The United States and Ukraine have signed a bilateral statement of intent that formally opens the U.S. military to Ukrainian combat drones, according to reporting from RFE/RL on July 22. It is the first drone-cooperation agreement of its kind between the two countries and lays the groundwork for what one official called "a giant leap forward for American defense."
What the statement of intent actually does
The document, signed by both Washington and Kyiv, creates a formal pathway for Ukrainian land, air and maritime drones to be exported into the United States for Pentagon testing and evaluation. It is not itself a production contract, but two sources familiar with the deal told RFE/RL that the framework is expected to feed directly into future U.S. procurement requirements and, eventually, joint manufacturing of Ukrainian-designed platforms on American soil.
For the Pentagon, the appeal is speed and cost: four years of full-scale war have turned Ukraine into arguably the world's most productive lab for low-cost, combat-proven unmanned systems, from FPV interceptors to electronic warfare drones to sea-skimming attack USVs. The agreement dovetails with the U.S. Defense Department's "Drone Dominance" push, a $1 billion program to buy 200,000 lethal drones by 2027.
MAGURA maritime drones head to Oregon
The signing follows a separate July 21 memorandum between Ukrainian autonomous-systems developer UFORCE and Oregon shipbuilder ReconCraft to co-produce the 24-foot MAGURA family of unmanned surface vessels in the United States. Production is expected to scale from hundreds to eventually thousands of hulls, with the U.S. Navy as a target customer.
A wartime supply chain crosses the Atlantic
The MAGURA-ReconCraft deal is significant on its own: U.S. forces used unmanned surface vessels in combat for the first time earlier this month against Iranian naval targets, exposing a gap in domestic USV production that Ukraine's battle-tested platforms are well positioned to fill. Sean Plankey, chief executive of UFORCE's American operations, described the joint venture as a template for pairing Ukrainian combat experience with American industrial capacity.
The move also caps a series of tighter Kyiv-Washington defense ties that saw Ukraine's F-Drones ship its first 2,000 F10 strike UAVs to the Pentagon earlier this month, and comes on top of Europe's parallel wave of Milrem-VDL ground-robot production for Ukraine and the Come Back Alive foundation's $30.9M tactical-drone purchase. It also comes as Anduril and NATO members increasingly bet on Ukrainian know-how to bulk up allied production against Russia, China and Iran.
Reporting based on coverage from RFE/RL, Reuters, Ukrainska Pravda and The Washington Times.