American Drone Startup Notches Rare Victory in Ukraine

Above a battlefield littered with failed American drones, California startup Shield AI notched an important victory in Ukraine.

The company in August became a rare Western supplier to demonstrate it can withstand the brutal electronic warfare that is downing drones across Ukraine. The country, which has preferred locally made drones, has now requested hundreds of Shield AI systems.

The company’s success is a bright spot for an otherwise anemic American drone industry. U.S. drone makers sent hundreds of drones into Ukraine with the hope of earning the badge of being battle-hardened. Few made the cut.

The sale of a big squadron of drones to Ukraine would more than double Shield AI’s revenue and potentially position it as one of the few winners in a new generation of military-tech startups. It is a field in which many have struggled to convert developing high-tech weapons into a self-sustaining business.

...

Shield is hoping its success in Ukraine will help it break away from the swarm of struggling drone startups. Scuttled by electronic warfare, most of the U.S. drones brought to Ukraine have flown off course, fallen out of the sky or struggled even to take off. They have often been glitchy, difficult to operate and expensive, Ukrainian officials said.

“The Ukrainians are super skeptical of every company claiming anything, and they have great right to be skeptical,” Tseng said.

Ukraine has largely relied on itself, building a national industry of more than 200 drone makers. However, the ever-evolving intensity of electronic warfare has led to the diminishing effectiveness of their tactics to harden the drones against jamming.

The Ukrainians and the Russians deploy jammers—devices that use radio signals to drown out the transmissions from GPS satellites, disabling the receivers drones rely on.

“You have never seen a threat like this amount of jamming,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program for the Center for a New American Security.

Read the full article and more on The Wall Street Journal.