The drone was shot down by a Romanian F-16 fighter jet stationed in Šiauliai, Lithuania, Estonian media reported from a press conference by the defense ministry in Tallinn. Estonian radars had detected the threat before it entered the country’s airspace, according to the Estonian minister of defense, Hanno Pevkur.

The shootdown has been confirmed by several high-ranking Estonian government officials.

The drone fell into a swampy area between Lake Võrtsjärv and Põltsamaa just before 13:00 local time.

Around two hours after the incident, Ukraine issued a public apology, with Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi saying that “we apologize to Estonia and all of our Baltic friends for such unintended incidents.”

Estonia’s air force commander, Brig. Gen. Riivo Valge, was cited as saying that a residual threat to the Baltic states remained, adding that “it may happen that we may have a repeat of the situation today.”

The wreckage of the drone shot down today has not yet been recovered, and Estonian authorities warned residents not to touch any debris. The civil alert associated with the airspace incursion has been lifted.

The shoot-down comes just hours after Russia had used martial language to threaten Latvia, with the SVR − Russia’s foreign intelligence agency − claiming without evidence that Latvia was planning to allow Ukraine to use its territory to launch drones against Russia. The Moscow-based agency said that NATO membership “will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from just retribution.”

Latvia has denied any such claims, with the country’s foreign minister taking to X to state that “Russia lies again.”

Tykhyi, the Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson, said that “neither Estonia, nor Latvia, Lithuania, or Finland have ever allowed to use their airspace for strikes against Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine has never requested such a use.”

This year has seen several incidents of Ukrainian drones entering Baltic NATO countries’ airspaces and, in some cases, even crashing into critical infrastructure. An accidental strike on an empty Latvian oil refinery last week prompted the resignation of both the prime minister and the defense minister there. Previously, drones had hit a power plant chimney in Estonia and fallen into a lake in Lithuania.

Speculation and some tacit official acknowledgment have surfaced that Russia may be using electronic warfare measures to redirect long-range strike drones from Ukraine meant for Russian targets towards the NATO countries at the eastern end of the Baltic Sea.

“Russia continues to redirect Ukrainian drones into the Baltics with the use of its electronic warfare,” the Ukrainian MFA said. “And Moscow does this on purpose, together with intensified propaganda.”

Russia has exploited the drone incidents in a coordinated media campaign, sidestepping claims of EW measures to place blame on the Baltic States and Finland for allegedly “opening their airspaces” to Ukrainian drones. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in April that those countries “will face consequences.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from the Ukrainian government.

The aerial bomb is a winged but engineless weapon that drops from an aircraft at altitude, gliding to its target on the speed and altitude of release, steered by satellite guidance. It costs much less than cruise missiles per shot, carries much larger warheads than most drones and lets aircraft stay outside the densest air defenses.

“The first Ukrainian guided aerial bomb is ready for combat use,” Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov wrote in a Telegram post announcing the milestone, noting the Ministry has already purchased an experimental batch and is gearing up to deploy the bombs on the front.

“Ukraine is moving from importing individual solutions to creating its own high-tech weapons, which systematically strengthen the Defense Forces and provide a technological advantage on the battlefield,” Fedorov said.

Until now, Ukraine had no domestic precision glide bomb. The country has relied on scarce Western donations for strikes beyond the reach of conventional artillery, like American-made JDAM-ERs and ATACMS missiles, British Storm Shadows and French SCALP-EG cruise missiles.

Cheap to produce and free of donor restrictions, the new bombs let Kyiv press the fight at mid-range and conserve scarce longer-range Western missiles for deeper targets — part of a broader Ukrainian push to use tech to change the mathematics of war in its favor after over four years of defending itself against a much larger and richer enemy.

“We are scaling up solutions that increase the range and accuracy of strikes and change the rules of modern warfare,” Fedorov said.

DG Industry, a little-known Ukrainian firm sponsored by the state-backed defense innovation cluster Brave1, started work on the munition 17 months ago, MoD said.

Ukraine had no guided aerial bomb. Now it does.

DG Industry, a Brave1 participant, has completed all required trials and declared the weapon ready for combat after 17 month of development. The bomb carries a 250 kg warhead, hits targets dozens of kilometers behind enemy lines,… pic.twitter.com/EXP0PiLOHl

— BRAVE1 (@BRAVE1ua) May 18, 2026

The team faced a challenging environment, requiring guidance that could survive Russia’s electronic jamming, an airframe that stays stable across release speeds and altitudes and an interface that integrates with whichever aircraft will carry it, according to Brave1.

The result is a system officials say is different from others in its class.

Russia’s UMPK-equipped FAB bombs, for example, are glide kits bolted onto Soviet-era bomb bodies that were never meant to glide. The Ukrainian weapon is purpose-built from the airframe up, not a glide kit.

“This is not a copy of Western or Soviet solutions, but a development of Ukrainian engineers for effective destruction of fortifications, command posts, and other enemy targets tens of kilometers deep after launch,” Fedorov said.

Glide bombs also offer another edge.

Released from standoff distance, they appear over the target only in the last seconds of flight, leaving traditional air defenses little time to react.

They can be harder to detect, too, flying at different speeds, arcs and altitudes than the threats most air defense systems are optimized to track, according to NATO’s Joint Air Power Competence Centre.

Russian Su-34s release the bombs from well beyond Ukrainian air-defense coverage, and once airborne, the bombs themselves are small, unpowered and hard to track.

Ukraine knows from experience how hard they are to stop.

Russia now drops an average of more than 250 guided aerial bombs on Ukrainian positions and cities each day, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, three FAB-250 strikes on Kramatorsk killed five civilians and injured 12 more, according to regional military officials.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has named glide bombs among Russia’s most dangerous weapons since Moscow began deploying them regularly in 2023.

And they cost far more to shoot down than to produce and deploy.

A UMPK-equipped FAB costs tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture, while a single Patriot interceptor capable of stopping one runs in the millions.

The new Ukrainian glide bomb is built to make that asymmetric cost ratio Russia’s problem, too.

“Soon, Ukrainian guided aerial bombs will be used against enemy targets,” the Ministry of Defense said.

The latest iteration of Project Flytrap, a multinational exercise to test new drone technologies in a realistic conflict setting, pitted U.S. and allied forces against each other in scenarios that featured drone swarms, jamming systems and counter-UAS defenses that continue to redefine modern warfare.

Army leaders have emphasized the need to integrate drones into doctrine and tactics, as they say the rise of inexpensive, mass-produced drones have forced the service to rethink everything from aviation to infantry patrols.

Project Flytrap took place in Lithuania, involved nearly 1,000 personnel and centered around pushing the Army’s technology to its limits amid variable weather and terrain.

Exercise leaders speaking during a Thursday roundtable said soldiers practiced massing unmanned platforms to test the limits of their systems and practice pinning down enemy forces, sometimes using tens of drones at a time.

Sgt. 1st Class Tyler Harrington, a platoon sergeant for Eagle Troop, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, led soldiers in developing counter-UAS tactics during the exercise. The proliferation of drones has changed the basics of soldiering, modifying even the way units conduct basic patrols.

“I’m out there doing my patrols and all of a sudden you hear buzzing. No longer am I just scanning to my 12:00 and around me at ground level,” he said. Now, his troops must look up.

They must also learn to listen.

“You have to now learn the sounds of the drones,” Harrington said, adding a chilling and provocative question, “does it sound like one of the one-way attack drones coming in our potential direction?”

During the roundtable, leaders also highlighted how units used additive manufacturing — like 3-D printing — to quickly create replacement parts and modifications for drone systems in the field.

For the first time, the Army applied testing standards established by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF 401, as troops trialed and collected data on over 20 different systems, including drones not yet fielded to the ranks.

The task force, which was established by the Pentagon in 2025, consolidates drone-related acquisition and standards across the country in an attempt to contend with the rapid evolution of unmanned aerial technology in conflicts across the world.

Warfare — from Eastern Europe to the Middle East — has shifted as both state and nonstate actors have begun to attack with hordes of drones that are cheap yet advanced.

The Army is grappling with how to defend its soldiers against these new air threats and also procure and use similar weapons advantageously.

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East have sought Ukraine’s advice in defending against Iran’s Shahed drones, weapons that the eastern European country has ample experience countering in its war with Russia.

The lessons gleaned from exercises like Project Flytrap tie into broader modernization discussions in Washington.

In a Friday House Armed Services Committee hearing, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the service was racing to restructure how it fights in a drone-flooded battlefield, “where swarms of drones are going to be attacking an Apache.”

Discussing aviation modernization during budget testimony, Driscoll added, “if you look all over the world, there are not good solutions for that.”

As NATO tries to keep pace with fast-changing drone warfare, the alliance used Latvia’s Crystal Arrow exercise to test unmanned ground combat, equipping opposing forces with wheeled robots. The systems gave the red team an element of surprise over a blue team relying only on aerial drones, said Lt. Col. Andris Brūveris, the Latvian battalion commander leading the opposing side.

“They are force multipliers, and they are here to stay,” said Brūveris, who commands Latvia’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion, in a briefing with reporters at the Sēlija training area in central Latvia on Monday, during a press trip organized by NATO.

“We are a little bit behind because we’ve been using only the air drones,” he added. “I hope we will move forward with this at a quick pace.”

Ukraine reshaped aerial drone warfare, and now appears poised to do the same for unmanned ground vehicles, with plans to buy 25,000 UGVs by the end of June. For Crystal Arrow, Brūveris relied on Ukrainian veterans for training and tactics, using wheeled robots for gathering intelligence, attacking enemy positions, resupply and casualty evacuation.

At the Sēlija training range, less than 200 kilometers from the border with Russia, the opposing force engaged the blue force using UGVs and aerial drones without direct troop-to-troop contact, according to Brūveris. After two days of reconnaissance, the exercise moved into a kinetic phase on Monday, with the opposing force pushing back the flanks of the blue force.

“We specifically, deliberately employed the UGVs here with the opposing forces to allow the friendly forces to understand what the threat was, and how they would counter that,” Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, Allied Land Command’s deputy chief of staff for transformation and integration, told Defense News.

Brūveris said he made particular use of a small four-wheeled UGV from Estonia-based startup Ark Robotics, likening it to the ground-based equivalent of an aerial first-person view drone. Battle-proven in Ukraine and reminiscent of a toy radio-controlled car, Ark-1 can be used for reconnaissance or to race a 15-kilogram antitank mine into an enemy position at more than 40 kilometers per hour.

“So I can do road reconnaissance, and at the same time, if there is a valuable target, that’s a suicide drone, so I can do the kinetic effect as well,” Brūveris said. “This is really something new for me, and I implement that in my maneuvers a lot.”

In the exercise, the red team used the Ark-1 for reconnaissance up to 15 kilometers away, including when conditions were too windy to fly UAVs on Monday, according to Brūveris. The opposing force used the kinetic drone to take out a road obstacle defended by the blue forces, as well as hit enemy positions.

Ukraine has leaned on unmanned systems to compensate for Russia’s superior numbers, and ground drones are preferable to sending soldiers into unfamiliar terrain, a Ukrainian veteran with the callsign Sleb, in charge of training at Ark Robotics, told Defense News.

Brūveris said Latvian troops will now need to figure out how to fit UGVs into the military decision-making loop, after having done the same for aerial drones.

“The blue force is my sister battalion from the same brigade,” Brūveris said. “They haven’t seen the drones on the ground, I haven’t used the drones on the ground, so it’s a surprise for both of us. We’re both learning, and afterwards, we’ll have a good chat how it works out.”

NATO Allied Land Command is likewise keen to integrate the feedback as the alliance builds up its Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, and leaders including U.S. Army Gen. Chris Donahue, who commands the alliance’s Landcom as the head of United States Army Europe and Africa, made their way to Selija on Tuesday. NATO covered the cost of travel and accommodation for media attending the exercise and event, including for Defense News.

“What we are really interested in hearing is if these systems are able to provide tactical advantage, essentially, in the way that Lt. Col. Brūveris decided to employ them,” Sean Thorne, a Canadian reserve officer in charge of lessons learned and interoperability at Landcom, told Defense News.

He said Landcom is really looking for “organic, bottom-up experimentation” to understand how UGVs can be used at the tactical level.

What systems to buy and how many remains up to individual countries, with several studies underway about the “optimum force ratio” of crewed and uncrewed systems, Brig. Gen. Gent said. He said the alliance has done the math to decide on, for example, how many UGVs would equal a NATO capability target for a vehicle.

With every nation in NATO trying to shorten the procurement cycle, the next challenge becomes integrating the UGVs into doctrine, training and how troops actually use capabilities, Gent said.

Troops spent two to three days learning the systems alongside Ukrainian veterans and company representatives, according to Brūveris, who called the UGVs fairly simple to operate.

Due to its small size, some troops that received training to operate the UGVs in Crystal Arrow were initially dismissive of Ark-1, according to a Ukrainian with the callsign Backspace, who identified himself as the integration lead for Ark Robotics.

“Even guys from Latvia and Canada, on the first day of our training, they’re laughing, they’re joking that it’s just a toy,” Backspace told Defense News. “But yesterday on the operation, they were shocked. We are doing war like in a movie, because it’s really very powerful.”

Latvian troops were highly motivated, even if Ark Robotics usually takes more time to train troops in Ukraine, said trainer Sleb. A representative for Ukrainian firm UGV Laboratory who identified himself as Denys concurred, saying teaching Latvian operators was “pretty easy.”

“Our task is to learn from them and prepare ourselves, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” Brūveris said of the Ukrainian firms providing training and advice. In the exercise, he used reconnaissance drones at the platoon level, with kinetic ground robots attached to the maneuver companies.

The exercise also allowed suppliers to learn about challenges of the Baltic forest environment, as opposed to Ukraine, according to Brūveris. In addition to Ark Robotics, firms taking part within the NATO Task Force X framework were Latvia’s Natrix, Ukraine’s UGV Laboratory, Poland’s Husarion and Estonia’s Alfatec Group.

Unmanned ground systems are at the stage where FPV drones were in 2023, according to Denys at UGV Laboratory. The company supplied its four-wheeled Simba drone, which can carry a load of more than 200 kilograms. The representative said he expects 2027 to be a boom for the industry. “Because right now it is impossible to fight without these UGVs, we wouldn’t survive without it.”

The Simba is used in Ukraine as a logistics drone to supply forward positions, and while not certified to do so, troops also use it to transport wounded soldiers back on return trips, according to Denys. With the Ukrainian battlefield changing fast, the platform is updated about every three months, and the company is working on a version with a weapon turret, he said.

A first lesson from using UGVs in Latvia was the need to plan missions around terrain and network coverage, with dense and boggy local forest interfering with control signals for the Starlink-equipped ground drones, something less of a concern in more open terrain in Ukraine.

Whereas aerial drone use is easy to plan as long as the weather cooperates, relying on satellite internet to control the ground robots meant planning the axis of advance to take into account tree coverage, according to Brūveris.

Brūveris said the exercise made clear Latvia needs ground-based systems to cover all war-fighting functions, including reconnaissance and strike missions. He said proof of their effectiveness was his company commanders in the field all asking when they would get back the UGVs being used for demos on Tuesday, because the robots were needed in the fight.

“These unmanned systems are the future, because one way or the other, it’s cheaper than people’s lives.”

The draft agreement would open a legal channel for Kyiv to sell its weapons to the U.S. for the first time since it effectively banned arms exports to maintain its own forces at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, CBS News first reported.

The memorandum, drawn between the State Department and Ukrainian Ambassador Olha Stefanishyna, would integrate Ukrainian producers into joint ventures and tech-transfer arrangements with American firms.

The development caps two weeks in which Kyiv adopted an export framework dubbed “Drone Deals,” launched a procurement coalition with multiple European partners and watched Washington lift a 1997 import ban – all while signing four bilateral export contracts and pursuing roughly 20 more across the Middle East and partner countries, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week.

Zelenskyy touted the new framework at a May 13 summit in Bucharest, Romania, with delegates from NATO’s nine eastern-flank members and their Nordic allies, as seen in a clip of the event posted on X.

“I believe all of us need bilateral Drone Deals,” he said, “using Europe’s production capabilities and Ukrainian expertise proven in real defense during a real war.”

Over four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has built an arms industry that manufactures much of the hardware seen on the battlefield today, but that has struggled to scale up while capped by export bans, funding limitations and manufacturing challenges caused by the ongoing war.

“The Ukrainian military will always have the right to priority and sufficient supply – they will take what is needed, and the volume beyond that will go to export,” Zelenskyy said in a April 28 Telegram post announcing the new policies.

After years of struggling to arm its one million active-duty soldiers, Kyiv has been wary of allowing its domestic producers to sell their weapons abroad at a markup in case they may choose profit over supplying their own military.

But times have changed. Foreign defense funding to Ukraine hit $6.1 billion in 2025, marking a tenfold increase over the roughly $600 million the year before, according to the Ministry of Defense, and the world is turning to Kyiv as the leader in modern warfare and defense tech.

Fears over remaining empty-handed at home appear to have subsided.

“In some production areas, we currently have up to 50% surplus capacity,” Zelenskyy said last month.

Ukraine’s defense production capacity has grown 35 times since the invasion began, from $1 billion to $35 billion, but domestic contracts covered only about a third of that last year – a gap Kyiv’s National Security and Defense Council projects will widen, with capacity expected to hit $55 billion in 2026.

Western contracts pay multiples of what the domestic procurement budget can offer, and those funds are the only capital large enough to fund the scale Ukraine needs to sustain both its front line and its surging arms industry.

Stefanishyna told the Philadelphia Inquirer in April that more than 100 U.S. investors have already expressed interest in Ukrainian defense-tech companies, and the U.S. government bought an initial 1,000 P1SUN drones from Ukraine that month.

Business lost?

Ukrainian producers have been pressing for new and improved export laws for years, but especially since demand from foreign buyers for Ukraine’s drones began surging after the war in the Middle East kicked off earlier this year.

Ihor Matviyuk has spent months turning down orders he cannot legally fill. He heads Aero Center Drones, a Kyiv-based manufacturer building FPV strike platforms and interceptor drones.

Until now, the only legal route has run through state arms-trade companies like Ukrspecexport, Progress and SpetsTechnoExport that take the contract on the producer’s behalf, he said.

“No Ukrainian company can export military goods independently. Companies can manufacture, but they cannot ship,” Matviyuk told Military Times in March.

He said a Western government asked Aero Center for 1,500 interceptor drones earlier this year, a request he’s now received several times over as the Iran war demonstrates how quickly a state can exhaust conventional interceptor stocks defending against mass-drone attacks.

But Matviyuk said he had to turn down the request despite having the manufacturing capacity to do it within weeks without affecting his current contracts.

“We cannot currently export large quantities,” he said at the time. “It’s only possible at the state level.”

The new framework permits five export categories – drones, missiles, ammunition, software and integration services – drawn from Defense Ministry-certified surplus. The Foreign Ministry and intelligence services have naturally blacklisted Russia and its cooperators from buying Ukrainian.

“The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, based on intergovernmental agreements with partners, will define the framework for cooperation – just to ensure that Ukrainian technologies and Ukrainian weapons do not end up in Russian hands,” Zelenskyy said.

It opens three legal channels for producers – independent licensing through the State Export Control Service, routing via specialized state arms-trade companies, and a 15-day “Defense City” preliminary permit that skips Cabinet designation, though the interagency commission still reviews every application under all three routes.

Defense City is a special legal regime for defense manufacturers, launched in January, that grants qualifying firms tax exemptions, simplified customs and the fast-track 15-day export permit regardless of where they operate in Ukraine. Approved firms will also be able to sell through the ten European hubs Zelenskyy announced in February, according to Euronews.

Every signed contract will now move through a 90-day clock at the State Export Control Service and a 17-member interagency commission under the National Security and Defense Council, replacing a licensing regime that set no fixed timelines and left approvals to bureaucratic discretion.

The NSDC commission had sat dormant for eight months until Zelenskyy reactivated it in December. It has made roughly 80 decisions since then, according to Ukrinform.

The new framework is intended to break the bottleneck that turned Matviyuk’s prospective 1,500-interceptor order into a loss, and Zelenskyy said the new timelines should close the room for graft that the old system created.

“We also need automatic export authorizations with a clear and predictable timeframe for approval, so that there is no ground for corruption,” he said.

Kyiv officials have pledged to continue advancing anti-corruption enforcement in parallel – a difficult process that has seen several successes but still has significant work ahead, according to a 2026 analysis by the global watchdog group Transparency International.

Procurement orchestrations

For Kyiv, things are moving forward elsewhere, too, when it comes to fresh approaches to defense purchases with European partners.

Ukraine and five European nations – Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom – signed the CORPUS Memorandum on April 30 in a Kyiv hotel garage-turned-bunker, launching a defense-procurement coalition that links the countries’ national procurement agencies to coordinate buying, share supply-chain intelligence and open a path to joint contracts.

Ukraine’s CORPUS chair, Arsen Zhumadilov, also heads the country’s Defense Procurement Agency, set up in 2023 to take over arms buying after scandals over inflated food contracts and substandard winter jackets cost then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov his job.

One of the DPA’s biggest moves against corruption and approval delays cut out the intermediaries – middleman firms that had been a required layer between state buyers and private manufacturers. Their share of arms procurement has fallen from 81% to 12%.

Zhumadilov’s role in CORPUS places Ukraine’s own procurement agency inside a multinational coalition, rather than leaving it only on the buyer’s side.

“We are starting with the exchange of experience and best practices to build coordination mechanisms, mutual trust, and plan for the future,” Zhumadilov said at the CORPUS post-signing press conference.

Denmark, France and the Netherlands have already registered interest in joining the group, he added.

More bilateral defense procurement partnerships are in the works, too. Kyiv and Berlin announced six new joint ventures over the last month, and Norway inked a parallel cooperation declaration to mass-produce Ukraine’s mid-range strike drones. Zelenskyy has announced plans to open ten export hubs across Europe in 2026, with production lines already running in the United Kingdom.

European leaders increasingly see Ukrainian weapons production as key to allied defense.

“Instead of us thinking that Ukraine needs Europe, perhaps we should think that we in Europe need Ukraine more,” Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, said on May 4.

The alliance has invited companies to pitch counter-unmanned aerial systems, or C-UAS, by mid-May, and will pick 18 systems in the next one to two months, said Claudio Palestini, NATO head of innovation and technology adoption, in a video briefing with reporters on Monday. The goal is to have contracts in place “by the summer” so nations can start to procure via the marketplace.

With the pace of drone innovation in Ukraine measured in weeks, NATO wants to help member countries move on from requirement-based procurement to a mechanism based on challenges and use cases, a methodology Palestini called “very fitting” for some autonomous systems such as aerial drones, unmanned ground vehicles and C-UAS.

“When we buy phones or laptops, we don’t go to the suppliers with the requirements of them, but we go to the market,” Palestini said. “We buy what fits best with our needs. And this is the spirit that we want to do.”

The marketplace pilot comes after NATO members in June 2025 agreed on the Rapid Adoption Action Plan, seeking to shorten the delay getting cutting-edge technology in the hands of troops. In addition to challenge-based procurement, NATO is looking at new ways of buying such as purchasing capability as a service, as well as leasing models, the head of innovation said.

For the C-UAS marketplace, NATO wants solutions for point, area and border defense, with each operational need covered by a static counter system, another that is deployable in for example containers, as well as a fully mobile system, according to Palestini.

For the resulting nine use cases, NATO then plans to sign contracts for the solution that is the best value for money, and for the cheapest technically-compliant solution, to offer a total of 18 C-UAS options, Palestini said. In addition, all contracts will have a purchasing and a lease option, he said.

“Whenever there will be a requirement from one nation, we can take these requirements and try to map it with the one of the nine use cases and going back to the nation, saying, ‘Okay, this is the solution that we have for this use case,’” Palestini said. “You can basically procure immediately, because this already went through a pre-completed process.”

NATO has also established common funding that will allow nations to test C-UAS systems before making a final decision on procuring them, for example by leasing for one or two months, according to the NATO official.

In a next step, NATO is looking at testing the 18 solutions against standardized procedures, “so that not only we have the possibility to do contracts quickly for nations, but also to give them reasonable assurance of the performance of the system in the use case they envisage,” Palestini said. The alliance is aiming for that testing to happen in September, according to the official.

NATO is setting up a number of so-called innovation ranges, including in Latvia, where industry can test products in real-life conditions and where national procurement agencies can confirm that technology works on the firing range, Palestini said. The goal is to organize a testing campaign about every six weeks, testing different aspects such as performance but also interoperability

As part of the Rapid Adoption Action Plan, NATO intends to hand out “innovation badges” for systems tested in standardized procedures, as a way to assure member countries about how a system performs in a given scenario. The idea is that companies will be able to retest whenever they change their systems to receive a new badge, Palestini said.

Drone warfare in Ukraine has shown “increasingly rapid innovation cycles,” with UAS tactics on average evolving every two to three weeks in the 2023-2025 period, according to Palestini. That imposes a need for rapidly adapting both technology and doctrine, and “ensuring that NATO allies are able to meet this speed is of vital consideration for us.”

The NATO official said the urgency of developing C-UAS solutions means that while the alliance will push for challenge-based procurement that favors interoperability, it will leave “space for innovative solutions to be brought to market at speed.”

The alliance announced the UNITE-Brave NATO initiative in November to develop joint products between companies in member states and Ukrainian firms, and Palestini said the goal is to marry Ukraine’s rapid innovation with “long-term predictability, interoperability and NATO planning.”

The NATO Innovation Range in Latvia for now is set to hold five testing sessions for companies in 2026, including the first one held in March that saw 17 companies trial their products, including four from Ukraine. Another 18 companies will test solutions in May, including one Ukrainian firm, according to the alliance’s head of innovation.

On May 7, two drones entered Latvia from Russian airspace, hitting a fuel depot. Nobody was injured. As early as March of this year, there had been incidents of Ukrainian drones crashing into Baltic allies’ territory, with one hitting a power plant chimney.

Following the latest incident, Latvia’s prime minister, Evika Siliņa, said that defense minister Andris Sprūds had lost her trust and “that of the public,” calling on him to resign. He did so on Sunday, being replaced by Col. Raivis Melnis of the Latvian Army.

Also on Sunday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed that the drones that struck Latvia were sent by his country, though not aimed at the Baltic republic. The fact that the drones missed their targets and crashed in friendly territory instead, he said, “was the result of Russian electronic warfare deliberately diverting Ukrainian drones from their targets in Russia.”

When a series of drones hit all three Baltic states earlier this year, there had been speculation that Russian electronic warfare may be to blame, and that Russia was deliberately re-routing the aircraft “back to sender” − but toward Europe.

The new statement by a top Ukrainian official provides the strongest public confirmation yet that this is a tactic employed by Moscow.

So far, there have been no deaths or injuries reported from wayward Ukrainian drones, but the accidental air strikes have laid bare the inadequate state of air defense even at NATO’s most exposed frontier, with the lack of fatalities seemingly mostly a matter of luck.

In Thursday’s strike, which took place 40 kilometers into Latvian territory from the Russian border, four empty oil storage tanks were damaged, and firefighters had to extinguish a smoldering area of around 30 square meters. Schools in Rēzekne were closed, air raid alerts were declared across three municipalities, and residents reported hearing explosions. French NATO Baltic Air Policing jets were scrambled during the alert.

Latvian officials initially said the drones were not shot down because the safety of civilians and infrastructure could not be guaranteed. Sprūds then reversed that stance entirely, saying: “Drones must be shot down — that’s the responsibility of the head of the Armed Forces and myself, as the political leader.”

As in March, the Baltic states have used the incident to call for stronger air defense measures. Latvia and Lithuania jointly called on NATO to boost regional air defenses in the wake of the May 7 strike, with Lithuania’s defense minister Robertas Kaunas appealing to NATO that “Strengthening anti-drone defense in our region should be a particular emphasis, and additional capabilities are welcome here.”

Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps and its Cerberus unmanned ground systems unit ran the April 25 rescue with a reconnaissance drone overhead.

The woman lived in the same house for 53 years before Russian forces destroyed it. Three other civilians from the same area were drone-escorted to a pickup point and handed to a 1st Mechanized Battalion armored vehicle, according to a Telegram post by the 3rd Army Corps.

Recon units said Russian drones saturated the airspace, making a conventional ground evacuation impossible. So Ukraine sent a robot.

The same UGV class that hauls ammunition and evacuates wounded soldiers is now pulling civilians out of contested ground — sometimes inside the same week, sometimes off the same platform.

Ukraine’s ground robots are dual-use by default.

Four years ago, that meant a Kyiv grandmother knocking a Russian drone out of the sky with a jar of pickled tomatoes — a wartime legend recounted by Business Insider.

Today, it means the Cerberus unit running ammunition and casualty evacuations on the same Lyman axis where it pulled the 77-year-old out last month, the 3rd Army Corps said.

Commanders inside Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) describe the dual-use stack as a strategic doctrine, not improvisation.

“According to the SBS doctrine, a very large number of tasks fall to SBS. This is fire impact, mine-laying, logistical missions, engineering works, evacuation of the wounded and other measures,” Heorhii Khvystani, chief of staff of the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 58th Separate Motorized Brigade, said on a panel at the Lviv Drone Autonomy Conference last month.

“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line. In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said April 18.

“Our goal is for 100 percent of frontline logistics to be performed by robotic systems.”

The Defense Ministry has contracted 25,000 UGVs in the first half of 2026 alone, more than double last year’s total, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the production of 50,000 ground robots for the year last week — creating a robotic ground force bigger than some allied armies.

“The main purpose of ground robots is to minimize human risk on the battlefield,” he said.

Ukrainian units have been logging dual-use UGV missions for months.

On the same April 25 operation that brought the grandma out of Lyman, the “Lut” Brigade and 100th Brigade used a UGV to extract a wounded “Luhansk” assault brigade soldier after a Russian ambush, according to UNITED24 Media.

Earlier the same month, Ukraine’s 1st Separate Medical Battalion ran six robotic casualty evacuation missions in a single day, with two UGVs covering roughly 185 miles (300 km) combined, according to Defence Blog.

Ukraine’s General Staff has credited robotic platforms with cutting personnel casualties by up to 30%.

Ukrainian commanders frame the doctrine in survivability terms.

“An autonomous solution is a tool designed to lift a human’s burden,” Yevhenii Lesin, deputy commander in Ukraine’s famed 412th Brigade “Nemesis,” said at the same Lviv panel attended by Khvystani last month. “A person can be preserved, their life can be saved, their time resources can be saved so that they can make decisions on how to apply the tool.”

The Marine Corps wants to develop robots that can do the grunt work of laying down the matting used to quickly construct Expeditionary Airfields, or EAF, in amphibious beachheads and other remote locations.

“Currently, assembling EAF matting is a manual process carried out by Marines — a task that is physically demanding, labor-intensive and exposes personnel to potential hazards,” explained the Small Business Innovation Research proposal, which has a deadline of June 3.

The project, titled “Automated Expeditionary Airfield Assembly,” calls for robots capable of operating on “uneven or unstable surfaces.” They must also “manipulate and position heavy EAF mat sections with precision” while enduring “harsh environmental and operational conditions,” according to the proposal.

The Marine Corps envisions robots with sufficient autonomy to “navigate and control without human assistance, which includes obstacle avoidance, path planning and grasping,” according to the SBIR.

Contractor solutions will be expected to explore “various robotic configurations — such as mobile manipulators and assistive technologies — for their effectiveness in EAF mat handling, alignment and interconnection across diverse and austere terrains,” the proposal states.

Phase I of the project involves demonstrating “the technical feasibility of a robotic system capable of automating or augmenting the assembly of EAF prefabricated surfaced aluminum (PSA) Flat Top-Nested (Top-N) Trackway mats.”

Robots will be evaluated on metrics such as “payload capacity, reach, manipulation precision, power consumption and operational endurance,” according to the proposal.

Phase II calls for a functional prototype capable of automated or semi-automated operations.

“The robot shall be able to handle the PSA mats in some manner to aid in the assemble of the airfield, be a closed system and able be able to operate in a realistic environment,” the SBIR specified. “The system will be judged on feasibility, time to assemble, ease of use and overall size and mass.”

Phase III requires a deployable system for field testing. The SBIR emphasizes that the robot “will undergo hardening against electrical, environmental and cyber threats.”

“The resulting system must demonstrate sustained operation in deployed environments, achieving significant reductions in manning requirements, operational costs and/or deployment time,” the proposal states.

The Marine Corps has been working to ease the difficulty of expeditionary airfield construction, including adopting commercial lightweight matting.

Meanwhile, robotics companies are developing robots optimized for construction work, including four-legged and even two-legged humanoid robots.

For airport operations, Japan Airlines is testing humanoid robots for baggage handling.

In stationary concentration, a soldier moved only his fingers as he steered a small device through plastic pipes arranged into a makeshift obstacle course built to qualify soldiers on a tool that has quickly changed the course of modern warfare: drones.

Unmanned aircraft shape nearly every part of the battlefields today, from reconnaissance and artillery spotting to precision strikes and surveillance.

As the U.S. Army moves to integrate drones into each formation, units across the force are figuring out how to teach, train and test soldiers on rapidly evolving technology.

At Fort Stewart, that effort has morphed into a homegrown schoolhouse that is designed to push drone operators beyond their comfort zone and into a stressful state of sweaty palms and elevated heart rates.

The Marne Unmanned Center of Excellence, which became operational in March, moves soldiers through academic instruction, virtual simulators and increasingly challenging flight tests.

The classroom

The center starts with classroom instruction on airspace rules and flight controls. Before soldiers can send a drone into the air, they spend time at a desk, fiddling with controllers hooked up to laptops. For weeks, instead of shooting rifles, soldiers become engrossed in virtual reality scenes reminiscent of video games.

They learn to toggle the controllers to send their virtual drones through windows and under sallyports. They learn to navigate when the line of sight is lost or video quality diminished. They learn to attack.

Soldiers spend 40 to 50 hours operating virtual drones before touching a real unmanned aircraft.

Fort Stewart also hosts a 60-seat collective trainer, where each individual operates their own laptop while a battlefield view is plastered across a massive screen at the front of the room.

Drones then become a part of the fight and operators must interact with other capabilities, such as artillery and armored vehicles.

The flight line

Once soldiers can send a virtual drone through a gauntlet of obstacles, they go outside to try the real thing under the watchful eyes of an expert.

In a parking lot near the building, one student stood next to his instructor as she looked on.

Spc. Tyler Lee stared at his controller in deep concentration, periodically looking up to check his drone’s location as he maneuvered it down from the sky. A satisfied smile danced on his face after a successful landing.

Lee grew up playing video games, listing first-person games, like Call of Duty, among his favorites. Those games, he said, helping him pick up operating first-person view, or FPV, drones like the one he was flying. He even bought a commercial drone to improve his skills.

Despite completing the academic training and simulators, Lee was modest about his abilities.

“I’m nowhere near proficient,” he said. “I would still consider myself a beginner even though I’ve flown a lot and I’ve got my own [drone].”

Staff Sgt. Nway Nway Lwin, Lee’s instructor, said maneuvering a drone around was just the beginning of becoming an expert.

For individual qualification training, Lwin said she would have a student focus on basic maneuvers: moving right, left, up, down and through, gathering basic information about the surroundings as they go.

Once they master that, Lwin makes things complicated with real-word scenarios.

“You are doing the recon mission,” she’ll tell students. “This is your [Named Area of Interest] and this is where you are setting up — show me the flight plan.”

The sky

Drone operators who have learned basic maneuvering can advance to complicated obstacle courses that are graded on time standards.

They also go into the woods, pushing their skills by flying without being able to see the drone in the sky.

Because of that, Fort Stewart’s drone center has a unique relationship with its air traffic controllers and range control officials. Many drones can reach heights that intersect with crewed aircraft, requiring constant monitoring.

Other drones are built to explode. Some units use Fort Stewart ranges to practice with one-way attack drones designed to carry explosive payloads that detonate when they crash into a target.

One-way drones are already in use in theaters across the world, according to the base’s range control, and are just another unmanned aircraft skill to master.

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Jonathan Morrison, who helped spearhead the base’s drone training program, said his goal is not just to qualify operators.

“You can be qualified, but can you be well qualified?” he asked.

“Can you be super confident with your system? And can you be confident enough to go out there and perform any mission at any time, anywhere at a moment’s notice?” Morrison speculated.

The C-UAS Close-In Kinetic Defeat Enhancement project focuses on aided target recognition, or AiTR. This uses concepts such as AI, machine learning and computer vision to create a system that can detect threats — and distinguish them from non-threats such as birds — faster than a human operator can.

The first phase of the project is aimed at remote weapons stations, and specifically the ubiquitous Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, or CROWS, turrets fitted to a variety of military vehicles.

“The primary objective is to accelerate the engagement timeline, initially focusing on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), with a secondary focus on other threats like vehicular and man-sized targets,” explained the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation. The deadline is May 15.

Prototypes must “demonstrably improve” the ability of current remote weapons stations to detect, track and engage Groups 1 and 2 — targets with a weight of 55 pounds and under.

Detection should be at ranges greater than 600 meters, and engagement at a minimum of 100 meters. The system should be effective against drones moving at speeds of at least 30 meters per second, or 67 miles per hour, per the solicitation.

The second phase of the project seeks to boost C-UAS capabilities on “both moving and stationary platforms, including ground and maritime environments,” the solicitation said.

Specifications include the ability to hit a Group 1 drone — under 20 pounds — moving at 7 meters per second, or 16 miles per hour, at a range of 50 to 200 meters. Weapons should be able to engage targets while depressed to minus 10 degrees or elevated directly overhead to 90 degrees, the document stated.

This requires contractors to provide a prototype that can “be fired in land and maritime environments,” the solicitation says, “rather than just a laboratory setting at time of pitch.”

Most noteworthy, meanwhile, is the third phase of the project: adding aided target recognition to small arms carried by dismounted troops.

“Desired solutions include systems capable of deflecting or self-aiming standard-issue rounds to increase hit probability against manually selected, transient targets, while integrating networked sensor and small arms fire control systems,” DIU said.

The system must be capable of engaging drones moving at least 7 meters per second, and “must be adaptable to dismounted legacy small arms, scalable across calibers and configurations, and maintain baseline weapon performance in the event of system degradation or failure,” the document states. “A semi-automatic, live-fire capable prototype is required.”

The final phase of the project seeks to improve integration between sensors and weapons.

“A commercial wireless edge network architecture that bridges to military systems and the reverse is essential across all stages of this effort to manage data transfer from sensors and weapon/fire control systems,” the DIU wrote.

The U.S. military is beginning to embrace aided target recognition. The Army is already testing small UAVs equipped with AiTR to help infantry squads control drones.

But the Pentagon is also aware that AI and targeting is controversial.

The DIU project specifies that there must be a human in the loop. Solutions must strictly adhere to DOD’s AI Ethical Principles. Non-compliance “will result in immediate disqualification,” DIU warned.

The new company is designed to act as an opposing force, or OPFOR, against troops training at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, testing the capabilities of U.S. and allied troops by using a combination of infantry tactics with new technology modeled on modern conflict.

It is unclear if the unit will remain — or have enough troops to train — after the Defense Department’s drawdown takes effect.

The Pentagon said it planned to remove 5,000 troops from Germany over the next 12 months as a rift between U.S. President Donald Trump and Europe over the Iran war continues to fester.

Eerie Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, was stood up in December 2025 and focuses on playing the enemy force against training formations with short- to long-range reconnaissance.

The company often uses drones that simulate those used in the war in Ukraine, where the technology has become a constant fixture shaping how units fight.

“The rate at which modern warfare is moving, and due to current conflicts, this company was established to help bridge that gap and be the eyes and ears of the battalion,” Capt. Luther Salmon, the new unit’s commander, said in a release.

Hohenfels’s training center frequently hosts large multinational exercises designed to test units against complicated, high-threat situations that can mirror war.

The establishment of Eerie company — and the removal of troops from Europe — comes amid growing concern that the U.S. is lagging behind in adapting its military to this new form of warfare that involves cheap drones and electronic warfare.

Lessons from Ukraine have shown that those systems change combat by making even basic resupplies much more dangerous. Kyiv, meanwhile, is now exporting hard-fought lessons in drone warfare to Western militaries — like the U.S. — that have studied the concepts but are new to facing them in combat.

As drones have become integral to war, the Army has begun pushing the skillset across formations. Anyone in the service can learn about or become a drone pilot, regardless of specialty or job.

One of the main drones used by Salmon’s company is the Neros Archer FPV, or first person view, which the Army said can be configured in many ways and helps replicate conflict situations like those observed in Ukraine.

Spc. Ryan Hatcher, an infantryman who has become an expert on the drone, said the Archer Neros has been helpful in training.

“It’s pretty good for an FPV,” he said. “Other FPVs we’ve flown here in Hohenfels, Germany — we’ve only been able to max out at eight to 10 minutes of battery life.”

Local officials say they believe the remaining months of 2026 are a realistic timeframe for the first export contracts.

We have “discussed in detail with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine the launch of arms exports, specifically the regulatory steps intended to support our state’s agreements and weapons production,” Zelenskyy wrote in an April 29 social media post.

Ukraine’s arms makers have touted their products as having been successfully used in an intense land conflict not witnessed in Europe since World War 2. At the same time, the Ukrainian defense industry is required by law to deliver its entire output to the country’s armed forces.

Vadym Ivchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker for the Batkivshchyna party, told Defense News a political consensus on the need to allow Ukraine’s defense industry to launch export sales has emerged across party lines.

“Meeting the needs of the defense forces as a top priority is a fundamental condition for all sides. Only after that can the sale of surplus be considered to attract investment,” Ivchenko said.

The lawmaker said that, as Ukraine’s president has already approved the so-called Drone Deals framework, Ukraine is now officially coordinating export details at the state level.

“Therefore, 2026 can be considered a realistic timeframe for launching the first contracts. Of course, delays are possible, but it is important to understand that this would lead to idle production capacity, which is an unacceptable luxury during wartime,” according to the politician.

Ivchenko said drones of various types are expected to become the Ukrainian defense industry’s flagship export products.

“From reconnaissance to strike systems, particularly those already tested in real combat conditions. In addition, Ukraine could offer missile systems and software solutions, including battlefield management technologies,” the lawmaker said. “Naval drones, software integrations, and other technological solutions are also highly likely. We may also offer our unique experience in countering modern navigation and communication systems, as well as various aviation components.”

Facing threats similar to those of Ukraine, the Gulf region’s officials have shown interest in the Ukrainian defense sector’s output, creating a momentum for its industry’s expansion across the Middle East.

“Many countries could potentially become buyers of Ukrainian products, especially those currently facing elevated security risks. In this regard, Gulf countries can be considered likely customers due to their strong interest in proven solutions,” Ivchenko said.

With the European drone market fragmented, the new marketplace will “significantly shorten” the process of buying mission-ready drones, Intelic said in a statement on Monday. The company said defense ministries can use the platform, called BASE, to shop for drones from different manufacturers that can work together via its Nexus command-and-control software.

“Our main principle is that governments here can buy plug-and-play systems they know will work within their organization, without having to adjust training and such too much,” Intelic Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Maurits Korthals Altes told Defense News in an emailed reply to questions.

BASE was inspired by procurement models developed in Ukraine, according to Intelic. Ukraine’s Brave1 platform, which connects frontline units with drone manufacturers, has been credited with helping the country field new unmanned capabilities at an unprecedented pace and turning Ukraine into a crucible for drone-warfare innovation.

The company is finalizing an agreement to provide the Royal Netherlands Army’s drone units with its Nexus software that will also give the Dutch access to the procurement platform, Korthals Altes said. Intelic is in talks with several other European ministries of defense, though the CEO declined to name them, saying that could hurt ongoing talks.

Drone manufacturers signed up for the marketplace include Portugal’s Beyond Vision, the Netherlands’ DeltaQuad, Avy, Acecore Technologies and Height Technologies, Germany’s Highcat, Latvia’s Origin Robotics and Slovakia’s Airvolute, according to Korthals Altes. The partners also include drone makers from France, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, Intelic said.

Delivering drones acquired via the BASE marketplace will be the responsibility of the manufacturers, and is not something Intelic will guarantee, the CEO said. Intelic will, however, guarantee interoperability through its Nexus software, though Korthals Altes said additional software developers could join in a later phase.

The Intelic marketplace specifically targets unmanned aerial vehicles for now, with plans to add other types of unmanned systems in the future, the CEO said. He said the drone makers signed up for the first stage are expected to generate combined sales of more than €1.5 billion (US$1.76 billion) this year.

BASE will allow defense ministries to explore systems that are ready to be used in a coalition framework, according to Korthals Altes. One difference with Brave1 is that Ukrainian military units can buy directly from their marketplace, something European Union procurement is not set up for, the CEO said.

The platform will allow buyers to access confidential information about the systems and their use cases, as well as the application of the Nexus software, Korthals Altes said. In a next step, Intelic will add “full life-cycle support,” for example by adding feedback and maintenance requests, he said.

Interoperability between drones from different manufacturers is achieved by having them all run on Intelic’s Nexus command-and-control software, unlike systems offered on a generic marketplace, according to Korthals Altes. “Ultimately, it all comes down to addressing fragmentation.”

Intelic’s Nexus software has been in use in Ukraine since 2025, including by Gurzuf Defence for its Heavy Shot family of drones, and the Dutch startup has also been working to integrate its software on Skyeton’s Raybird UAV platform.

Nexus has “some overlap” with products such as Anduril’s Lattice command-and-control software, according to Korthals Altes, though he said there are important differences, with Intelic’s software primarily platform-agnostic. “We don’t sell hardware; that makes us flexible and much more ecosystem focused.”

Being able to quickly identify interoperable capabilities available in Europe has become a strategic priority, yet procurement remains fragmented, slowing down deployment and reducing visibility of what systems are available, according to Intelic. Ensuring interoperability before any purchasing decision reduces integration risks and cuts time to deployment, the company said.

“For many MoDs, it’s still very much a matter of figuring out exactly what they need and how all of that should work together,” Korthals Altes said. “A large part of accelerating the process therefore also involves supporting the MoD in that decision-making process.”

The CEO said the next steps will be to add more drone manufacturers and countries to BASE. “Our goal is to persuade Europe.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to remove a company name from the list of marketplace manufacturers, based on new information from Intelic.

Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Zelenskiy has sought to strengthen Kyiv’s alliances, both with Western allies and with countries of the “global south,” to restrict Russia’s diplomatic sway.

The Iran war has confirmed how central drones are to modern warfare and handed Zelenskiy a diplomatic trump card at a time when U.S. support for Kyiv appears unreliable, analysts say.

During the war, Ukraine has invented cheap and highly effective ways to counter drone attacks instead of relying only on state-of-the-art defensive missile systems such as the costly U.S. Patriot, used by the U.S. in the Gulf. Kyiv has also developed long-range attack drone capabilities to hit Russian energy infrastructure.

This month alone, Ukraine signed defense and drone deals in Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, following long-term security partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in late March.

Zelenskiy has in recent weeks also agreed security cooperation with Turkey and Syria, and signed agreements at the weekend with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on defense and energy.

“Zelenskiy is really trying hard to show that Ukraine is an asset and not a liability and that it has an answer to the changing nature of war,” said Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “Ukraine now needs to organize itself to actually deliver.”

Export obstacles

Ukraine’s drone manufacturers say they have significant spare capacity, but the government has approved only a handful of defense export licenses.

Ukraine has begun drone manufacturing overseas, including in Germany and Britain, but that production is earmarked for its own military needs.

“In Ukraine, the choke point is the export control: basically it’s an export ban,” Lutsevych said, adding that Ukraine needed to streamline the rules. “It needs to find a balance between its war needs and exports.”

Zelenskiy, in his evening address on Tuesday, said Ukraine’s defense industry had 50% spare capacity in some areas and would soon begin exporting weapons. Authorities would simplify the bureaucratic procedures for export, he said, while taking steps to ensure Ukrainian technology and weapons do not end up in Russian hands.

Another challenge for Ukraine is that its success has mostly been in developing effective systems — such as coordinated layers of interceptor drones, machine guns and jamming devices for drone defense - rather than cutting-edge technology.

As a shop window for these techniques, Ukraine has deployed about 200 experts to the Gulf to help defend against Iran’s Shahed long-range drones.

Kurt Volker, a former U.S. NATO ambassador and Ukraine envoy during President Donald Trump’s first administration, said Kyiv was rightly cautious about sharing its wartime systems too widely.

“Much of what the Ukrainians have done is develop process and mentality,” Volker said, adding Ukraine was concerned about Russia learning how its systems operate. “What any business would do is protect your IP for as long as possible. That’s what makes it valuable. So of course they’re doing that.”

Human operators

Ukraine’s low-cost air defenses rely on the training and skill of the operators of its interceptor drones, said Fabian Hoffmann, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Defence University College.

That has been highly effective against propeller drones, such as Russia’s Geran-2, but the gradual introduction of jet-powered models that can fly at 400 km (250 miles) an hour are making it harder for human operators.

“Ukraine has been moving towards autonomously guided interceptor drones but, so far, the operators have done a lot of the heavy lifting,” Hoffmann said, adding that European companies such as Tytan in Germany and Frankenburg in Estonia were developing autonomous systems that might erode Ukraine’s advantage.

Military exports would bring economic benefits to Ukraine, experts say. About 400,000 people already work in Ukraine’s defense industry, according to UCDI, a manufacturers’ association. A better-capitalized defense sector could also reduce reliance on Western financial and military support, and fuel economic growth after an eventual ceasefire.

Zelenskiy hopes drone diplomacy can help secure energy supply deals with Middle Eastern states and markets for Ukraine’s agricultural produce.

He also wants to strengthen Ukraine’s missile defenses. The U.S.-Israel war with Iran has raised concerns in Ukraine that supplies of Patriot systems - used to bring down Russian ballistic missiles – could dry up as Washington prioritizes its own needs.

Ukraine’s $4-billion defense pact with Germany this month included supplies of Patriots and pledges of cooperation to create a European ballistic missile defense. Zelenskiy has said Ukraine needs its own anti-ballistic missile defenses within a year.

Hoffmann said the challenges of building an interceptor capable of downing modern maneuvering ballistic missiles was enormous: the Patriot PAC-3, with a success rate of perhaps 60%, was the fruit of decades of work, he said.

Underlying Ukraine’s push, analysts say, is concern over Washington’s reliability as a partner.

“He (Zelenskiy) understands that America stopped being an ally,” Lutsevych said. “The Ukrainians also understand that they need to walk a fine line by keeping America on side as long as possible.”

The MQ-25A Stingray launched from Boeing’s facility at MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, and flew for about two hours, according to a Navy release.

Navy and Boeing Air Vehicle Pilots controlled the MQ-25A Stingray during its test flight from the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System MD-5 Ground Control Station.

The pilots conducted a series of tests to validate the aircraft’s basic flight controls, engine performance and handling features, the release stated.

As an aerial refueling tanker, the MQ-25A is designed to assume the refueling mission from crewed fighters with the goal of boosting the combat range and strike capability of the carrier air wing, per the statement.

The MQ-25A is “the first step in integrating unmanned aerial refueling onto the carrier deck, directly enabling our manned fighters to fly further and faster,” Rear Adm. Tony Rossi, who oversees the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, said in the release.

Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets currently performing the aerial refueling role would, as the Stingray goes operational, be allowed to focus on main tasks as multi-role strike fighters, according to a Boeing release.

Boeing posted a video on Monday of the MQ-25A’s flight and said that the aircraft demonstrated its ability to taxi, take off, fly and land autonomously. The Stingray successfully completed a predetermined mission plan, per Boeing’s release.

The Navy statement said that later this year the MQ-25A will conduct its ferry flight to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. In the meantime, the service and Boeing will complete more test flights in Illinois to further test the Stingray’s flight controls and capabilities, the Boeing release said.

The Stingray is the first of four Engineering Development Model aircraft that will be delivered to the Navy under a $805 million contract.

The Navy announced in 2018 that Boeing was awarded this contract as part of the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program, which is meant for aerial refueling as well as surveillance and intelligence missions.

“The successful first flight officially initiates the rigorous flight test program, which will focus on expanding the aircraft’s performance envelope and verifying all mission systems,” Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Manager Capt. Daniel Fucito said in the Navy announcement.

The Stingray is powered by a single Rolls-Royce’s AE 3007N engine. This year, the company is expected to deliver four more engines to Boeing to support production spares, per a Rolls-Royce release.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared the target after meeting with domestic UGV manufacturers last week, where he also announced that the ministry had already begun signing contracts for 2027 to stabilize long-term manufacturer pipelines.

“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line,” Fedorov wrote in a Facebook post on April 18. “In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them.”

“Our goal — 100% of frontline logistics should be performed by robotic systems,” the minister said.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has spent over 14 billion hryvnia, or roughly $330 million, to push more than 181,000 drones, UGVs and electronic warfare systems to the front since January through a digital procurement system that allows frontline units to order equipment directly from domestic manufacturers, Fedorov said Thursday.

Within days of Fedorov’s announcement, Kyiv codified the Bizon-L — a 300-kilogram-payload logistics robot with a 50-kilometer range — under NATO cataloging standards and cleared it for operational use across Ukraine’s armed forces and those of allies.

Ukrainian forces have run more than 22,000 unmanned missions in the past three months, sparing that many soldiers from the war’s most dangerous work, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an April 14 Arms Makers’ Day address.

Zelenskyy pointed to one operation in particular.

The president described how, last summer, operators from a robotic strike unit in the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, NC13, used only aerial drones and unmanned ground vehicles to take a fortified Russian position in Kharkiv Oblast.

Russian troops raised a cardboard sign reading “We want to surrender” before drones guided them into captivity, brigade commanders said, according to CNN.

“For the first time in the history of this war, Ukrainian warriors captured an enemy position using exclusively unmanned platforms," Zelenskyy said.

Scaling production of tens of thousands of UGVs to deploy across 1,200 kilometers of frontline within the year is no simple feat, but Ukraine’s defense leaders have said they believe they are up to the task.

“We have around 300 ground-drone companies in the Brave1 ecosystem, up from zero in 2022,” Brave1 CEO Andrii Hrytseniuk told Military Times in February, adding that the organization has issued 175 grants to ground-drone developers in the same period.

Brave1 is Ukraine’s government-backed defense-tech cluster, coordinating grants, testing and frontline feedback for domestic and international manufacturers.

Zelenskyy emphasized the priorities of leaning into defense tech innovation in his speech earlier this month.

“This is about high technology protecting the highest value — human life,” Zelenskyy said.

Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said the plan is to “more than double the funding that we’re allocating to counter-drone defenses,” to the tune of A$7 billion.

These figures – $5 billion in U.S. dollars – emanate from the Integrated Investment Program (IIP) released by Canberra on Apr. 16.

As the Australian Defence Force (ADF) seeks weapons able to count medium-sized drones and small-drone swarms when deploying overseas or to protect domestic infrastructure, Conroy touted two development contracts on Apr. 21.

AIM Defence was awarded an A$21.3 million contract for its Fractl laser system, whilst Sypaq Systems received a A$10.4 million deal to develop an interceptor drone.

The fourth-generation Fractl is a portable, high-energy laser system able to track a dime-sized object at speeds exceeding 100km/h, and powerful enough to burn through steel.

The funding will enable AIM Defence to enhance Fractl’s capability and combat readiness to counter individual and swarms of drones.

As for Sypaq, the Department of Defence said it will “develop the Corvo Strike, an interceptor drone designed to track, target and destroy larger drones now commonly employed on battlefields.” This winged interceptor powered by four propellers is also a loitering munition.

Both products will eventually integrate into a command-and-control system being developed under the Army’s umbrella Land 156 counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) program.

Conroy’s A$7 billion “for drone defenses” also includes diverse capabilities like naval missiles, the NASAMS air defense system, a new medium-range air defense system and upgrades to fighters, for example.

Dedicated counter-drone systems are just one of seven categories listed in the IIP. That document mentioned the “acquisition and introduction of dismounted and vehicle-mounted systems to protect deployed forces from low-altitude aerial threats, including uncrewed air systems and helicopters.”

The two contracts worth a combined A$31.7 million pale in comparison to the A$3.9 billion going toward AUKUS submarines this year alone. Furthermore, they are only development contracts, so the Fractl and Corvo Strike are not yet ready for widespread fielding.

“With the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East showing how uncrewed aerial systems are increasingly being employed in conflict, the development of sovereign counter-drone solutions is essential to ensure the ADF can detect, assess and respond to these threats,” Conroy stated.

Ukraine is expected to produce an estimated 4.5 million drones and counter-drone systems in 2026.

The development of the Autonomous Warfare Command was mandated by SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan in an effort to further support the Trump administration’s national security objectives and SOUTHCOM’s operational dominance, per the statement.

Once fully operational, the new command will be tasked with engaging autonomous, semi-autonomous and unmanned platforms to “counter threats across domains.” The announcement did not specify when SAWC will reach operational status.

“From the seafloor to space and across the cyber domain, we fully intend to leverage the clear superiority of the American defense ecosystem by deploying cutting-edge innovation and working ever closer with our enduring partners in the region to outmatch those who threaten our collective peace and security,” Donovan said in the release.

The announcement stated that SAWC will work toward shared purposes with allies and partners in the region, such as missions focused on “degrading” narcoterrorist and cartel networks and responding to national disasters.

SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility includes the Caribbean, South America and Central America.

“Our geographic area of responsibility has a wide range of conditions, varied terrain and diverse operational environments that make it an ideal setting in which to innovate,” Donovan said in the statement.

“It is also a region with very capable and committed security partners who lean forward, embrace technologies and are very eager to work collaboratively with us to support regional stability in new and effective ways,” Donovan continued.

SOUTHCOM, military services and the Department of Defense’s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group will collaborate ahead of SAWC’s full launch, the release noted.

The groups will strive to ensure that SOUTHCOM will be able to completely integrate the new command into their mission, while pinpointing necessary expertise and capabilities required for the new command’s commencement.

The addition of the unmanned-focused unit, meanwhile, continues a trend of increased U.S. emphasis in the region.

In January, the U.S. Space Force officially activated its southern component, formalizing Space Forces Southern’s role in space capabilities across the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. Space Command played an integral role in the recent high-risk operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, providing space-based capabilities such as satellite communications and position, navigation and timing.

Donovan assumed command of SOUTHCOM after the Maduro raid, replacing Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who retired last year amid increasing scrutiny over the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the region, a remarkable extension of American power in Latin America.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers last week during a budget hearing that the service has already begun deploying the system — known as the Merops — and is rapidly scaling production as part of a broader push to defend against cheap, massed drone attacks.

“When the conflict kicked off, within about eight days, we were able to purchase … 13,000 Merops, which are incredible,” Driscoll said during a budget hearing, describing a streamlined acquisition process that cut through what had previously been a years-long, multi-agency effort.

The cost advantage is central to the strategy. Officials say the Merops interceptor currently runs about $15,000 per unit and could drop below $10,000 at scale and well below the estimated $30,000 to $50,000 price tag of a Shahed drone.

“That puts us on the right end of the cost curve, and we will make that trade all day long,” Driscoll said.

Developed by U.S. defense firm Perennial Autonomy, formerly known as Project Eagle, the Merops is a mobile, fixed-wing interceptor designed to destroy hostile drones in flight. According to industry data, it has a range of roughly five to 20 kilometers and can reach speeds of up to 280 kilometers per hour.

The system carries a two-kilogram fragmentation warhead and uses onboard sensors for target tracking and terminal homing, allowing it to lock onto targets using radio frequency signals, radar guidance or thermal signatures. It is also designed to operate in contested environments and resist GPS and radio-frequency jamming.

The drone was first used by Ukrainian forces in June 2024 against Russian-operated systems, including Shaheds, and has since been deployed by NATO allies such as Poland and Romania to help defend the alliance’s eastern flank.

In a November demonstration by U.S. and NATO forces, soldiers launched the interceptor from the back of a pickup truck, showcasing its ability to autonomously locate and engage targets.

Brig. Gen. Curtis King, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, described the system as “very lethal” and said it “enables us to kill [enemies] very effectively and at a much lower cost.”

The force’s Experimental Operations Unit conducted hands-on testing with Anduril’s YFQ-44A aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in an effort to utilize “principles of the new Warfighting Acquisition System,” according to a Thursday Air Force release.

Previously, the concept employed by the force was fully human-piloted drones, and now, “there is no operator with a stick and throttle flying the aircraft behind the scenes,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering for air dominance and strike, said in an October 2025 company release.

The testing took place sometime last week, according to a Thursday Anduril social media post written by vice president of autonomous airpower Mark Shushnar.

Shushnar said in the post that the EOU gained experience launching, recovering and turning the aircraft during the exercise, and it conducted the pre- and post-flight checks and clearances, weapons loading and unloading and direct tasking of the air vehicle during taxi and flight.

The EOU operators used a ruggedized laptop to upload mission plans, initiate autonomous taxi and takeoff, task the in-flight aircraft and manage post-flight data, Shushnar said, taking out the previous need for fixed infrastructure of a large, established base.

Shushnar highlighted how the YFQ-44A is designed to be easy to maintain with a small crew compared to traditional unmanned aerial vehicles. The exercise demonstrated that, he said. With only a couple days of training, a handful of EOU maintainers were able to turn the aircraft between sorties.

The exercise showcases a move toward “operator-driver experimentation” to find ways to speed up the capability process, per the Air Force’s release.

“By embedding the operators from the EOU with our acquisition professionals, we create a tight feedback loop that lets us trade operational risk with acquisition risk in real-time,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said in the release.

From beginning to end, the exercise was executed by EOU airmen, working alongside Air Force Material Command’s 412th Test Wing, to polish procedures for deploying and sustaining CCA, a trailblazer for the Warfighting Acquisition System, in contested environments, the announcement says.

The release recognized that the EOU’s main objective is to place operators at the center of this process to ensure that the CCA is workable for future conflict by “embedding the warfighter’s voice as the driving force from the beginning.”

The Air Force announced in April 2024 that Anduril and General Atomics were selected to design and create this first batch of drone wingmen. Anduril began flight testing in October 2025 and announced the production for the YFQ-44A Fury CCA in March 2026.

General Atomics announced that their ground testing began May 2025.

Although it is not yet clear how many YFQ-44As the Air Force has ordered from the defense companies, the service has noted they want a fleet of at least 1,000 CCAs for tasks, such as conducting strike missions, carrying out operations and flying alongside manned aircraft, like the F-22, F-35 and F-47 fighter jets.

Despite Anduril and General Atomics both developing aircraft for the Air Force’s CCA program, the service may choose to move forward into the production phase with only one. The Air Force is expected to make that decision sometime this year.

The defense technology firm introduced the system, known as MAYHEM 10, which expands upon its Switchblade family.

The Army in February announced a $186 million purchase that includes two variants of Switchblade one-way attack, or “kamikaze,” drones: the Switchblade 600 Block 2 variant and the Switchblade 300 Block 20 variant.

The difference is that MAYHEM 10 is multifunctional, meaning it can perform tasks in addition to striking. The new system can carry a 10-pound payload and has a range of over 62 miles, per the release.

The system is capable of 50 minutes of endurance, with a launch assembly that can be done in under five minutes, the statement says. It can also be launched from the air, ground or maritime platforms.

“By integrating advanced autonomy, multi-domain payloads, and rapid adaptability, we empower our forces to sense, disrupt, and strike with precision — even in the most contested environments,” Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Last year, U.S. soldiers tested the Switchblade 600 system, which has a range of 27 miles and is designed to engage a target using onboard cameras.

The Switchblade 300 Block 20, unlike the heavier 600 variant, is small enough to be carried in a backpack. For the first time, according to a February AeroVironment announcement, it will come equipped with an Explosively Formed Penetrator, a deadly warhead that is made to penetrate armored vehicles.

The U.S. military is paving the way for the regular deployment of high-energy laser weapons on American soil for air defense amid the expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Defense Department have reached a “landmark safety agreement” regarding the use of laser weapons to counter unauthorized drones at the US-Mexico border following a safety assessment that concluded such countermeasures “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” the FAA announced Friday.

The assessment and resulting agreement were the direct result of two laser incidents along the southern border of Texas in February, which prompted the FAA to abruptly close nearby airspace amid concerns over the potential impact on civilian air traffic. The incidents involved the U.S. Army’s 20 kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL), a vehicle-mounted version of defense contractor AV’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System.

In the first incident, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel used an AMP-HEL on loan from the Pentagon to engage an unidentified target near Fort Bliss, triggering an airspace shutdown above El Paso on Feb. 11. In the second, U.S. military personnel used an AMP-HEL near Fort Hancock to neutralize a “seemingly threatening” drone that turned out to belong to CBP, spurring another shutdown on Feb. 27.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement. “We will continue working with our interagency partners to ensure the National Airspace System remains safe while addressing emerging drone threats.”

The “first of its kind” safety assessment, conducted in early March by the FAA and the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) counter-drone organization at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reportedly yielded two significant conclusions: 1) the LOCUST’s automatic shutoff mechanism will consistently prohibit the system from firing under unsafe circumstances, a point that AV executives have emphasized in recent weeks, and 2) in the event of a system failure, the laser beam itself cannot inflict catastrophic damage even on aircraft flying at its maximum effective range, let alone those at cruising altitudes.

Here’s how Aaron Westman, AV senior director for business development, described the LOCUST’s safety protocols in a company blog post on March 23:

Every time an operator presses the “fire” button, the system runs through a series of automated checks. Some examples include:

• Is the laser pointing away from protected “keep-out” zones?
• Are all internal subsystems operating within safe parameters?
• Is the system properly locked onto a target?
• Are safety interlock switches engaged?
• Are all software safety checks satisfied?

Each of these checks acts as a safety “vote.”

If any subsystem registers a “no vote,” the laser simply will not fire. An operator can press the trigger — and nothing happens. The system refuses to engage until all conditions are verified as safe.

These automated safeguards are built into both the hardware and the software of the system.

Here’s how DefenseScoop described the LOCUST’s potential effects on passing airframes based on an account from Army Col. Scott McLellan, JIATF-401 deputy director, of the testing at White Sands:

McLellan said the evaluation involved “localized” firing of the AMP-HEL from various distances at the fuselage of a Boeing 767 airliner that testers lugged on to White Sands to assess the system’s damaging effects, “or lack thereof” on aircraft material. He said it aimed to “disprove some myths” about the capability, noting “that energy clearly dissipates over time and space and doesn’t have the effect everyone thinks it does as far as lasers are concerned.”

A JIATF 401 spokesperson said the laser was fired at its “maximum effective range for up to 8 seconds” at the grounded fuselage, “demonstrating that even at full intensity, the laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft.”

As drone warfare spreads beyond distant conflicts, laser weapons are an increasingly attractive domestic countermeasure. While kinetic interceptors and electronic warfare may be considered suitable for chaotic battlefields, their potential for collateral effects makes them far too risky for consistent domestic applications. And even if collateral damage wasn’t a concern, expending expensive missiles on the 1,000 cartel-operated drones that cross the border with Mexico monthly is economically unsustainable, especially for a Pentagon that’s already rapidly burning through munitions as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. On paper, the argument seems obvious: Why not save those critical interceptors for high-end threats overseas and let domestic laser emplacements, with their deep magazines and minimal cost-per-shot, pull counter-drone duty at home?

Using laser weapons for domestic air defense wouldn’t be unprecedented. France deployed two 2 kw High Energy Laser for Multiple Applications – Power (HELMA-P) systems to secure the airspace over the country’s Île-de-France region during the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics. This past September, China’s People’s Liberation Army deployed several laser weapons across Beijing during a major military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. As of January, the U.K. Ministry of Defense was reportedly drawing up plans to build a domestic laser screen, albeit composed of lower-power laser dazzlers, to protect military installations and other critical infrastructure. The Pentagon has even already considered laser weapons to reinforce the airspace above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s residences at Fort McNair in Washington following a series of unauthorized drone incursions there.

Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that laser weapons could see increasing domestic applications amid the U.S. military’s growing appetite for novel drone defenses. On April 2, JIATF-401 announced that it had funneled $20 million in counter-drone systems like the Dronebuster EW handset and Smart Shooter computerized riflescope to the U.S.-Mexico border in just four months.

Days later, the task force announced $100 million to enhance counter-drone capabilities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup starting in June “to protect stadiums and fan zones in 11 cities across nine states,” part of larger $600 million surge in counter-drone systems that also allocated $158 million to “defend the nation’s highest-priority defense critical infrastructure.”

With the Pentagon asking for $580 million in R&D funding just for JIATF-401 in its fiscal year 2027 budget request (and potentially $800 million in procurement cash), the task force appears poised to explore any and all possible solutions to the drone problem — and operationally, the FAA-Pentagon safety agreement helps establish laser weapons as a viable option.

That said, the safety agreement on its own is unlikely to open the floodgates for a sudden spate of laser weapon deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border, let alone for major events like the World Cup or critical infrastructure just yet. First, the agreement doesn’t appear to clarify who has final say in authorizing a laser engagement when U.S. military, CBP and FAA jurisdictions overlap — the precise ambiguity that yielded February’s airspace closures and, until resolved, will complicate future engagements during a fast-moving crisis. Second, the U.S. military’s arsenal of operational laser weapons is currently limited despite a stated goal of rapidly fielding new systems at scale within three years. Even with clear plans to surge directed energy research and development for homeland defense under President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome for America” missile shield, the age of sleek beam directors quietly standing watch along the US-Mexico border remains a long way off.

The FAA agreement may end up laying the foundation for a true domestic laser air defense architecture — a “Laser Dome” in all but name. Whether the U.S. military actually builds it, however, will depend not just the Pentagon’s promise to deploy laser weapons at scale, but whether Washington can finally sort out who’s in charge when a beam crosses into civilian airspace.

French defense firms have been slow to set up joint companies with Ukrainian partners, with just one joint venture created so far, compared to 11 for Germany and five for Spain, said Ihor Fedirko, the chief executive officer of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry. He was speaking at a press briefing late Wednesday after a day of meetings organized with French land defense industry group GICAT.

Ukraine has developed unmatched expertise in Europe in drone warfare after four years of fighting Russia’s invasion, coming up with new use cases and doctrine as well as scaling up drone production to millions of units per year. Meanwhile, France is home to some of Europe’s biggest defense firms and is the world’s second-biggest arms exporter.

“We have to establish a win-win strategy with the defense industry of France, to find our best partners,” Fedirko said. “We want to know as well how you produce your products, your production culture, your standards. That’s what you can bring to our industry.”

Ukraine was present with 27 companies, most of them drone makers, while nearly 60 French firms showed up for the day of match making, according to Fedirko. He said some Ukrainian companies would follow up with visits to French manufacturers on Thursday.

Co-producing Ukrainian defense products with strategic partners, on their territory, means an additional flow of equipment to send to the front, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former minister of strategic industries. He said allied governments buying co-produced kit to donate to Ukraine “is the fastest and the best way how we can support our front line.”

Kamyshin said Ukraine’s industry has historically been integrated “into the East” and now needs to become part of the European defense framework, while Europe’s defense industry will become stronger by integrating capabilities learned and developed in Ukraine.

“We come with our lessons learned,” Kamyshin said. “We offer a model which is definitely beneficial for your country, for your industry, for your economy. And we want to do more together.”

Fedirko said no other European country has a defense industry like that of France, active in deep tech and completely independent, with the French industry strong in aerospace and “classic weaponry.” With France able produce everything from missiles and radars to night-vision equipment, what Ukraine can bring is knowledge, technologies and innovations in the field of drones, he said.

“When we will combine our experience and expertise and your deep technologies, your standards, your production culture, we can establish something pretty new,” Fedirko said.

French companies may announce at least one or two drone joint ventures with Ukrainian partners in the coming weeks, said Clément Requier, GICAT’s director of export and European partnerships. He noted France’s defense industry already works with Ukraine’s industry in formats other than joint ventures.

Ukraine is offering a level of industrial collaboration that wouldn’t have been available five years ago, and is open to sharing what it learned to produce, in the interest of integrating with European industry, according to Kamyshin. The Ukrainian official said in turn he sees strong interest in cooperation from the French side.

Wednesday’s meeting was the fourth between the French and Ukrainian defense industries since July 2023, and the first in France, according to Requier. France often frames cooperation with other countries in terms of delivering stand-alone solutions, and should think more about also being a provider of critical components and equipment, he said.

Ukraine has the expertise it needs, with more than 1,000 companies active in defense, most of them producing unmanned systems, said Kamyshin. He said Ukrainian drones have sunk Russian ships and submarines, saying it “looks like Lego drones work well,” an oblique reference to reported comments by Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger widely seen as dismissive of Ukraine’s drone innovation.

France has deep knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence, and “we would be happy do to more in that domain,” according to Kamyshin. Ukraine sees France as a strategic partner, and the focus is on promoting collaboration and co-production in France, rather than sales, the special adviser said.

Ukraine in March raised the possibility of sharing battlefield data with partners to train AI models, and Kamyshin said Ukraine would be happy to share datasets with countries with which it starts co-production, and “not only in Ukraine,” with an announcement on partnerships expected on April 13.

With regards to what France can bring to the table, Ukraine could benefit from more sharing of strong standard setting in Europe, said Éloi Delort, public affairs director at Alta Ares, a French defense AI firm. He said France’s Directorate General for Armament puts “a lot of stress” on French companies to secure systems and ensure technology is not getting stolen.

One of Wednesday’s participants, Ukraine’s MOWA Defense, which provides training and advisory services for defense, sees France as a key market, co-founder Fedir Serdiuk said. Operating in France would require a local partner, which the executive says he hopes to have found, with a possible final agreement or at least a letter of intent in coming months.

Ukrainian drone maker eDrone came to Paris looking for new partnerships, chief commercial officer Pavlo Valenchuk said. He cited the example of a French company with radars, a good drone-tracking system and software, “everything to develop a really good system” to protect strategic objects in France, but lacking interceptor drones. “This type of partnership we’re looking for.”

French company SBG Systems, which makes low-cost inertial navigation systems in France that are used by Ukraine in strike drones, is looking to qualify partnerships to relocate some production to Ukraine, CEO Thibault Bonnevie said. Some manufacturing may be difficult to move because it relies on machine tools from Switzerland, with export restrictions for countries in conflict, he said.

SBG is working to enhance feedback on its products from the front line, a key issue in Ukraine because of the fast-evolving battlefield and Russian electronic-warfare, Bonnevie said. The company’s customers are manufacturers rather than the armed forces directly, which means relying on the drone makers for user feedback, something that was “discussed a lot” on Wednesday, the CEO said.

Meeting with Ukrainian companies in Paris was a way to meet potential new partners rather than sign contracts, according to Bonnevie.

“The next step is usually to go visit those companies directly in Ukraine, because there is nothing really happening in Ukraine for European companies without stronger links,” Bonnevie said. Even if discussions center around drones and robots, “there is still a story of humans working together and trust that needs to be built between the companies,” he said.

The website cited a state-run media report and experts calling the vessel a “major leap in integrated combat capability” that “positions the vessel among the most advanced frigates in service today”.

A slew of announcements such as that one from March 30 shows AI expanding across a military that aims to “intelligentize” as it prepares for potential conflicts in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. But analysts say China is picking its AI battles carefully rather than expecting quick domination of the technology or short-term parity with the United States.

China is taking a “cautious official posture” toward AI in the armed forces, said Sophie Wushuang Yi, postdoctoral teaching fellow with Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University.

“China’s concept of intelligentized warfare has been embedded in official defense white papers since 2019,” Yi said. “But the open-source academic literature is frank that China cannot currently close the overall gap with the United States in military AI capability.”

Still, AI is becoming a force within the forces.

An institution under the People’s Liberation Army in January used AI to test drone swarms and, according to a test run shown on Chinese state television, one soldier supervised some 200 of the autonomous vehicles at the same time.

AI is taking on a greater role as well in the military’s use of space and cyberspace, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst for defense strategy and national security with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In space, he said, it can manage “complex orbital operations,” while in cyberspace it can plan and conduct operations against critical information infrastructure.

The military’s ability to use AI at machine speed would potentially let it exploit a faster “observe-orient-decide-act” loop compared to purely human-controlled systems, Davis said.

“That’s something that’s being demonstrated by the U.S. and Israel now in operational planning in the Iran war, where AI is playing a key role in identifying targets and planning mission packages,” the Canberra-based analyst said. “There’s no reason that the PLA won’t learn from that and utilize a similar capability.”

A testament to AI’s reach throughout the military, a March 26 PLA Daily report notes its use in battlefield perception, intelligent decision support and autonomous control systems.

PLA leaders particularly value AI decision-making because most of their people lack battlefield experience, unlike American counterparts, said Sam Bresnick, a research fellow with the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

He said its priorities include layering AI on top of computer networks, gathering volumes of data and the autonomy of unmanned systems such as uncrewed underwater vehicles.

Chinese officials want to surpass the U.S. in military AI use, Bresnick noted, but the government today fears information that AI could use or generate. “The data could go against Xi Jinping and Communist Party ideals,” he said. “They don’t want to lose control over it.”

The U.S. armed forces now have a “commanding” AI lead over China, the Modern War Institute at West Point said in a March 17 study.

It says the United States has more than 4,000 data centers versus some 400 in China. Four-year-old U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors shipped to China limit Beijing’s access to AI-related hardware, the study adds.

“China’s publicly stated position is considerably more cautious and more hedged than is commonly assumed in Western coverage,” Yi said.

“The PLA lacks the volume of real operational data that the U.S. military has accumulated over decades of expeditionary warfare, and there are unresolved doctrinal tensions between the decentralized decision-making that effective AI-enabled operations require and the PLA’s deeply embedded centralized command culture,” said Yi of the Schwarzman College.

China may have surpassed the United States in AI for drone swarms, however, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor in the Diplomacy and International Relations Department at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

“With the addition of drone carriers already in service, the PLA has taken the lead over the U.S. military in this category of AI military applications,” he said.

The Qinzhou frigate was commissioned last year and did a combat drill in the South China Sea, where Beijing disputes maritime sovereignty with five other governments.