NEW YORK — The U.S. military 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 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 was not previously reported, is a sign of how Ukraine’s military surged ahead in drone and counter-drone technologies that were battle-hardened in its four-year war with invader Russia.
Ukrainian military officials arrived at the base in recent weeks to train U.S. troops with Sky Map, which the Ukrainian military widely uses to detect incoming drone threats — including Iranian-developed Shahed drones — and launch counterattacks with interceptor drones.
As cheap, mass-produced drones play a large role in Russia's war in Ukraine, the Pentagon ramped up investments in counter-drone technology. The use of Ukrainian technology at Prince Sultan, which is about 400 miles from Iran and endured waves of drones and missiles since the war began, highlights vulnerabilities in U.S. air and missile defense, analysts say.
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“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 came a month after President Donald Trump publicly rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's offer 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. Zelenskyy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Last month, the Pentagon’s counter-drone unit announced it 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 provided an array of new technologies, including sensors, cameras and interceptors.
“There is no ‘silver bullet’ tool that will stop every drone threat,” Scher said.
Planes are seen Feb. 17 at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia via satellite imagery.
Sky Map used by Ukraine’s military
Sky Map 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 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 — also were used at the base, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
Officials faced some early testing challenges involving the new counter-drone systems, the people said. 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.
In this picture obtained from social media released March 29, a U.S. Boeing E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft is damaged after an Iranian strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. Reuters confirmed the location by the runway layout, buildings, utility towers and terrain seen in the photographs, which matched satellite imagery of the area.
Air base hit by attacks
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 a March 27 attack 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 used to defend against missile and drone strikes include a Northrop Grumman NOC.N command-and-control platform called Forward Area Air Defense, or FAAD, according to three sources. The platform, first deployed by the U.S. Army in the 1990s, provides tracking data to help troops combat incoming threats from mortar and rocket strikes to drones.
To combat short-range drone attacks, the base largely used RTX-made RTX.N 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.
The FAAD system “is consistently dependable in theater today," a spokesperson for Northrop Grumman said.
Chris Johnson, a spokesperson for RTX, said the Coyote interceptor proved "highly effective, defeating hundreds of aerial threats during combat operations."
