The €90 million ($103 million) contract centers on the “Shrike,” a highly effective first-person-view (FPV) drone. While the hardware is built by major Ukrainian manufacturer SkyFall, the drones are being supercharged with advanced software developed by U.S. defense technology firm Auterion. This specialized AI programming allows the drones to autonomously lock onto, track, and strike moving targets during the final phase of flight, even if electronic jamming severs the operator’s manual signal, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier confirmed the massive scale of the initiative, noting that a portion of the 50,000-drone batch has already been delivered to the frontline, with the remaining units scheduled for dispatch before the end of the year. Both the German and Ukrainian Defense Ministries declined to comment on the specific logistics, citing strict operational security.
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The low-cost Shrike drone has been a staple of Ukrainian operations since 2023, but its cutting-edge target-tracking capabilities have recently caught global attention. A modified version, the Shrike 10-F, recently dominated the opening round of a Pentagon-run competition aimed at procuring hundreds of thousands of one-way attack drones.
Western allies are rapidly scaling up their unmanned aircraft pipelines to match Ukraine’s staggering battlefield demand, where thousands of drone strikes are launched every single day:
Auterion’s Network: Beyond the German contract, the tech firm is partnering with multiple hardware makers to deliver a total of 100,000 Western-funded drones to Ukraine this year, which includes a separate 33,000-drone contract from the U.S. Pentagon.
The UK Contribution: Last month, Great Britain announced it would step up to provide 150,000 drones to Ukraine this year as part of a larger £752 million ($1.01 billion) defense funding package.
