US, Ukraine Sign Drone Pact for Pentagon Testing as $1.1 Billion Program Scales Up
Updated
Updated · Washington Times · Jul 31
US, Ukraine Sign Drone Pact for Pentagon Testing as $1.1 Billion Program Scales Up
3 articles · Updated · Washington Times · Jul 31
Summary
Preliminary US-Ukraine documents now let Ukrainian drone systems go to the United States for Pentagon testing, a first step toward a broader bilateral drone agreement.
Six Ukrainian companies already have approval to export about 100 drones each for the Pentagon’s $1.1 billion Drone Dominance program, which aims to field more than 200,000 one-way attack drones by 2027.
The cooperation is already moving into US production: Ukrainian Defense Drones chose Holland, Ohio, for an assembly site tied to a Pentagon prototype order, with at least 300 jobs and a nine-year state tax credit.
Beyond aerial drones, Uforce and Oregon-based Reconcraft signed an MOU to build Magura naval drones in the US, extending the model to autonomy software, command systems and other unmanned platforms.
The deal could give Kyiv export revenue and scale for an industry whose capacity is about five times the government’s budget, but both sides still face hurdles on compliance, intellectual property, export controls and procurement speed.