The war in Ukraine has exposed significant deficiencies in the American drone industry, with glitchy, expensive drones made in the U.S. failing to meet expectations and being supplanted by off-the-shelf Chinese products.
Silicon Valley firm Skydio is among the U.S. firms whose drones have fallen flat on the Ukrainian battlefield, with the Wall Street Journal reporting “hundreds of its best drones… flew off course and were lost” after running into Russian jammers.
“The general reputation for every class of U.S. drone in Ukraine is that they don’t work as well as other systems,” admitted Skydio chief executive Adam Bry, confessing his product was “not a very successful platform on the front lines.”
Ukraine’s drone supplier of choice is Chinese firm SZ DJI Technology — which, officially, does not even want its products to be used in war zones, saying it “absolutely deplores and condemns the use of its products to cause harm anywhere in the world.”
Embarrassingly for the U.S. government, DJI has been banned by the U.S. military, and Congress is weighing whether to ban it altogether – yet the firm is being bolstered by Ukrainian purchases funded at least in part of U.S. aid.
Ukraine’s burgeoning domestic drone industry also relies on Chinese parts.
The problems with U.S. drones are not only a national security weakness but also a loss for the U.S. economy, with Ukraine using up around 10,000 drones a month that might have come mainly from U.S. firms had they been more reliable.
