After Iran launched thousands of one-way attack drones at Israel, American bases, and Gulf states this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to share Kyiv’s battlefield experience in stopping them, an offer that could reshape how the US and its allies defend against cheap Iranian drones.
“We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against ‘Shahed’ in the Middle East region,” Zelensky posted on Thursday. “I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security.”
The previous day, Zelenskyy said, he had charged Ukraine’s foreign minister and other defense officials with assisting countries under attack “in a way that does not weaken [Ukraine’s] own defense.”
“Our military possesses the necessary capabilities. Ukrainian experts will operate on-site, and teams are already coordinating these efforts,” he wrote on X/Twitter.
Furthermore, on Thursday, the Financial Times reported that the United States and at least one Gulf country are in talks to purchase Ukrainian interceptor drones, quoting Ukrainian “industry figures.”
According to the report, the Ukrainian-built defensive drones’ low cost and high effectiveness provide a cheaper alternative to traditional defense systems.
US, allies struggle to down Iranian drones
Since the joint US-Israel attack on Iran (Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury) on February 28, the Islamic Republic has targeted almost a dozen countries across the Middle East using its Shahed UASs, causing damage to military and civilian facilities. According to estimates from Tel Aviv University’s Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), during the first four days of the war, Iran launched over 2,000 UASs at Israel, Gulf nations, and US military bases.
Six US military personnel were killed at a military base in Kuwait in the opening hours of the war when a Shahed slammed into their installation.
Gulf states such as Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain, which have all been targeted by the HESA (Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Company) Shahed systems in recent days, generally use MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air (SAM) missiles to counter this threat. While effective, Patriot batteries cost billions of dollars to deploy, and each interceptor missile can cost several million. As Iran’s stockpile of UASs is estimated to be in the tens of thousands, Patriot interceptions aren’t an optimal long-term solution.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian interceptors would take time before they could be operational in the Middle East, as they would need to be integrated with the radar systems in the region. Troops would also need to be trained in their use.
Ukraine finds cheap, effective ways to intercept drones
Ukrainian air defenses, largely inherited from the Soviet era, often struggled to detect low-flying UASs. To counter this, the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been finding new solutions for countering hostile aerial threats.
Reserving costly SAM systems, such as Norway’s NASAMS and Germany’s IRIS-T for high-value targets, the UAF has deployed everything from truck-mounted machine guns to GPS spoofing against drones. Most notable are their purpose-built interceptor UAVs, taking the fight to enemy UASs in direct drone-vs-drone engagements.
The Ukrainian drone interceptors are largely First-Person-View (FPV) drones, which fly faster than Shahed UAS and use cameras and AI to detect hostile UAS before crashing into them.
Built by Ukrainian defense technology company SkyFall and unveiled in November 2025, the drone interceptor P1-Sun successfully downed a Shahed UAS in January. Costing approximately $1,000 and partially 3D-printed, the product is one of the possible options that Ukraine could sell to the US and allies, Ukrainian online media outlet dev.ua reported. Since their introduction on the battlefield, interceptors such as P1-Sun have quickly taken a main role in countering the Russian UAS threat.
According to a statement on Tuesday by UAF Commander-In-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky, defensive drones such as the P1-Sun account for around 70 percent of Shahed interceptions in the Kyiv region – having destroyed over 1,500 UASs last month. Additionally, in October 2025, Zelensky claimed that interceptor drones had a 68% success rate in the air, a number he said would increase with more funding.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia is estimated to have utilized tens of thousands of Shahed 136 UASs, and last month, Ukraine's Air Force announced that it had downed a total of 44,700 since February 2022.
What is the Shahed?
While Iranian aerospace company Shahed Aviation Industries boasts a lineup of nearly two dozen types of unmanned aircraft, Russia has primarily favored the Shahed-136 model against Ukraine, which it calls the Geran-2.
Shahed 136 UASs are one-way drones, which crash into their target and detonate upon impact. Carrying up to a 200-pound (90-kilogram) warhead and traveling at speeds up to 115 mph (185 km/h), it presents a formidable threat, especially when launched in swarms.
Russia reportedly began to produce the UAS domestically during the course of the war, at an estimated cost of between $20,000 and $50,000 per unit, and can now build thousands every month.