Iran Adds New Urgency To Pentagon’s Ukraine Drone Deal

President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran has given Ukraine a new card to play — its hard-won expertise defending against Russian drone and missile attacks.

The Iranian counterattack with cheap, easily produced drones has exposed a vulnerability for the U.S. and its regional allies, adding new urgency for the Pentagon to close a deal with Ukraine that has been in the works for the better part of a year.

Any agreement on sharing technology to counter Iranian drones could be a boon for the U.S. and many of its closest partners, who are shooting multi-million dollar missiles at $50,000 drones. It also marks one of the few times Ukraine can publicly offer the U.S. something of immediate value as it seeks financial and military support for its four-year campaign against Russia.

So far no deal has been signed, according to two people familiar with the ongoing conversations, who, like others in this story, were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks. But Brig. Gen. Matt Ross and several members of his Joint Interagency Task Force 401 — which is running the Pentagon’s sprint to develop and buy new counter-drone weapons — were in Ukraine last week to continue working on the plan to leverage Ukraine’s combat-tested drone expertise, according to a defense official.

Underscoring the threat, an Iranian/Russian Shahed drone hit an American command center in Kuwait, killing six U.S. soldiers on the second day of the war. And the drones are causing widespread damage to civilian infrastructure across the Middle East, leading several Gulf countries to begin exploring options with Kyiv to get their advice and possibly buy some of their cheaper interceptors.

The possibility of securing Ukrainian help comes as Trump touts America’s military dominance in Iran and continues to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his country’s ongoing war with Russia.

But even as Trump needled Zelenskyy, several Ukrainian officials confirmed that the interest in their drone interceptors — from the U.S. and several Arab countries caught in the line of fire — is “growing.”

“We're not prepared for Iranian drones. I think we probably should have been,” said Imran Bayoumi, associate director with the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. “I don't think the challenge is so much: can the United States and its Gulf allies innovate fast enough? It's more do we have enough technology, munitions, resources to spread this around? For Ukraine, especially in exporting this technology, they're going to want to make sure they can still retain some of it for itself, right? Ukraine still has a very real threat from Russia.”

The White House referred back to the president’s previous comments about welcoming help from allies to counter Iranian attacks.

A person close to the president's national security team acknowledged that Zelenskyy has "marginal short term leverage" with the U.S., and that it's a "smart play" for a leader who's lacked much leverage in the year-plus since Trump returned to the White House, to take advantage of the current moment.

But they said Zelenskyy will need to keep his requests manageable. "He wants more rockets for Patriot systems, so maybe he can get [the U.S.] to expedite some requests," the person added.

With the Iran war only in its first week, Ukraine — in dire need of missiles and money — now appears to have another opportunity to show Trump that it is a more reliable partner than Russia. While Zelenskyy has backed the joint U.S.-Israeli operation targeting Iran’s senior leaders, nuclear facilities and military stockpiles, Russia has sided with Iran, providing not just Shahed drones but, in recent days, intelligence to aid Tehran’s attacks on American targets, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The intelligence sharing was first reported by the Washington Post.

Whether Trump adjusts his lopsided approach to the two countries’ leaders is another matter. Trump insists Zelenskyy “get moving” in peace talks that remain at an impasse over territorial concessions in eastern Ukraine. Conversely, Trump continues to assert that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal, despite scant evidence that that’s the case.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday sidestepped a question about whether Russia’s reported assisting of Iran might alter his faith in Putin.

“Peace is still an achievable objective with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war,” she said, adding that any Russian intelligence shared with Iran “is not making a difference…because we are completely decimating them.”

The initial contours of a drone deal with Ukraine were billed as a blockbuster agreement that would see U.S. investment flow into Ukraine, and some manufacturing move to the U.S. But one person familiar with the talkssaid that the deal is being broken up into smaller parts, with scaled-down ambitions.

Several U.S. allies have worked more quickly than the Trump administration to harness Ukraine’s stunning innovation in developing new drones.

The U.K. in particular has already invested in the Ukrainian drone industry and the Kyiv-based Ukrspecsystems is opening a factory in the U.K. to build new, cheap military drones that will create 500 jobs — a manufacturing boost that the Trump team has long said is a central component of its increased defense spending.

The U.K. has also started to produce the Ukrainian-designed Octopus interceptor drones which can target the Iranian/Russian Shahed drones.

The Octopus costs about $3,000 to produce, a small slice of the $50,000 for a Shahed, and a fraction of the $3 million- plus for a PAC-2 or PAC-3 Patriot interceptor missiles which Gulf allies are currently using to shoot down the incoming Shaheds, according to a U.S. official. Often it takes several Patriot interceptor missiles to hit a single drone, an unsustainable proposition given the cost.Meanwhile, the Israelis are also using their “Iron Beam” system – a directed energy weapon it's been developing for years – to destroy Iranian rockets and drones. “The broader discussion in defense procurement is evolving. It’s not just about producing the cheapest drones possible. The real challenge is finding the right balance between cost and advanced, proven technology that can perform reliably in complex environments,” said Aviv Shapira, CEO of XTEND, the drone company that Eric Trump invests in.

But as Iranian drones have hammered hotels, military bases, oil- and gas-producing facilities and embassies across the Gulf, Trump made it clear this week in an interview with Reuters that he’d accept “any assistance from any country” when it comes to fending them off.

“The U.S. is years behind on tactical drone technology — the kind you see on the battlefield in Ukraine,” a former Pentagon official acknowledged, noting that the deficiency would be of greater concern in a ground war. “If the U.S. fought in Ukraine right now, for example, we would suffer mass casualties. This is why it became the top priority for DOGE, along with AI, when the cutting was over.”

Facing the same threat and limited help from its allies, Ukraine developed expertise in shooting down drones with anti-aircraft guns,truck-mounted machine guns, cheap missiles as well as “interceptor” drones — fast-flying craft that can catch and destroy Shaheds.

However, Ukraine still relies on its allies, and especially the U.S., for systems like Patriots to protect against ballistic missiles. Kyiv has complained that shortages of interceptor missiles left Ukrainian cities vulnerable during this year’s freezing winter.

Zelenskyy this week took note of how the U.S. was burning through the PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles he’s requested — but not received — from Washington.

“Ukraine did not have that many missiles since the start of the war,” the Ukrainian president said at a press briefing on Thursday.

And European officials warned this week that the biggest risk of the Iran war for Ukraine will be a shortage of PAC-3 missiles.

But despite any frustrations and even before an agreement on drones was finalized, Zelenskyy pledged Ukraine’s assistance. "There will be security support from Ukraine,” he said in an evening statement on Thursday. “The main thing is that this will allow us to expand our security cooperation with partners: by protecting countries from the Iranian regime, we are adding to our defense capabilities."

Veronika Melkozerova contributed to this report.