Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Aramco is planning to acquire interceptor drones to protect against Iranian attacks on oil fields as the joint US-Israeli military campaign in Iran is in its second week.
The company is in talks with two Ukrainian companies SkyFall and Wild Hornets over the purchase of interceptor drones. Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country sent three professional teams to the Middle Eastern countries of Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia to boost their efforts to counter Iranian drones. In return, Kyiv expects to receive Patriot air defence systems to fight Russian attack in the four-year-war. Zelenskiy said Kyiv will raise this issue in talks with Middle Eastern countries that requested drone-related assistance.
Earlier in August, Zelenskiy offered Washington its technology for downing Iranian-made drones. The White House rejected this offer at that time but changed its mind last week due to increased Iranian drone strike amid the rising tension in the Middle East. "Snubbing Ukraine's offer ranks as one of the biggest tactical miscalculations by the administration since the bombing of Iran began February 28," Axios publication quoted unnamed US officials saying. "If there's a tactical error or a mistake we made leading up to this war, this was it," the official went on saying.
Ukrainian drones have proven successful in downing Iran’s Shaheed kamikaze drones being used by the Russian army in the current war. By 2024–2025 Ukraine had scaled production to hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, of small drones annually. Much of this production includes inexpensive first-person-view (FPV) drones used as precision attack weapons, as well as longer-range unmanned aircraft capable of deep strikes.
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