The U.S. Army has put a combat-tested Ukrainian reconnaissance drone into American hands for the first time, awarding Skyeton Inc. a $10.6 million contract for its Raybird unmanned aircraft — a system that has already logged more than 350,000 hours watching the battlefield for Ukrainian forces, according to Defence Blog.
Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, issued the $10,640,000 firm-fixed-price award to Skyeton's North Las Vegas, Nevada, subsidiary on Sept. 18, 2026, for Raybird UAS hardware and services, according to the Pentagon's daily contract announcement. The Army solicited bids over the internet and received exactly one, from Skyeton. Neither the delivery location nor the funding for specific orders was set at the time of the award; both will be determined as individual task orders are placed against the contract, which carries an estimated completion date of Dec. 15, 2026.
The deal is small by defense-acquisition standards, but it marks a milestone: it appears to be among the first confirmed contracts putting Raybird directly into U.S. Army hands, after years in which the aircraft's reputation was built almost entirely on Ukrainian battlefields.
What the $10.6 Million Buys
Raybird is a small, fixed-wing surveillance drone designed for endurance rather than speed or firepower. It can stay airborne for close to 28 hours at a stretch, fly more than 2,500 km (1,550 miles) without landing, and operate at altitudes up to 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) while carrying a sensor payload of 5 to 10 kilograms. The airframe is rated to operate in temperatures from minus 35°C to 55°C, a range built to cover conditions from Arctic cold to desert heat.
The Army has not disclosed how many Raybird systems the $10.6 million will actually buy, which unit will fly them, or where the aircraft will ultimately be delivered. Because the contract is structured to let the Army place individual orders over time rather than commit to a single lump-sum buy, those details may not surface until the first task order is issued — potentially with little public notice, since order-level funding and locations aren't disclosed in the base award.
350,000 Combat Hours Before Reaching the Army
What sets Raybird apart from most drones entering U.S. service is that it arrives with an extensive combat record already attached. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Raybird has flown more than 350,000 combat hours for Ukrainian forces, the bulk of it on long-range reconnaissance missions over contested territory. Skyeton has marketed that record as evidence of low attrition and resilience against Russian electronic jamming, a persistent threat that has grounded or downed less hardened drone designs on both sides of the front.
Skyeton, founded in Ukraine in 2006, originally built light sport aircraft before shifting into unmanned systems. Over the past year the company added satellite communications to Raybird to remove range limits imposed by line-of-sight data links, and it has been testing a hydrogen fuel-cell version of the aircraft in combat conditions in Ukraine since December 2025 — an effort aimed at extending endurance and reducing the aircraft's logistics footprint even further.
A Bid for NATO Markets Beyond Ukraine
The Army award lands as Skyeton is actively expanding its footprint across NATO. The company has formed a joint venture with British firm Prevail Partners, called Skyeton Prevail Solutions, to manufacture Raybird for NATO markets and to compete for a contract to replace the British Army's aging Watchkeeper drone. Skyeton has also partnered with French sensor maker Harmattan AI to integrate AI-driven payloads onto the aircraft and sells Raybird in Poland through a local distributor.
A Skyeton representative, quoted by Defence Blog following the announcement, tied the U.S. contract directly to the company's broader product development:
"Together with our American partners, we are leveraging U.S. government support to advance capabilities across the Skyeton product portfolio, combining next-generation sensors, edge computing, and SkyControlAI, the AI-enabled mission autonomy software. These capabilities enable autonomous search, detection, classification, tracking, targeting, and collaborative multi-platform operations across large areas of interest."
The Army's own description of the purchase stays narrower. The contract announcement identifies the award only as a "firm-fixed-price for Raybird UAS hardware and services," with no further detail on the systems' intended role, according to the Sept. 18, 2026 Department of War contract announcement, mirrored by GlobalSecurity.org.
What It Means for Contractors
The award is a signal to other foreign-origin drone makers, particularly those with Ukraine-tested hardware, that the Army is willing to buy combat-proven systems through a straightforward, sole-response solicitation rather than requiring years of domestic testing before a first contract lands. Skyeton's U.S. subsidiary structure — a Nevada-registered entity fulfilling the order — also offers a template for how a foreign manufacturer can compete for American military business without waiting for a joint venture or licensing deal with a U.S. prime.
For established U.S. small-UAS builders, the contract is a reminder that battlefield performance data from Ukraine has become a competitive credential the Pentagon is willing to reward, even against companies with far shorter track records inside U.S. acquisition channels. With Raybird also competing for the UK's Watchkeeper replacement and already selling into Poland, the Army's purchase adds a U.S. government reference customer to a sales pitch Skyeton is making across NATO simultaneously — a factor that could matter in future competitions where past-performance citations carry weight.
The order-by-order structure of the contract also means the real scale of the Army's Raybird buy — how many aircraft, which units, and where they'll be based — will only become clear as individual task orders are issued against the Dec. 15, 2026 completion date, giving contractors and competitors limited visibility into the program's actual trajectory for now.
