OPINION:
U.S. military aid to Ukraine wasn’t charity. It was an investment that is already paying off.
As Iranian Shahed drones rain down on American military and civilian targets across the Middle East (with targeting support from Russia), Ukraine is dispatching military advisers to the Gulf to share counter-drone expertise forged over four years of war.
Russian ruler Vladimir Putin used Ukraine as a drone warfare test lab, and now Iran is applying those lessons with deadly precision.
The Shahed’s lethal rise did not occur overnight. In 2022, Russian officials visited Iran to study its drone arsenal. Moscow then signed a $1.75 billion deal to purchase 6,000 drones and license production technology. A Russian factory supported by Iran, North Korea and China now churns out more than 5,000 drones a month.
Russia upgraded Iran’s design with better navigation, larger warheads and anti-jamming electronics and then shared these improvements with Tehran. Russia gained cheap mass-casualty weapons, and Iran received hard currency.
Ukraine bore the brunt of this partnership and has had to innovate to survive.
With U.S. support, Ukraine’s military has grown into the largest in Europe. More important, Ukraine has faced four years of unprecedented drone warfare, targeted with more than 57,000 Russian Shaheds. This has forced it to build a proven, layered, cost-effective system for stopping drones at scale. No NATO country has such a system.
Facing nightly swarms of hundreds of drones, Ukrainian engineers have deployed acoustic sensor systems to detect the drones in real time. They also have deployed new GPS spoofing systems, low-cost Sting interceptor drones and artificial-intelligence-powered turrets to detect and destroy airborne threats.
These layered systems can intercept up to 90% of incoming Shaheds at a fraction of the cost of Western alternatives, which include $4 million Patriot interceptors to destroy $30,000 drones.
In some cases, Western nations spend $20 to $28 dollars in defense for every dollar Iran or Russia spends on attacks. Cost aside, America produces about 100 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles and 500 Patriots per year, compared with Iran and Russia’s combined Shahed production of 15,000 per month.
When Iranian drones began striking across the Gulf, countries turned to Ukraine, not a U.S. defense contractor, for assistance. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted, no Patriot battery, however well-supplied, can handle a high volume of Shaheds.
The consequences stretch well beyond saving lives. Iran’s attacks closed airspace in one of the world’s most critical transit corridors, costing the global economy billions of dollars. Ukraine’s counter-drone expertise can help save lives and reopen the transit corridors that underpin the global economy.
Ukraine’s drone defense innovations would have been impossible without U.S. military assistance to help Kyiv sustain its defense capabilities. Patriot batteries, HIMARS, air defense munitions, intelligence sharing and logistical support gave Ukraine the breathing room to innovate rather than collapse.
Ukraine symbolizes a product of American defense investment done right: a capable partner that expands U.S. reach and safeguards American interests without putting American troops in harm’s way.
The threats Washington will face, including Chinese drone swarms in the Pacific and more Iranian proxy attacks across the Middle East, are the same ones Ukraine has been countering. Ukraine can help defend U.S. troops and our allies in the Middle East, but only if it continues to defend against Russia’s onslaught. That’s why sustained U.S. support matters.
Continued U.S. military assistance for Ukraine does more than deny Russia a victory. It also preserves and strengthens a combat-experienced partner that can help save American lives in this conflict and the next. Conversely, if we allow Ukraine to fall, then its technology, experience and know-how will be in the hands of our enemies.
• Colby Barrett, JD, PE, is an entrepreneur, filmmaker and former U.S. Marine Corps captain who led infantry and scout/sniper platoons in the Pacific Rim and Middle East. He is the producer of “A Faith Under Siege.” Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, has been in Ukraine since Day 5 of the war to provide nonlethal aid to Ukrainian drone units and other humanitarian support. Previously, Mr. Moore was chief of staff to a Republican member of leadership in the House of Representatives.
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