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Kyiv — Ukraine is ready to sign a landmark drone defense deal with the United States, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is prepared to sign the deal on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York City, but the sources said the deal may instead be finalized at a later date, when the U.S. is ready to sign.
Over the past year, the Department of Defense and its Ukrainian counterpart have developed a framework that would allow the two countries’ militaries to expand testing and production of Ukrainian defense technology in the U.S.
The importance of expanding partnerships with Ukraine’s defense industry has become increasingly clear to the U.S. and its allies throughout the war with Iran. During the first days of the war, Iran began targeting American military installations across the Middle East with Shahed one-way attack drones — the same type of drones Russia has used to attack Ukraine’s cities. As the U.S. and the Gulf states initially lacked cost-effective means to intercept the drones, Kyiv sent drone interceptors and pilots to help.
Ukraine has since signed defense agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. The agreements match foreign financing with Ukraine’s burgeoning defense manufacturing industry. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine aims to make 10 million drones this year. By comparison, the U.S. Army acquired roughly 50,000 in 2025, according to former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
But experts say the most important lesson for the U.S. and its allies is that Ukraine’s advantage lies not only in the drones themselves, but in the software, operators and teams constantly adapting them.
“There is a sort of a misconception that you just buy the tech and somehow it’s going to work. Really what the West needs to start understanding better is that it’s not just about having the tech. It’s about how the tech is used. And this is where Ukraine’s knowledge, skills, experience really need to be transmitted along with it,” Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Green Flag Ventures, an American venture capital firm that invests in Ukrainian defense technology, told CBS News. “It’s not just like it’s a rifle that you just point and shoot.”
Previously unreported details from the opening days of the Iran war illustrate that challenge.
In March, as Iran began to retaliate against joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, then-Army Secretary Driscoll called Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who has since founded Perennial Autonomy, a U.S. drone company active in Ukraine. Perennial Autonomy manufactures an interceptor drone known as Merops, which is among the most effective means of countering the Iranian-designed Shahed drones Russia uses against Ukraine. Driscoll asked Schmidt to supply 13,000 Merops interceptor drones and 10,000 Bumblebee reconnaissance and strike drones to the Middle East.
Schmidt agreed and the drones were sent to the U.S. military within days, but it would take weeks before they were operational because of Ukrainian components that arrived late, according to multiple sources familiar with the shipments. Perennial Autonomy’s Merops drones use AI beacons manufactured by Sine Engineering, a Ukrainian defense communications company, and Ukrainian warheads that carry the drones’ explosive material. Ukrainian expertise was also needed to integrate the drones into U.S. air defense radars before they could be used in combat.
CBS News has reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment on the use of Ukrainian technology to defend bases in the Middle East and the status of the drone deal with Ukraine.
In recent months, Washington’s efforts to absorb the lessons from Ukraine’s drone warfare have been uneven. In August, the U.S. Army phased out a drone battalion tasked with studying lessons on Ukraine’s drone warfare. Two of the unit’s prominent backers, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and the former commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher Donahue, were both ousted or forced to retire early this year.
But the Pentagon has also taken steps toward expanding America’s own drone arsenal. The U.S. Drone Dominance Program has invited American and select foreign companies — primarily Ukrainian ones — to compete for drone contracts from the U.S. military. The program hopes to purchase more than 200,000 drones by 2027.
Skyfall, one of Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturers, won the program’s first “gauntlet” earlier this year. Perennial Autonomy and Neros — another American manufacturer with a presence on the ground in Ukraine — won the second.
Sources with direct knowledge of the drone deal say it would go beyond awarding contracts to a handful of Ukrainian companies. Instead, it would create a broader framework for leading Ukrainian defense firms to work directly with American counterparts and the U.S. military.
Fairlamb, the Ukraine-based American venture capitalist, said the deal’s value will hinge on its ability to transfer Ukraine’s operational know-how alongside its technology.
“So much of what goes into utilizing drones on a battlefield, whether offensive or defensive, really takes an enormous amount of coordination, operational planning, understanding the environment, communication between drone operators,” she said. “There’s a whole chain of events that happen in parallel with the utilization of drones that people are sort of overlooking — but that is utterly intrinsic to the Ukrainians’ understanding of how they’re using drones.”
