Reuters sources claim that the US military is protecting Prince Sultan Air Base with a solution from the Ukrainian company Sky Fortress. The base is also testing drones from the Merops system, one of which lost control and hit an American toilet block.
Reuters sources claim that the US military is protecting Prince Sultan Air Base with a solution from the Ukrainian company Sky Fortress. The base is also testing drones from the Merops system, one of which lost control and hit an American toilet block.
As Reuters reports, the deployment of the Ukrainian Sky Map command and control system became critically necessary after traditional US air defenses failed to prevent the destruction of more than $1.3 billion in equipment. In particular, the base lost a rare E-3G Sentry long-range radar detection aircraft, a KC-135 Stratotanker tanker, and a key element of the THAAD anti-missile system — the AN/TPY-2 radar station.
In March 2026, President Donald Trump publicly assured that the United States «does not need help» from Ukraine in countering drones. However, real combat losses forced the Pentagon to reconsider its approach and turn to Ukrainian technologies, hardened in the four-year war with Russia.
According to sources, Ukrainian officers have been at the facility for several weeks now, training their American counterparts on Sky Map. It has reportedly become the primary command and control platform used by the Ukrainian military. Sky Map provides a dashboard with maps and video feeds that combines data from radars and sensors to identify approaching threats.
Sky Fortress, the company that develops Sky Map, was founded in 2022 by Ukrainian engineers with ties to the military, who deployed over 10,000 acoustic sensors across Ukraine to detect Russian drone attacks.
In parallel, the Prince Sultan base is testing American drone interceptors of the Merops system from Project Eagle (a project of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt). At the beginning of the tests, the Americans encountered some problems associated with the new anti-drone systems. Insiders claim that in early April, during tests at the Prince Sultan base, the Merops drone interceptor lost control and crashed into a toilet block on the base.
