Canada and Ukraine are deepening their relationship in ways that could benefit both countries.
On Sept. 10, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a series of initiatives to expand Canada’s defence capabilities and support Ukraine.
Industry participants say Ukraine, now in its fifth year of war with Russia, has considerable battlefield experience Canada can learn from.
“[Ukrainians] keep us hungry,” said Cameron Chell, CEO of Saskatoon-based drone company Draganfly.
“They show us that the real speed of innovation still comes from the war fighter in the field.”
Draganfly is among six Canadian defence suppliers receiving federal contracts worth up to $50 million in total to produce drones and uncrewed ground vehicles.
Last week, Carney also announced a partnership between Ottawa-based General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada and Ukrainian company Green Tech Harvest to produce drones and related technologies.
That partnership is the latest in a series of Canada-Ukraine drone arrangements. In May, Hamilton-based Sentinel Research and Development also announced a drone production agreement with Ukrainian defence company Airlogix.
The goal is ambitious: to give Canadian industry the capacity to produce “millions of drones over the next two years,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Ottawa says the initial contracts will “increase the number of drones currently deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces tenfold.”
Much of this production will go to Ukraine.
“Thirty per cent of these drones will go to Ukraine immediately to [the] battlefield,” Zelenskyy said during the joint press conference with Carney.
“Immediately to our people, our soldiers — to save our children, our families.”
Ukrainian drone expertise
Drones have become ubiquitous in the war in Ukraine.
Both Ukraine and Russia use uncrewed systems for reconnaissance and surveillance, precision strikes and mine laying.
But the technology changes rapidly. Software and battlefield tactics can render drone models obsolete within months.
Ukraine’s response has been to rapidly iterate and prioritize cheap production. It uses, for example, 3D printing to quickly modify drone components as battlefield needs change.
The “Bullet” unmanned aerial vehicle, produced by Ukrainian company General Cherry, displayed at the MSPO 2026 International Defence Industry Exhibition in Kielce, Poland, on Sept. 8, 2026. | Krzysztof Popławski, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 
FP-1/FP-2 drone at International Defence Industry Exhibition 2026 in Kielce, Poland; Sept. 9, 2026. | Michał Derela, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 The JEDI Shahed Hunter interceptor drone, developed by Ukrainian defence company Neo Drones Tech to intercept Russian strike and reconnaissance drones; July 29, 2026. | Ministry of Defence of Ukraine – Defense Forces of Ukraine 
The Leleka-100, also known as the Stork, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone, displayed at a military exhibition in Kyiv; Oct. 16, 2021; | VoidWanderer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 
The Raybird, also known as the ACS-3, a Ukrainian unmanned aerial system developed by Skyeton for long-duration reconnaissance and surveillance missions; July 9, 2019. | Raybird 3, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sergii Vlashchenko and Igor Kolosiuk, Ukrainian defence-technology experts and co-founders of Vancouver-based Snake Island Lab, say such qualities have enabled Ukraine to hold its own against a larger and wealthier Russia.
“Every large brigade, every army corps … has its own research and development laboratory, manufacturing capabilities, and financing capabilities inside the corps,” Vlashchenko said in a joint interview with Kolosiuk.
“It lets them face a challenge, invent to overcome it, and manufacture the response within weeks.”
A June study found that Ukrainian producers could move from prototype to deployment in weeks, with some minor fixes implemented within 24 hours.
The cost benefits of this approach are considerable.
Ukraine spends as little as US$200 to $1,000 on a typical FPV drone. Before Ukraine popularized these drones, the U.S. military could have previously spent as much as US$53,000 for the closest equivalent.
Chell, of Draganfly, says Canada will need a faster, more predictable procurement system to produce drones at the scale Carney announced and to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology.
Katheron Intson, CEO of Sentinel Research & Development, agrees.
“We need to start actually making things and developing a feedback loop (hours, not weeks) between manufacturers and military,” she said in an email.
Intson says working with Ukraine has already changed how the company approaches military procurement.
“The end-users should determine the specs of the product, not the defence contractor,” she said.
“The feedback loop from the end-users is critical.”
The cost of speed
Ukraine’s low-cost, iterative approach to drone production has benefits but also comes with trade-offs. Ukraine relies heavily on Chinese components, a practice Vlashchenko calls “painful” because of the security risks.
“It’s open information that even now most of the parts of unmanned drone systems in Ukraine are made with Chinese parts,” he said.
“But Ukraine is trying to do its job in the most simple and cheap way it can.”
Kolosiuk says Ukraine is looking to Canada for a more secure supply chain. He says the two countries could build a scalable, non-Chinese supply chain serving both the Canadian and Ukrainian militaries.
Chell says Ukraine’s lower costs reflect different design and manufacturing standards than those used by tier‑one militaries, such as Canada’s and the United States’.
“Chinese parts … aren’t what are called [National Defense Authorization Act]-compliant, so they’re not from a protected supply chain,” he said, referring to U.S. defence procurement requirements.
Chell says Ukraine’s rapidly assembled, modified drones would likely not meet the more stringent requirements of Western military procurement. “Strapping a grenade on a drone and just sending it out there isn’t acceptable,” he said.
But Ukraine’s approach is also shaped by its wartime circumstances, Chell said.
“In Ukraine, it’s an existential threat. The risks they’re willing to take, able to take, have to take — they’re doing an incredible job.”
