass-produced technology faster than their adversaries.

This month, the United States and Ukraine took a step toward doing exactly that: The two countries signed preliminary documents on drone cooperation that would allow Ukrainian systems to be sent to the United States for Pentagon testing, as negotiations over a broader bilateral “drone deal” are ongoing.

“The emerging partnership is aimed at turning Kyiv’s battlefield-tested drone industry into a source of weapons, technology and manufacturing capacity for the U.S. military. It is important that Ukraine is now able to send its drones to the United States for testing,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after meeting U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker on July 22. His office said the signed documents brought the two countries closer to a wider agreement.

Six Ukrainian companies have already received permission to export about 100 drones each for the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program. The $1.1 billion initiative is designed to rapidly buy hundreds of thousands of low-cost attack drones through a series of battlefield-style competitions.

This new arrangement hints at a broader bargain. 

Washington is trying to import the technology, methods and accumulated combat experience Ukraine has developed over years of full-scale war against Russia. At the same time, U.S. officials want to anchor the resulting production lines, employment and supply chains inside the United States.

This budding Ukraine-U.S. partnership is already taking several forms: Pentagon testing of Ukrainian drones, American factories operated by Ukrainian companies, joint ventures with U.S. manufacturers, access to American capital markets and potential transfers of software and battlefield doctrine.

For Ukraine, the United States offers something Kyiv desperately lacks: the money and industrial scale needed to sustain a defense technology sector whose production capacity has vastly outgrown the government’s ability to buy everything it can make.

From the battlefield to Ohio

One of the clearest examples is taking shape outside of Toledo, Ohio.

Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech, the U.S. company representing Ukraine’s F-Drones, has selected Holland, Ohio, for its first major American assembly and manufacturing center after receiving a Pentagon prototype order through the Drone Dominance initiative.

The multimillion-dollar project is expected to create at least 300 jobs. The facility will support drone production, testing, training, software and hardware integration and the localization of supply chains for the American and allied markets.

Ohio offered UDD Tech a nine-year tax credit tied to the creation of more than $18.4 million in annual payroll, provided the company maintains operations at the site for at least 12 years. 

State documents say Ohio competed against Texas for the investment and that the Pentagon program drove the company’s decision to establish production in the United States.

The project illustrates how Ukrainian technology could be made politically attractive in Washington. 

Rather than purchasing drones abroad, the Pentagon can gain access to Ukrainian designs and experience while creating American jobs and reducing its dependence on foreign supply chains.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said the investment would strengthen both the state economy and “the manufacturing base that our nation’s security depends on.”

The U.S. program has set an aggressive target.

Pentagon officials say Drone Dominance is expected to field hundreds of thousands of weaponized one-way attack drones by 2027. The first phase was structured around 30,000 aircraft priced at no more than $5,000 each, with later phases intended to increase volumes while driving unit costs lower.

“Drone dominance is a process race as much as a technological race,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said of the program. “We are buying what works, fast, at scale, and without bureaucratic delay.”

Ukrainian systems have already performed strongly.

A drone jointly produced by Ukraine’s SkyFall and British company Skycutter won the program’s first round, while Ukrainian Defense Drones secured a prototype order after competing against a large field of American and foreign entrants.

Ukrainian lawmaker Halyna Yanchenko said the initial deliveries would test more than flight performance.

“It is not only about the drone itself, but also about proving that the manufacturer can consistently produce large batches with the same high level of quality,” she told NewsNGR. “If this first batch performs well during testing, there is a strong chance that much larger orders will follow.”

Capital, factories and naval drones

The partnership is not confined to UAVs.

UFORCE, a Ukrainian-origin autonomous systems company, signed an agreement this month with Oregon-based RECONCRAFT to manufacture Ukraine’s famed MAGURA naval drones in the United States.

The companies aim to combine Ukrainian combat experience and autonomy software with American boatbuilding capacity. RECONCRAFT executives have said the partnership could eventually produce hundreds or thousands of unmanned vessels annually at facilities in Oregon and South Carolina.

The MAGURA family has been used to remarkable effect by Ukraine to strike Russian warships and drive Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea, despite Kyiv’s lack of a conventional navy.

Under the agreement, UFORCE also plans to offer the United States access to aerial and ground systems, command-and-control technology and autonomy software.

“Partnering with UFORCE combines our manufacturing expertise and capabilities with the combat-proven autonomy of the MAGURA platform,” RECONCRAFT co-founder Joe Silkowski said, allowing the companies to deliver systems to American forces faster than developing a new platform from scratch.

Another potential model is represented by Swarmer, a Ukrainian-founded company developing software that allows a single operator to coordinate multiple autonomous systems. 

The company has tapped American investors and public markets and recruited Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, as non-executive chairman.

Mr. Prince said Ukraine’s chief advantage was its ability to move quickly from a problem observed at the front to a working system.

“The garage operator who sees a problem in Ukraine can come up with a prototype and field-test it in a matter of weeks or months,” he told The Times on the margins of the Black Sea Security Forum. “The Ukrainians, out of necessity, have figured out how to do things way cheaper, as a means of survival and as a way of staying in the fight.”

He said Swarmer sought to address a basic manpower constraint: Ukraine needs to operate more drones than it has trained pilots.

“How do you put an AI brain onto that drone to make it do the thing you need it to do?” he said, referring to artificial intelligence.

Importing a method, not just a machine

The biggest question is whether Washington can absorb the operating culture surrounding Ukrainian drones, rather than merely importing a few successful aircraft.

Josh Segal, a retired naval intelligence officer who frequently travels to Ukraine and consults for the War Department, said American procurement still tends to treat a drone like a standardized rifle.

“The culture of drones, they think of it as like an M16 rifle or M4 rifle,” he said. “They don’t realize that it’s not the drone you’re worried about, it’s the components of the drone.”

Ukrainian workshops constantly change motors, communications links, cameras, electronic-warfare protection and payloads according to the mission and the conditions in a particular sector.

“That philosophy, that outlook, that culture has not pervaded the acquisition ecosystem in the United States, or frankly, most of the European countries,” he said.

Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reached a similar conclusion in a study of what the Pentagon can learn from Ukraine.

Ukraine created a parallel, commercial-first market for drones and software, decentralized purchasing authority to military units and defined requirements through battlefield problems rather than rigid specifications written years in advance, she found.

The lesson for the United States, Ms. Bondar wrote, is the need for “radical decentralization, bottom-up innovation, and competitive dynamism within the defense industrial base.”

Ukraine’s procurement marketplace now allows combat units to select systems directly from hundreds of products and manufacturers. Its Defense Ministry says 95% of the drones procured for the armed forces are Ukrainian-made, with decisions increasingly driven by the soldiers who use them.

A lifeline for Ukrainian industry

The partnership also addresses a growing problem for Kyiv.

Ms. Yanchenko said the production capacity of Ukraine’s private defense companies is now roughly five times larger than the government’s procurement budget. Continuing to prohibit exports, she argued, was beginning to slow the industry’s development.

Foreign orders could keep factories running, finance research and development and lower unit costs for the Ukrainian military.

“We expect exports to increase the utilization of Ukrainian production facilities, which will reduce manufacturing costs,” she said. “Lower production costs will allow the government to purchase more weapons for our military.”

Kyiv says exports will remain limited to surplus capacity and subject to government approval to prevent equipment needed by Ukrainian forces from being sold abroad.

Ukraine also hopes to become a supplier of components that can replace Chinese parts in Western supply chains.

Ms. Yanchenko said roughly 500 Ukrainian companies now manufacture products ranging from FPV motors and flight controllers to frames, propellers and engines for larger strike drones.

“We can become a reliable supplier not only of complete drone systems, but also of individual components,” she said.

Significant hurdles remain, however. First, Ukrainian manufacturers must meet Pentagon security, compliance and mass-production requirements.

The two governments must also settle questions over intellectual property, licensing, export controls and who will own improvements derived from Ukrainian battlefield data.

Localized production could also slow the rapid design cycles that have made Ukrainian systems so effective. A drone delayed by a drawn-out American procurement process may be obsolete by the time it reaches the frontline.

For Kyiv, there is another, substantive risk: transferring its best designs abroad without securing lasting investment in Ukrainian factories or adequate returns for its wartime intellectual property.

Still, this tectonic shift is already underway as Ukraine moves from being an aid recipient to a potential supplier, investor and technology partner. 

The United States can offer the capital, factories and market access Ukraine lacks. In exchange, Ukraine can offer Washington what American money cannot buy: weapons and operating methods refined every day against a sophisticated enemy.

“It is not just about selling drones,” Ms. Yanchenko said. “It is about sharing the knowledge, technologies and operational experience that have been gained in the world’s most technologically advanced war.”