Auterion chief executive Lorenz Meier has put a figure on one of the larger drone orders for Ukraine this year: about €90 million ($103 million), paid for by a European country. SkyFall, the Ukrainian maker of the drones, confirmed that Germany was involved but said it could not discuss details of the purchase. Reuters, citing a source, reported the order as 50,000 strike drones.
The drones are Shrike first-person-view (FPV) models built by SkyFall, one of Ukraine’s major manufacturers. Each carries software from the U.S. defence technology firm Auterion that is meant to track and hit moving targets on its own during the last phase of flight. Meier told Reuters some of the drones had already reached Ukraine’s government, and the rest are due to ship this year.
A drone that went abroad
The Shrike is cheap, and it has been used in Ukraine since 2023. Lately it has drawn attention overseas. A version called the Shrike 10-F, which SkyFall produces with the UK company Skycutter, topped the leaderboard in the first round of a Pentagon-run competition. That contest is part of a $1.1 billion initiative to buy hundreds of thousands of one-way attack drones. Auterion said its software appears in several entries.
Part of a bigger supply line
Meier said Auterion is helping to supply 100,000 drones to Ukraine in total this year, working with different hardware makers and funded by several Western governments. One piece of that is a $50 million Pentagon contract for 33,000 drones, which he said have been delivered.
Britain moved in the same direction last month. It said it would provide 150,000 drones to Ukraine this year as part of a broader £752 million ($1.01 billion) funding package.
Ukraine has leaned heavily on unmanned vehicles through more than four years of war with Russia. It makes millions of drones a year, and its forces carry out thousands of drone strikes every day.
