Two Ukrainian companies have been selected for the program, which has a total budget of $1.1 billion and is divided into four phases. The initiative focuses on procuring large numbers of affordable and effective unmanned systems for the U.S. Armed Forces.
The Ukrainian participants are General Cherry, widely known for drones actively supplied to Ukraine’s Defense Forces, and Ukrainian Defense Drones Tech Corp, a company whose name has not previously appeared in public reporting.
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At this stage, the program is only at the beginning of its competitive process. The first phase involves direct testing of drones from 25 manufacturers. These trials are scheduled to begin on February 18 at Fort Benning, a U.S. Army base. Evaluations will be conducted by U.S. military personnel and are expected to continue until the end of March.
In an exclusive comment to Defense Express, Marko Kushnir, Communications Director at General Cherry, explained how the company qualified for the program, what solutions it will present in the United States, and whether participation could affect supplies to Ukraine's Defense Forces.
"To enter the first phase, we had to submit a detailed technical description of the system, confirm compliance with NDAA requirements and U.S. legislation, disclose ownership structure and supply chains, demonstrate the ability to scale mass production on short timelines, and pass a preliminary selection among hundreds of companies from around the world," he said.
He added that the Drone Dominance Program "is not a classic tender and not a paperwork-driven process, but a multi-stage competitive program with strict technical and compliance screening." After the first phase, only 12 companies are expected to remain from the original 25 participants.
Within the program, General Cherry will present not a single drone, but a comprehensive system-level solution that integrates reconnaissance, target detection, and target engagement.
"This is not about an individual drone as a platform, but about a full-fledged system that includes the unmanned aerial vehicle itself, command-and-control and communications systems, and an integrated payload. The program's key focus is scalability, low unit cost, ease of use, and a resilient supply chain. Our solution has been adapted specifically to these requirements," Kushnir explained.
At the same time, for Ukraine, despite the fact that participation by Ukrainian defense manufacturers in a U.S. program is an unquestionable recognition of their capabilities, ensuring domestic needs remains a priority. Therefore, a key question is whether the company can continue to meet the demands of Ukraine's Defense Forces.
"The Drone Dominance Program explicitly prioritizes production and assembly in the United States or allied countries. In the event of success, we plan to localize part of production and final assembly in the U.S. or another allied jurisdiction, build a separate and fully compliant supply chain for the American contract, and use a distributed production model in which key components and final integration are geographically separated. This is standard practice for defense programs of this scale.
It is fundamentally important that contracts for Ukraine's Defense Forces and for international partners do not compete with each other, but are separated into different production streams. Ukraine's experience allows us to scale production faster than most Western companies. International contracts do not reduce, but rather strengthen, production capacity, investment flows, and the technological base.
In practice, this is a model in which Ukrainian battlefield experience is transformed into scalability, international orders, and ultimately increased capabilities for Ukraine," General Cherry emphasized.
Kushnir also noted that the very fact of a Ukrainian company's participation in a U.S. defense program is "an important signal recognizing Ukraine’s real combat experience, trust in Ukrainian engineering and production teams, and confirmation that our solutions are competitive at the global level, not only in the context of the war in Ukraine."
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