Berlin's €90 million order for Shrike loitering munitions marks largest known Western drone purchase for Kyiv
Germany is funding the production of 50,000 attack drones for Ukraine in a deal worth approximately €90 million ($103 million), a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on July 12. The order, confirmed by Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier, represents the largest known single purchase of one-way attack drones for Kyiv by any Western government to date.
The drones — Shrike FPV models manufactured by Ukrainian defense-technology firm SkyFall — are equipped with terminal-guidance software from Auterion, a US defense technology company. Meier said some units have already been delivered to Ukraine's government, with the remainder due for dispatch this year. SkyFall confirmed Germany's involvement but declined to discuss purchase details. Germany's Defence Ministry declined to comment, citing operational security; Ukraine's Defence Ministry likewise declined.
The hardware behind the order
The Shrike has been in combat use since 2023, but the Auterion software is the critical addition: it allows the drone to autonomously track and strike moving targets during the terminal phase of flight, reducing reliance on operator skill and mitigating Russian electronic-warfare jamming that regularly severs FPV pilot links. A joint SkyFall-Skycutter variant, the Shrike 10-F, recently topped the leaderboard in the first round of a Pentagon-run competition tied to a $1.1 billion US program to procure large volumes of comparable munitions.
At roughly €1,800 per unit, the order sits far outside the cost architecture of conventional Western platforms. It follows Berlin's broader realignment of its eastern-flank posture, visible in its expanded defense pact with Poland and its assumption of a command role in Baltic reinforcement planning. It also arrives against a backdrop of uneven US supply commitments to the region, including the Pentagon's cancellation of a planned Tomahawk deployment to Germany earlier this year.
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Neither the delivery schedule nor the drones' technical specifications have been disclosed. Zelenskyy, in his July 12 address, said he was "preparing changes in Ukraine's diplomatic efforts" to ensure arms agreements are implemented faster, following Russian strikes that killed at least eight civilians over the preceding day. The Shrike order, whatever its final delivery timeline, signals that Western support for Ukraine is increasingly being channeled through Ukrainian production lines rather than Western factories — a structural shift whose implications for NATO's own procurement habits are only beginning to surface.
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