By David Jeans
NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. military has introduced Ukrainian counter-drone technology in recent weeks at a key U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, as it seeks to stem attacks that have destroyed aircraft and buildings, and killed at least one service member.
The deployment of a Ukrainian command-and-control platform called Sky Map at Prince Sultan Air Base, which has not previously been reported, is a sign of how Ukraine’s
military has surged ahead in drone and counter-drone technologies that have been battle-hardened in its four-year war with Russia.
Ukrainian military officials arrived at the base in recent weeks to train U.S. warfighters with Sky Map, which is used widely by the Ukrainian military to detect incoming drone threats – including Iranian-developed Shahed drones – and launch counter-attacks with interceptor drones.
As cheap, mass-produced drones play a large role in Russia's war in Ukraine, the Pentagon has ramped up investments in counter-drone technology. But the use of Ukrainian technology at Prince Sultan, which is about 400 miles (640 kilometers) from Iran and has endured waves of drones and missiles since the war began, highlights vulnerabilities in U.S. air and missile defense, analysts say.
“There's been longstanding gaps in U.S. air missile defense coverage around the world,” said Timothy Walton, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank. “This has been well understood. However, it hasn't been addressed.”
'DON'T NEED THEIR HELP'
The development comes a month after President Donald Trump publicly rejected an offer from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to provide help in combating Iranian drone strikes. “We don't need their help in drone defense,” Trump told Fox News on March 6.
The White House and the Pentagon directed questions to U.S. Central Command, which oversees Prince Sultan. Central Command declined to comment.
Sky Fortress, the Ukrainian company that owns Sky Map, declined to comment. Zelenskiy’s office did not respond to a comment request.
Last month, the Pentagon’s counter-drone unit announced it had committed $350 million to bolster defenses against drones in support of Operation Epic Fury. Adam Scher, a spokesperson for the unit, known as Joint Interagency Task Force 401, said the unit was providing an array of new technologies, including sensors, cameras and interceptors.
“There is no ‘silver bullet’ tool that will stop every drone threat,” Scher said.
SKY MAP USED BY UKRAINE MILITARY
Sky Map has emerged as a primary command-and-control platform used by the Ukrainian military, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. This type of platform, typically a dashboard featuring maps and video feeds, synthesizes data from radars and sensors to detect incoming threats.
Sky Fortress, which makes Sky Map, was launched in 2022 by Ukrainian engineers linked to the military who deployed more than 10,000 acoustic sensors across Ukraine to detect Russian drone attacks, according to a person familiar with the company.
The company, which received funding from the Ukrainian military’s innovation unit, Brave1, developed Sky Map as a software platform to coordinate counter-drone attacks, the person said.
Sky Map is one of a suite of new counter-drone technologies that have been deployed at Prince Sultan base during the war. Merops interceptors – a drone developed by Project Eagle, a U.S.-based company backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt – have been used at the base, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Officials have faced some early testing challenges involving the new counter-drone systems, the people said. Earlier this month, during a test at Prince Sultan, a Merops counter-drone interceptor lost control and crashed into a toilet block on the base, two of the people said.
A spokesperson for Schmidt declined to comment.
AIR BASE HIT BY WAVES OF ATTACKS
In the weeks after the war started, Prince Sultan faced waves of Shahed drone and missile strikes. One of the Air Force’s E-3 AWACS radar planes was destroyed during an attack on March 27 and multiple KC-135 refueling tankers were damaged in another strike. In one case, a tent believed to be housing a radar system used to support the base’s counter-missile battery THAAD system was destroyed, according to CNN.
The technologies the base has used to defend against missile and drone strikes include a Northrop Grumman command-and-control platform called Forward Area Air Defense, or FAAD, according to three sources. The platform, which was first deployed by the U.S. Army in the 1990s, provides tracking data to help warfighters combat incoming threats, spanning mortar and rocket strikes to drones.
To combat short-range drone attacks, the base largely used RTX-made Coyote interceptors, two of the sources said. The winged drones, for which the company signed a $5 billion agreement with the U.S. Army in September, can be used as one-way attack drones with warheads or with a microwave capability to fry the electronics in adversary drones.
A spokesperson for Northrop Grumman said the FAAD system “is consistently dependable in theater today and we are confident in the competitive advantage FAAD provides to the warfighter.”
Chris Johnson, a spokesperson for RTX, said the Coyote interceptor has “proven highly effective, defeating hundreds of aerial threats during combat operations."
(Reporting by David Jeans; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Mike Stone; Editing by Joe Brock and Rod Nickel)
