Ukrainian officials tried to sell the United States technology to shoot down Iranian strike drones more than six months ago. The administration of US President Donald Trump rejected the offer, but changed its mind after the attack on Iran.
Ukrainian officials tried to sell the United States technology to shoot down Iranian strike drones more than six months ago. The administration of US President Donald Trump rejected the offer, but changed its mind after the attack on Iran.
Axios reported that it had even obtained a PowerPoint presentation from the Ukrainians that they presented to American officials, showing how interceptor drones could protect the US military and its allies in a war in the Middle East. But the Trump administration underestimated the danger posed by the Shahed drones.
«If we made a tactical error or miscalculation that led to this [war in Iran], this is it», the American official admitted.
It is noted that at a closed meeting at the White House on August 18, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered President Trump interceptor drones as a way to strengthen relations and, according to one official, express his gratitude for US support in the face of Russian aggression.
The Ukrainians showed American officials a PowerPoint presentation that depicted a map of the Middle East and the warning: «Iran is improving the design of its Shahed drones, designed for single-strike attacks». The presentation included the idea of creating «drone combat centers» in Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf states where American bases are located to counter the threat from Iran and its allies.
«We wanted to build ‘drone walls’ and everything necessary, such as radars, etc.», said the Ukrainian official.
After that, Trump asked his team to work on the idea, but it did nothing. The US presidential administration decided that Zelensky was trying to sell them something they didn’t really need.
However, after the US and Israel attacked Iran, the situation changed. In early March, the US officially asked Zelensky for help in combating drones. One US official acknowledged that Ukrainian drones would have helped if they had been deployed earlier, but added that the US military’s actions «in the theater of operations were extraordinary».
The other day, Volodymyr Zelensky reported that there are currently requests for Ukrainian drones from 11 countries, most of which border Iran, as well as European states and the Americas. Ukraine has already responded to some of them. At a recent press conference, Donald Trump said that the US military had received cheap interceptor drones to combat Iranian Shahed drones, but did not mention whose UAVs they were.
