I don't think many people saw this one coming, but it makes sense in a perverse way.
Events in the Middle East have conspired to create a situation in which Ukraine has become an indispensable ally and munitions supplier to Gulf Arab states.
Nobody in the world has as much experience fighting Iranian drones as does Ukraine, and they have become extraordinarily proficient at destroying them before they do any damage, and at a price that cannot be beat.
The Gulf states, having blown through an awful lot of their anti-air magazines, are having to quickly learn how to defend themselves in a better, faster, cheaper way, and have discovered to their surprise that Ukraine not only has the knowledge, but the means to help them.
Generally speaking, most arguments about US failures in Operation Epic Fury strike me as ridiculous on their face. Arguments that Iran was kicking our butts began almost immediately, and were based on motivated reasoning, not on what the evidence showed.
But one area where our military clearly underperformed was in addressing the Shahed threat. Despite having watched and participated in the Ukraine conflict for years, we haven't yet put all the lessons learned in how to fight drones into practice.
We've been killing those drones in great numbers, but Iran's entire strategy has been to attrit our magazines of defensive weapons using cheap drones against expensive and relatively scarce interceptors.
Pictures show the total loss of 81-0005, an E-3G “Sentry” Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft with the U.S. Air Force’s 552nd Air Control Wing based out of Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, following yesterday’s Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack on Prince… pic.twitter.com/NNnILybnrU
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 29, 2026
Pictures show the total loss of 81-0005, an E-3G “Sentry” Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft with the U.S. Air Force’s 552nd Air Control Wing based out of Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, following yesterday’s Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The strike appears to have purposefully targeted the most important part of the E-3, that being rear of the aircraft which holds its rotating radar dome, containing several sensitive instruments including antennas for the E-3’s AN/APY-2 Surveillance Radar System.
I don't doubt that the military anticipated this problem, or that they expected some losses due to drone strikes. But I also believe that we could have done better if we had brought in the Ukrainians as advisors and arms suppliers earlier, we would have been in a better position right now.
JUST IN: Iran gave Russia its Shahed drones. Russia improved them in Ukraine. Now Western intelligence says Russia is shipping the upgraded versions back to Iran.
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 28, 2026
And the country that learned how to kill those drones on the battlefield just sent 228 experts to the Gulf to teach… pic.twitter.com/7NpoUiPNgv
JUST IN: Iran gave Russia its Shahed drones. Russia improved them in Ukraine. Now Western intelligence says Russia is shipping the upgraded versions back to Iran.
And the country that learned how to kill those drones on the battlefield just sent 228 experts to the Gulf to teach five countries how to do the same thing.
The full circle is extraordinary.
Iran supplied thousands of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to Russia starting in 2022 for use against Ukraine. Russia rebranded them Geran-2 and, over three years of combat, upgraded the navigation systems, added anti-jamming capabilities, improved the engines, and refined the payload delivery. The Financial Times and AP reported on March 26 citing Western intelligence that Russia is now in the final stages of shipping those upgraded Geran-2 drones back to Iran’s IRGC, along with medicine and food supplies. Kremlin spokesman Peskov called the reports “lies” and “fake news dumps.”
Meanwhile, Zelensky arrived in Saudi Arabia on March 26 for an unannounced visit, met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, signed a defense cooperation deal focused on air defense and drone expertise, and departed Jeddah on March 28. Ukraine has deployed 201 to 228 military drone specialists to five Gulf and Middle Eastern countries: the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. Another 34 are ready per Zelensky’s statement on March 17.
These specialists are not there as a symbolic gesture. They bring the single most effective counter to Shahed drones that exists anywhere on earth.
Ukraine developed FPV interceptor drones that account for roughly 70 percent of all Shahed and Geran-2 shootdowns in Ukraine per Forces News and Atlantic Council reporting. The method: radar and acoustic sensors detect the incoming drone at 20 to 50 kilometres. A cheap, fast quadcopter or fixed-wing interceptor launches from a mobile platform. An operator pilots it at high speed toward the target. It destroys the Shahed through kamikaze collision or a small explosive payload on impact. Cost per intercept: a fraction of what a surface-to-air missile costs. Militarnyi reported on March 22 that Ukrainian teams have already confirmed multiple Shahed shootdowns in the Middle East.
The arms race running through this war is now a closed loop.
Iran builds the drone. Russia tests it, improves it, and allegedly sends the improved version back. Ukraine learns to kill it through three years of battlefield iteration. Ukraine exports that knowledge to the Gulf states Iran is attacking. The Gulf states pay Ukraine in money, technology, and diplomatic support. Russia denies everything while the drones fly in both directions.
This is not a bilateral conflict. It is a global drone ecosystem where every improvement by one side is studied, countered, and re-exported by the other. The Shahed that hits a refinery in Bahrain tonight may carry Russian-upgraded navigation. The interceptor that destroys it may be piloted by a Ukrainian operator trained in Zaporizhzhia. The defense deal that funded the deployment was signed in Jeddah while the war it was designed to address raged 1,500 kilometres to the northeast.
SpaceX’s Starlink provides the communications backbone for these teams in contested environments where terrestrial networks are degraded by the same war. The same helium shortage threatening semiconductor fabs and quantum computers is threatening the rocket launches that put Starlink satellites in orbit. The same strait carrying the oil carries the data cables that the drones are trying to protect.
Every domain connects through the same 39 kilometres of water.
If history shows us anything, it's that necessity is the mother of invention, and Ukraine has birthed many inventions in its existential battle with Russia. Ukraine is now a drone war, and the Ukrainians are far better at drone wars than anybody on the planet.
It's not that drones can do everything, but they are very effective and efficient at doing what they are intended to do. They are the opposite of the exquisite weapons the US relies on and uses so effectively. They rely on sheer numbers to achieve their goal.
“There's a real risk that the U.S. would lose its military supremacy if it doesn't adapt to modern conditions on the battlefield,” says former U.S. Marine William McNulty, warning that future wars will be shaped by the drones used in Ukraine. https://t.co/9r2XsNFbF1 pic.twitter.com/g8A9mLA6yp
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 30, 2026
Ironically, the advantage the Ukrainians have developed in their war with Russia has developed almost as much despite the help the West has provided in its war with Russia as anything else. While Western weapons and support have been vital in keeping Ukraine in the fight against its larger neighbor, the Ukrainians have always been constrained by Western reluctance to allow Ukraine to strike enemy territory.
In fact, I've long thought that the Western strategy was to keep Russia tied up in a never-ending war of attrition, bleeding it dry. We supply the money and enough weapons to keep Ukraine in the fight, with only Russian and Ukrainian blood spilled.
Two former U.S. Marines now run a fund that invests in Ukrainian drone companies. https://t.co/rydFTML5AQ pic.twitter.com/7SPdsKT80h
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 30, 2026
Ukraine's response has been rather capitalist: enlist entrepreneurs to come up with innovative solutions, and after a fairly long learning curve and startup cycle, it appears they have. The Russian way of war is to throw mass at the enemy until they get smothered; the Ukrainians have built tools instead.
“From the point you send a drone to the front line, get the feedback, change something, and get the new version, it could be as short as one week,” says Oleksandr Kamyshin, the architect of Ukraine's drone program. https://t.co/9YbXsGNqjM pic.twitter.com/yfxdmKnUKP
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 30, 2026
Operation Epic Fury has been, by almost any measure, a roaring success in tactical terms, and I certainly hope that it will lead to a strategic victory. By many measures it is quite close to being so. The Iranians still get a vote, and even though their striking power diminishes by the day, as long as it has enough drones for one or two to get through a day, it presents a significant threat because our tolerance for damage and instability is very low, in the way that our supply chain is brittle, as was shown in the COVID era.
“We have to count [the] number of drones we use, efficiency of each of them, cost to kill for every Russian,” says Oleksandr Kamyshin, the architect of Ukraine's drone program. “The cost of killing every Russian is less than $1000 now.” https://t.co/PQwtPfHWmH pic.twitter.com/ILJ0pQP0fC
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 30, 2026
Ukraine has discovered that it has a product that others need, in the way that Taiwan has a unique advantage because it has a stranglehold on microprocessor manufacture.
It has a stranglehold on drone-fighting technology. Expect Zelensky to use this fact to his advantage in the years ahead, changing the war in Ukraine by changing the battlefield around the world.
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