Inside the Ukraine drone tech factories that can help the US military

KYIV, Ukraine — With the US and Ukraine discussing a “mega deal” for Washington to purchase battle-tested drones from eastern Europe in exchange for American heavy weaponry, The Post got an exclusive look Friday at two Ukrainian companies that are developing the technology to blast Russian crafts out of the sky.

“In Ukraine, there is a phrase people have been using — that ‘quantity’ becomes ‘quality,’” said Nomad Drones co-founder and CEO Andrii Fedorov.

A single, highly advanced interceptor missile or rocket — such as those in America’s Patriot air-defense systems, can cost between $100,000 and $250,000, according to Pentagon data.

While those are effective for countering enemy missiles and other advanced air capabilities, they are not financially feasible to defend against Iranian-made, Russian-launched Shahed drones — which Moscow has deployed in large quantities against Ukraine due in part to their cost of under $10,000.

Nomad Drones, and a second company that requested anonymity to avoid Russian targeting after having been struck multiple times, are in the business of making hundreds of thousands of small interceptor missiles and drones — that often are even less expensive than Shaheds.

“There is absolutely no sense to waste a $1 million weapon to shoot down a $50,000 Shahed,” Federov said. “But if you have 20 drones, then the capacity costs you, say, $40,000 to shoot it down.”

This affordability is especially critical in a war where Moscow sent more than 700 drones through the skies in a single night just last week.

“It’s all about cost-effectiveness,” one of the second company’s employees told The Post. “The world is unfortunately becoming a more dangerous place every day. We do understand that even though Western technologies are so cool and modern — they are expensive at the same time.

“Obviously, we don’t want anyone to fight and we want peace, but we live in the real world and there will be a need for relatively cheap yet effective solutions that potentially may be used by our Western allies and partners in their conflicts if they happen.”

The anonymous company is making approximately 3-foot-long missiles designed to stop enemy drones before they can reach their targets, which in the case of Russia’s invasion often include civilian homes — and civilians themselves.

“These can save so many lives,” the employee said.

Meanwhile, Nomad Drones and others in the field are producing tens of thousands of interceptor drones each month.

These aircraft, which cost between $3,000 and $7,000 depending on their size, carry explosives that can be detonated remotely upon approach to an enemy vehicle to destroy it before it reaches a target.

While the US has long had highly advanced and expensive precision drones developed for special forces to wipe out adversaries with pinpoint accuracy, the reality of modern warfare — with hundreds of drones being launched at the same time to overwhelm opponents — would make such reliance ruinously costly.

The “mega deal” discussed by the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government, which Kyiv President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed in an exclusive interview with The Post earlier this week, would provide not just drones, but technology to rapidly advance America’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities.

Such a deal could be transformative for the military and American national security, with officials and drone experts warning that US technology lags far behind Russia and China.

“The people of America need this technology, and you need to have it in your arsenal,” Zelensky said Wednesday.

“I think this is really a mega deal, a win-win, as they say.”