For three years now, the U.S. has dug into its weapons arsenal and shared billions of dollars to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia; now, as peace talks suggest the war could be coming to an end, America could reap a dividend in the form of Ukraine’s battle-tested drone technology.
Ukraine has developed a talent for transforming low-cost, commercially available drones into long-range weapons, which have proven more capable than many more expensive U.S. unmanned aerial systems, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, who visited Ukraine late last year.
“They have figured out how to make adaptations and how to make the systems work under most conditions, even pretty extreme ones, and that is something [many] U.S. companies just don’t have because … we are not in the same environment right now,” Pettyjohn told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “Ukraine is facing a real, living, breathing enemy that is constantly adapting.”
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) awarded contracts this month to develop low-cost drone prototypes for testing as one-way munitions at extended ranges. Four U.S. companies won contracts, two of which partnered with Ukrainian UAS firms.
The goal of the DIU program, dubbed Artemis, is to have prototypes ready in fiscal 2025—meaning by Sept. 30. According to Artemis program manager Trent Emeneker, the DIU program will create a new category of weapons not currently in the U.S. arsenal. The Artemis program is structured to rapidly produce large quantities of the new drones than conventional defense programs.
“The U.S. does not have cheap, mass-produced, fielded capabilities in this space,” Emeneker wrote in an email to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There is no reasonable timeline from a program of record to deliver a similar capability in the next four-five years, and almost certainly not at the price points that we will deliver at.”
The deals follow by six six months a Pentagon announcement that it would provide $800 million to support Ukraine’s ability to mass-produce long-range drones, which have demonstrated marked improvement at striking Russian targets hundreds of kilometers away.
Ukraine is experiencing rapid growth in uncrewed systems and “capabilities in response to constantly emerging and evolving threats, and is where we see the most rapid advances in capabilities, in the constantly evolving battlefield,” Emeneker said. “Because [Ukrainian] firms are so closely tied to the end user, their feedback and iteration loops are incredibly fast.”
For Artemis, DIU partnered with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment to award contracts to:
- AeroVironment, the U.S. maker of Switchblade loitering munitions
- Dragoon Technology, five year-old small-drone startup based in Tuscon, Ariz., and Colorado Springs, Colo.
- Swan, a little-known defense firm focused on autonomy and an unnamed Ukrainian partner
- Auterion, an autonomy specialist with offices in the U.S. and Switzerland, also partnered with a Ukrainian UAS firm
The Pentagon declined to release the names of the Ukrainian companies for operational security reasons, Emeneker said.
Kateryna Bondar, fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the inclusion of Ukrainian firms is a step toward more effective collaboration between the two country’s defense industries.
The U.S. defense industry strives to make the most advanced unmanned systems, but there has been a “huge misunderstanding of what is needed to make system that actually feed the demand, feed the mission, so when I saw this award, I was like ‘OK, finally we have real collaboration,” Bondar told Air and Space Forces Magazine in an interview.
In the past, U.S. companies mostly preferred to hire Ukrainian engineers or collaborate with drone operators instead of partnering with Ukrainian firms, Bondar said.
Part of the reason is that Ukrainian firms are not creating new technology but instead figuring out how to use existing tech in creative ways that are easy to mass-produce, she said.
“Ukranians are still not very accustomed to doing defense business in Western ways,” Bondar added, citing a second concern for U.S. firms. For example, a U.S. company will offer a deal that pays a license a small amount of money for each use of their software—while Ukrainians want money up front, said Bondar, who is Ukrainian and frequently communicates with the Ukrainian defense industry as well as its military forces.
“These are probably cultural issues; we have to realize that Ukraine is still a post-Soviet country and still has some post-Soviet mentality and the fear of the future,” Bondar said. “They are not ready to make obligations for the next 20 years and wait for the income. They want money right here and right now.”
Pettyjohn said the divide goes beyond culture. “There is also an urgency divide” in that Ukrainian companies don’t care about conducting lengthy testing certifications, she said. “They are fielding capabilities that they want to get on the battlefield today.”
The Artemis program grows out of the 2024 defense budget to quickly provide loitering munitions capable of operating in GPS-denied and electromagnetic-warfare-challenged battlefields. The weapons need to be cheap enough to mass produce. Emeneker would not discuss program costs, however, so it is unclear what the price range for Artemis products could be. But Emeneker said the program could issue as many as four production awards by the end of fiscal 2025.
The final versions of these rapidly updatable, ground-launched systems must have a maximum range of at least 300 kilometers and be capable of launching quickly, navigating at low altitudes, and carrying a variety of payloads, according to the DIU release.
To meet DIU’s aggressive timeline, each of the four companies will submit multiple UAS prototypes for evaluation in time for demonstrations to be completed by the end of May. The prototypes will be in a “relevant environment, which includes Electronic Warfare and full denial of the Global Navigation Satellite System for position keeping,” Emeneker said. “This will also include tactical feedback on ease of launch, mission planning, logistics, and transportability.”
Pettyjohn said she is hopeful that working directly with Ukrainian companies will produce more flexible, modular systems that are capable of performing better in real-world battlefield conditions.
“I think we have seen that the U.S. testing and evaluation process for different systems is not as rigorous as the battlefield in Ukraine,” she said. “That is why a lot of U.S. weapons have failed. … Part of the success of the Ukrainian systems is their adaptability and the fact that they are modified sometimes on a weekly basis in terms of what frequencies they operate on, where the antennas are located. … It runs the gamut from small hardware changes to software changes.”
Some U.S. drone systems have performed effectively in Ukraine. AeroVironment’s Switchblade loitering munitions have seen success there, and the company won a five-year U.S. Army contract in August 2024 worth up to $990 million to field the system to U.S. combat units, according to AeroVironment’s website. Aerovironment did not provide comment for this story before publication.
For Bondar, the strength that Ukraine brings to the table is in its use of plug-and-play software rather than sophisticated hardware.
“This software can be installed on any platform. … Basically you make it like a Lego,” Bondar said. “The Russians are very good at reverse-engineering any hardware. They do it easily, fast, and it’s obvious, but to reverse-engineer software is way harder because Ukranians encrypt it. They protect it. Even if [the Russians] get a very good piece of equipment that is not damaged; it is almost impossible for them to get the software and reverse-engineer it.”
Caitlin Lee, director of the RAND Corporation’s Acquisition and Technology Policy Program, said that Artemis is an admirable effort but will face challenges as it matures.
“Developing more modular systems that accept different software and subsystems is much harder than it sounds, or DOD would have started doing it a long time ago,” Lee told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an email. “One major challenge that still lies ahead is figuring out how to allow for modularity—and meaningful size, weight, and power—at a low price point.”