Remember all those videos of Ukrainian sea drones taking out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet? Well, the company making those is headed stateside under a new deal with a US boat-builder.
Yesterday, British-Ukrainian defense tech startup UFORCE announced that it’s inked a deal with Oregon-based Special Operations-focused boat-builder ReconCraft to produce its now-famous MAGURA USVs on US soil.
Seems like a big deal, and it’s good news for everyone in the US military eager to get their hands on some battle-proven Ukrainian tech.
U-Force multiplier: Let’s start with some background on the biggest defense tech startup you might not have heard of. UFORCE, founded in Ukraine but now headquartered in London, is less of a startup and more of a conglomerate of nine Ukrainian defense companies that merged early last year to integrate all their capabilities.
In March, the company raised at least $50M at a unicorn valuation to expand production internationally.
- The startup has a presence in at least 15 locations across six European countries, but a big focus of the raise was to get a foothold in the US because, well, “one side of the pond has a lot more money than the other,” CEO Oleg Rogynskyy told Tectonic.
UFORCE’s deal with ReconCraft is set to be a test of how strong the demand for Ukrainian tech is on this side of the pond, and if performance is any indication, it could be pretty strong.
The “MAGURA family of autonomous surface vessels holds one of the most impactful and reliable combat records in modern maritime warfare and contributed to the destruction of more than a dozen Russian warships in the Black Sea,” the company said in a statement. “UFORCE’s portfolio also includes the first autonomous surface vessel to successfully down manned helicopters and fighter aircraft in combat.”
- The MAGURA is 25 feet long with a 1,700-pound payload capacity and over 350-mile range. They can be used as one-way attack vessels (they cost less than $500,000), as a drone-launching platform, or in maritime ISR missions.
Boat buddies: According to the WSJ, which first reported the partnership, the deal is structured as a “teaming agreement,” where both sides “provide supplies, equipment and workers.” According to ReconCraft, the goal is to make “hundreds or even thousands of Maguras a year” at its facilities in Oregon and South Carolina.
Air, land, sea: In its statement, UFORCE added that they’ll also “work to make available to the United States its combat-proven full-stack aerial, maritime, and ground unmanned systems, advanced autonomy software, and command-and-control technologies” through the partnership. Along with the MAGURA, those offerings include:
- Nemesis: A family of medium and heavy strike multirotor bomber UAVs that are among the most popular and effective in Ukraine, earning them the mythological nickname “Baba Yaga” from Russian forces.
- Lyut 2 (Fury): An unmanned ground vehicle with an integrated turret designed to engage stationary and moving targets.
- Sunray: A next-gen counter-UAS laser system.
It goes without saying that those systems and others in UFORCE’s portfolio are about as validated as it gets, and this deal opens the door to more US-Ukrainian tech team-ups down the road.
“This partnership sets an important precedent,” Ukrainian Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna said at the signing ceremony at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington last week. “I am confident it will encourage many other companies to follow its example and deepen US-Ukraine defense industrial cooperation.”
That was either pretty prescient or a subtle wink and nudge, given this morning’s news—first reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)—that the US and Ukraine inked a bilateral statement of intent to allow Ukrainian combat drones to be exported to the US for testing.