KYIV, Ukraine \u2014 After years of trying to stop Iran-designed Shahed drones over its own cities, Ukraine is now sending counter-drone teams to Gulf partners \u2014 and pitching the help as a trade between equals.<\/p>\n
As the same one-way attack drones ripple across the Middle East, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine has deployed 228 counter-drone specialists across five regional partners \u2014 Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait \u2014 to help intercept incoming threats<\/a>, an expansion up from roughly 201 personnel a week earlier.<\/p>\n Zelenskyy has framed Ukraine\u2019s pitch in explicitly transactional terms: If partners can spare the high-end interceptors Ukraine can\u2019t get in sufficient quantity \u2014 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles \u2014 Kyiv can help fill the gap with what it can scale faster and cheaper: interceptor drones, plus the crews and tactics that make them work.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they give them to us, we will give them interceptors,\u201d Zelenskyy told reporters earlier this month, describing a PAC-3-for-interceptor swap.<\/p>\n He argued Ukraine\u2019s industry could produce around 2,000 interceptor drones per day \u2014 a volume that, if it can be sustained, dwarfs the annual output of many premium missile-defense lines, he later said in a speech to the British parliament, per Ukrainska Pravda.<\/p>\n In the first three days of the Iran war, the United States and its Gulf partners burned through more than 800 Patriot interceptors \u2014 more than Ukraine got all winter \u2014 even as U.S. forces simultaneously struck over 2,000 targets across Iran.<\/p>\n That dual consumption rate is why Kyiv is trying to trade a cheap layer of defense for a scarce one, Ed Arnold, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Military Times.<\/p>\n Ukraine is offering what it has learned to do at scale \u2014 stop drones \u2014 while still scrambling for what it cannot manufacture fast enough: the interceptors that matter when the threat is ballistic. Kyiv is trying to turn one shortage into leverage for the other.<\/p>\n PAC-3 interceptors can cost millions of dollars per shot, and production is limited.<\/p>\n The result is triage: Air-defense inventories are being stretched across U.S. forces and partners in the Middle East, Indo-Pacific planning, European requirements and Ukraine \u2014 leaving Kyiv stuck at the back of the line for the missiles it needs most.<\/p>\n \u201cInterceptors like Patriot, forget it,\u201d Arnold told Military Times earlier this month.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ukrainians aren\u2019t getting any more now because they\u2019re all going to go to the U.S. military \u2014 either Middle East or Taiwan,” he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOut of those priorities, Ukraine is at the bottom if you\u2019re the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n