Ukrainian Defense Drones (UDD), the U.S. company representing Ukraine’s F-Drones, has chosen the Village of Holland in Northwest Ohio for its first American assembly and manufacturing center. The company plans to invest $18.4 million and create at least 300 jobs in Lucas County by the end of 2029, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur announced Monday, June 29, together with JobsOhio, the state’s economic development corporation.
The factory follows UDD’s first Pentagon contract. Competing with F-Drones’ combat-proven F10 platform, the company placed sixth in the opening phase of the Drone Dominance Program‘s Gauntlet competition and secured a U.S. government prototype order for 2,000 first-person-view drones. DroneXL reported that leaderboard result in March, along with Pentagon testimony that Ukrainian competitors had committed to building factories on American soil. Sixteen weeks later, here is the first one.
The Holland plant will build FPV drones and other unmanned systems for the U.S. military and allied customers, with training and testing work alongside dual-use commercial applications. F-Drones says it is the first Ukrainian drone manufacturer authorized by Ukraine’s government to export drone systems to the U.S. military.
Pentagon’s Gauntlet Turned A Sixth-Place Finish Into An American Factory
UDD earned its path to Ohio through the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program, a $1 billion effort to buy more than 200,000 low-cost attack drones by 2027, in which the F10 placed sixth overall at the Gauntlet I fly-off and won a prototype contract for 2,000 FPV drones.
Gauntlet I ran at Fort Benning, Georgia, in February and early March, where roughly 100 servicemembers flew systems from 25 competing vendors through simulated combat scenarios. Skycutter topped the leaderboard with 99.3 points. UDD scored 72.9, good for sixth place and one of at least two Ukrainian-connected companies to receive orders from the eleven winners.
The contract was about more than airframes. Program manager Travis Metz told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 5 that Ukrainian companies were “likely to get orders” and had committed to stand up manufacturing in the United States. The Holland project, confirmed by Kaptur’s office, delivers exactly that. The facility is structured around production, workforce development, supply-chain localization, hardware and software integration, customer demonstrations, and long-term U.S. expansion.
F-Drones Brings Three Years Of Battlefield Iteration To Lucas County
The Holland facility will assemble first-person-view drones and other unmanned systems for U.S. and allied demand, drawing on more than three years of F-Drones’ wartime operating experience in Ukraine, where the F10 was developed, tested, adapted, and deployed under real battlefield conditions against an adversary that changes its countermeasures constantly.
F-Drones CEO Stas Khutor said Ukraine “did more than adapt to drone warfare” and instead helped invent it, refining drones under fire into the backbone of the country’s defense against a far larger aggressor. He described the export authorization from Kyiv as a historic first, and said the next step is producing those drones on American soil, according to the announcement from JobsOhio.
That export clearance did not exist for most of the war. Ukrainian law required defense firms to deliver their entire output to Ukraine’s own forces until Zelenskyy approved a Drone Deals export framework on April 28, a shift DroneXL covered when Gulf states lined up for Ukrainian interceptors. UDD is the first company to carry that clearance all the way to a U.S. military customer.
Ohio put real incentives on the table. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 1.642 percent, nine-year Job Creation Tax Credit for the project, per the governor’s office. Kaptur’s office counts more than 130,000 advanced manufacturing workers in the region. UDD joins Anduril and Joby Aviation on the roster of defense and aerospace firms setting up in the state, and JobsOhio President and CEO JP Nauseef pitched that manufacturing depth as the reason defense builders can move from prototype to volume production quickly there.
Retired Rear Admiral Michael Hewitt, chairman of U2D2, the group that assisted UDD through the process, said his organization now works with more than a dozen Ukrainian and Eastern European firms that together build over 10,000 drones per day. He called the Ohio facility a starting point and predicted the state would become “a vertically integrated manufacturing hub for all types of unmanned systems.”
Kaptur’s Bipartisan Bill Would Turn One Factory Into A Framework
One day after the Holland announcement, Kaptur introduced the Strategic Unmanned Systems Partnership Act, a bipartisan bill creating a Pentagon-led working group with Ukraine to co-develop and co-produce battlefield-tested drones and counter-drone technology, with the stated goal of faster low-cost acquisition for U.S. forces and manufacturing work spread across American communities.
Co-leads include Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Quigley, Michael McCaul, Jim Costa, and Don Bacon, with companion legislation in the Senate from Senators Jacky Rosen and Mike Rounds, per WTVG reporting. Kaptur, who co-chairs the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, framed the project in historical terms, saying the region’s factories “formed the backbone of the Arsenal of Democracy” in World War II.
The bill lands against a larger piece of unfinished business. The bilateral Drone Deal Ukraine has pushed since Zelenskyy first floated a mega-deal in July 2025 remains unsigned, even as Ukrainian specialists defend U.S. bases and Ukrainian-derived hardware fills Pentagon orders. As recently as May, Zelenskyy told CBS the agreement needs one thing: Trump to say yes.
DroneXL’s Take
The framework Drone Deal that Ukraine has chased for almost a year sits unsigned on the president’s desk, yet UDD’s Ohio factory shows the substance of that deal getting built anyway, piece by piece: an export clearance from Kyiv, a Pentagon prototype contract, a state tax credit, a bipartisan bill.
This is the pattern we flagged in March. When the Gauntlet I leaderboard dropped, the detail that mattered most was not Skycutter’s 99.3 points. It was Metz telling senators that Ukrainian companies had committed to manufacturing in the United States. Holland is that commitment converted into a building permit and a payroll, and I expect it will not stay the only one for long, because the Drone Dominance field we profiled in June included a second Ukrainian-connected firm holding orders.
Sixth place bought a factory. That is the part worth sitting with. The Drone Dominance Program is buying an industrial base rather than a leaderboard, and a mid-table finish with combat provenance converts into production capacity just as surely as a first-place score. UDD won its slot in an open fly-off scored by the soldiers who will fly these things. Compare that with the other route to market advantage this industry knows too well: lobbying your competitor onto a government blacklist. I will take the fly-off over the blacklist every single time. That is what fair competition looks like.
Two things now tell us whether Holland becomes a template or a one-off. Watch whether the Strategic Unmanned Systems Partnership Act moves through committee with its bipartisan co-lead list intact, and watch whether the F10’s combat pedigree holds up when the Gauntlet’s next phase adds GPS denial and jamming to the test card, hurdles our March reporting flagged alongside a ban on Chinese-made motors and batteries. If both break UDD’s way, the unsigned framework agreement starts to look like a formality. The deal is being assembled from the bottom up, contract by contract and factory by factory. When the signature Zelenskyy keeps asking for finally arrives, it will mostly ratify what places like Holland already built.
Sources: Office of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, JobsOhio, WTVG 13abc.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
