Ukraine has authorized the export of fully assembled combat drones for the first time, and the first shipment has gone to the United States. The State Service for Export Control issued the permit on 1 July for a batch of F10 strike drones built by the Ukrainian manufacturer F-Drones for the US military, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
"The permit is working — the drones have already crossed the state border," a company representative said.
The Ukrainian defense outlet Defender Media first broke the story.
The shipment inverts the arrangement that has defined Russia's war on Ukraine: for more than four years the West armed Ukraine, and Ukrainian law required defense firms to send their entire output to the front. Now a Ukrainian company is supplying combat-tested strike drones to the Pentagon — and it did so while the government-to-government drone deal Kyiv wants with Washington remains stuck. What made the F10 sellable is what US industry lacks: a cheap attack drone proven against Russian armor and built without Chinese components, which disqualify most commercial quadcopters from US military use.
A first for Ukraine's export controls
F-Drones says this is the first time Kyiv has cleared finished Ukrainian-made drones for export rather than individual technologies or components. The company completed the approval through the existing interagency export-control process, and — it noted — secured the permit before new government rules simplifying military exports took effect. The state arms trader SpetsTechnoExport handled the procedure.
How the F10 reached the Pentagon
The F10 is an FPV strike quadcopter carrying an explosive warhead, developed and refined under fire since F-Drones was founded in 2023. Its contract runs through the US Department of Defense's Drone Dominance program, a roughly $1 billion effort to buy more than 200,000 low-cost attack drones by 2027. At the program's first trials — Gauntlet I, held at Fort Benning, Georgia, in early 2026 — the F10 scored 72.9 out of 100, placing sixth among 25 vendors and landing among 11 winners with a prototype order for 2,000 drones, Defender Media reported. The company's US arm, Ukrainian Defense Drones, announced on 29 June that it will build its first American factory in Holland, Ohio, an $18.4 million plant expected to create at least 300 jobs. A second Drone Dominance phase opens in August, with 48 companies competing for orders of 60,000 drones.
Ukraine opens the door to arms exports
The permit landed as Ukraine formally opened defense-technology exports to partner countries. Under the framework announced by the Defense Ministry on 1 July, states with intergovernmental "Drone Deal" agreements can buy directly from Ukrainian producers; the Foreign Ministry sets the list of eligible countries, and the Defense Ministry the list of critical items barred from sale. Producers may apply to export arms worth 15 million hryvnia (about $360,000) or more, with intellectual-property rights retained in Ukraine and re-export allowed only with Kyiv's written consent. Where products made with Ukrainian technology are exported onward, 20% of their value goes to the state budget. F-Drones chief executive Stas Khutor framed exports not as diverting from the front but as a way to scale production and strengthen the military. The ministry says the armed forces' needs stay the priority: a firm can export only if it can guarantee its state contract and its export order at the same time.
