this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Ukraine has some of the world’s best expertise on intercepting Iranian drones — and now wants to capitalize on it.

Donald Trump's attack on Iran reveals that Ukraine does have some cards to play, after all.

The U.S. president lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year in the White House, telling him: "You don't have the cards right now." One year on, Ukraine is holding talks with polite American officials in Kyiv keen to get a look-in on Ukraine's world-leading anti-drone technology.

“Partners are turning to us, to Ukraine, for help,” Zelenskyy said on Wednesday night. “Requests on this matter have also come from the American side.”

Zelenskyy said he was also talking to Arab nations seeking to upgrade defenses against Iran, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain. He was clear that Kyiv was seeking to gain strategic leverage from the talks. ___

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[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 9 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

and now wants to capitalize on it.

Ukraine is forced to trade its anti-drone expertise at this time. Explanation below.

Around Iran, during 3 days, the US, Israel and Arab countries have shot off the same amount of Patriot missiles as Ukraine has consumed in 4 years. They are doing something wrong, overconsuming missiles at a crazy pace.

This is unrelated to drones, but the balance of ballistic attack and defense is tilted heavily in favour of attack. If you are over 50% sane, you only defend if you absolutely must. Most of time, you calculate the trajectory, sound the alarm in relevant areas, everyone takes cover - and you absorb the hits. Because defending would bankrupt you. For example, an Iranian "Zolfaghar" ballistic missile costs around 150 K euros, while a Patriot PAC-3 interceptor might cost 4 M euros, and typical defensive tactics involve shooting 2 per target. (It is very fortunate that the Russian Iskander is a precision weapon with midcourse corrections and not comparably cheap.)

Ukraine has a dependency they cannot alleviate. About 75% of Ukraininan antiballistic defense relies on Patriot imports from the US to knock down Iskander, Kinzhal and similar items on certain trajectories (not all trajectories). European production of Aster and South Korean production of KM-SAM is unlikely to have enough volume. Buying from South Korea is doubtful if the US is pulling out Patriot and THAAD deployments for sending to the Middle East (South Korea has North Korea to worry about).

If Ukraine does not apply every political lever to ensure continued supply of Patriot missiles, a time will come when Putin will be given a menu every morning - to decide which Ukrainian power plants must stop working next evening.

This is not something that Ukraine can afford. So they will leverage their antidrone knowledge to get a continued supply of missiles, at least until their own missiles start reaching Russian missile factories. Currently they rarely catch Russian launch vehicles. They have made a good attempt at attacking a factory producing Russian "Iskander" missiles, but only 1 building was hit. They will be fired at, and need a sufficient number of interceptors to stay functioning.

So, they will smile and offer an exchange on some mutually bearable terms. Then they return home and curse - properly. Foremost they will be cursing the utter stupidity of the orange toddler who picked an avoidable battle at the wrong time (or allowed a certain war criminal to drag him into it).