Iran’s aerial assault on Arab Gulf states—now in its third week—has been dominated by waves of Shahed drones, which are cheaper and easier to mass produce than the ballistic missiles Tehran has also launched. So much so that data released by several Gulf states indicate they have thus far faced roughly three Iranian drones for every ballistic missile.
Ukraine, which has been dealing with similar drones from Russia over four years of war, is looking to cash in on that experience—in terms of earning both goodwill and actual investment by dispatching teams of experts to the Middle East and fielding requests to its companies making counterdrone technology.
But the golden opportunity may be less within reach than it seems, with experts cautioning that technical constraints as well as political and strategic concerns might dampen what might otherwise be Kyiv’s time to shine.
Iran’s Shahed drones have plagued U.S. forces and the Gulf since the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in February. The drones, which are estimated to cost between $20,000 and $50,000 depending on the model, have slipped past air defenses to kill and wound U.S. forces, destroy expensive radar systems, and damage civilian and economic targets across the Middle East.
“We are seeing missiles targeting airports, we are seeing drones targeting apartment buildings, we’re seeing debris falling on individuals driving on a motorway,” Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic advisor to the president of the United Arab Emirates, said at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, just a day after a drone struck a fuel tank at Dubai’s international airport and forced several flights to be rerouted.
Gargash revealed that the UAE had faced over 2,000 projectiles—the vast majority of them drones—since the start of the conflict a little over two weeks ago. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have also reported being targeted by hundreds of drones each, with Saudi Arabia facing nearly 100 drone attacks on Monday alone—Iran’s largest single-day attack on the kingdom since the start of the conflict. Qatar has not shared specific numbers, but it has been reporting “a number of” drone attacks on an almost daily basis through its social media accounts.
Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE have all reported a significant success rate of interceptions, according to government figures compiled by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates a hawkish approach toward Iran. “We are handling it very well, to be honest,” Gargash said on Tuesday.
Those countries have sought to shoot down the drones with a mix of capabilities, including expensive air defense missiles designed to take down ballistic missiles. The problem is that those air defense systems are short in supply and high in cost, typically running into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each. While scrambling aircraft to shoot down drones could be seen as a lower-stakes alternative, it is also “really taxing” on the crews that operate those aircraft, according to Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow in the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
“When you look at the Gulf states’ investments in their air defense systems, it’s pretty clear they prioritized the ballistic missile threat from Iran,” Grieco said. “They haven’t invested in ways to intercept the low-end things,” she added. “The Shahed is about scale, and so the defender’s solution also needs to be about scale, and in order to get scale you have to bring the cost down.”
That’s where Ukraine comes in. Russia attacks Ukraine almost daily with a domestically manufactured version of the Shahed, launching more than 50,000 of them in 2025 alone. To counter them, Ukraine has spawned a host of companies that produce cheap counterdrone interceptors, with a per-unit cost that can be less than $2,500.
Amid Iran’s ongoing attacks, a Saudi Arabian defense firm reportedly signed a deal to buy Ukrainian-made interceptor missiles, the Kyiv Independent reported, and Saudi oil company Aramco entered talks to buy counterdrone interceptors from Ukrainian companies SkyFall and Wild Hornets, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Most major companies received tons of interest,” said Anton Verkhovodov, a partner at Ukrainian defense venture investment firm D3, which is backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Ukraine could quickly scale up, he added: “The key bottleneck is having the working capital for procuring components.”
Gargash did not explicitly acknowledge any potential drone deals in response to a question from FP about the talks with Ukraine, but he hailed the country’s “experience” and “know-how” as “very welcome and forthcoming” for the Gulf.
“Through this Iranian aggression we can clearly see where we need to protect ourselves,” he said.
Ukraine’s government, meanwhile, appears to see the war as an opportunity to demonstrate its value to partners. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he dispatched counterdrone experts and drones to help protect U.S. military bases in Jordan, as well as to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.
On March 14, it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested talks on Ukrainian drone interceptors. Zelensky also claimed that Russia has supplied Iran with drones, thereby linking the U.S. war on Iran to Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
“Ukraine’s drone experience is becoming a strategic resource,” wrote Oleksandr Kamyshin, a former top defense official who now serves as an advisor to Zelensky.
However, the potential windfall is not quite as simple as it first might appear.
For one, the counterdrone interceptors that Ukraine uses need trainers for their operators, said Verkhovodov of D3. That’s particularly challenging to export, as those trainers are busy at home teaching Ukrainian forces how to defend against constant Russian attacks.
Even if they clear that hurdle, it’s also a question of time. “They say they can create a pilot in three weeks that can go out to the field and do this, but that’s still three weeks,” Grieco said. “It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Drone detection is another challenge, added Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Ukraine uses a web of drone detection capabilities, including audio sensors capable of detecting Shaheds that are flying low to avoid radar. Setting up such a system outside Ukraine “will take time,” Verkhovodov said.
Politically, it’s also not clear how quickly Ukraine’s government will offer counterdrone technology—or how high the demand in the Gulf might really be.
After news reports emerged of Ukrainian companies doing deals with Gulf states, at least one company reportedly involved—Wild Hornets—denied it was in talks on March 13. Two days later, Zelensky criticized any efforts to sell counterdrone interceptors abroad without government permission, citing the need to consider the implications for Ukraine’s own defense needs.
Separately, Zelensky has begun a media blitz in a bid to push forward a stalled megadeal to sell Ukrainian drones and counterdrone technology to the United States. Zelensky spoke about his desire to get the deal done with Politico on March 11, the New York Post on March 16, and to the U.K. Parliament on March 17.
Zelensky may want to condition the sale of counterdrone capabilities to the Gulf on a drone deal with the United States, Bondar said. Such a deal would make Western defense plans dependent on Ukraine, thereby helping secure Western support for the country.
U.S. President Donald Trump, however, has said he isn’t interested in such a deal with Ukraine: “We don’t need their help in drone defense,” he told Fox News on March 13.
It’s also not clear just how much long-term demand there is in the Gulf for Ukraine’s technology.
Gulf countries, for example, may be cautious about openly embracing Ukraine, Bondar said. “Many of them are U.S. allies, and they have U.S. military bases and invested a lot of money in AI development. They also don’t want to annoy the Trump administration by going directly to the Ukrainians when Trump was so critical about them.”
Saudi Arabia will also be conscious of its relationship with Russia, particularly on energy, according to Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. “I do not believe this kind of thing is going to materialize on a large scale because Saudi Arabia is sensitive also to the Russians,” Ahmed said. “Saudi Arabia will not go that far.”
The Gulf states also have options beyond Ukraine, including U.S. defense firm Epirus, whose weapons can fry drones’ electronics, or Frankenburg, an Estonian defense start-up that produces counterdrone interceptors whose cost is closer to that of the Shahed.
“Next to Ukraine, by far the biggest market is in the Middle East,” said Kusti Salm, CEO of Frankenburg, in an interview with Foreign Policy.
Two Western defense executives, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive business discussions, said they had seen a surge of interest from the Gulf in counterdrone systems since the U.S. attack on Iran.
Still, Western companies have their own hurdles. “For emerging companies, it will still take weeks to get their stuff delivered,” Salm said. Salm said that Frankenburg aims to set up at least one factory manufacturing 100 missiles a day by the end of the year.
The first of the two Western defense executives granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues also flagged difficulty in exporting counterdrone technology due to export restrictions in their country.
Meanwhile, the Shahed threat to the Gulf continues, with the UAE reporting that it engaged with 15 Iranian drones on Thursday alone. And despite all the admiration for Ukraine’s capabilities, the UAE, Kuwait, and Jordan received emergency approval from the U.S. State Department on Thursday to buy more than $15 billion worth of U.S. weapons—including some counterdrone systems.
