U.S. senator visits Kyiv drone factory, praises innovation

Sen. Richard Blumenthal toured a Ukrainian drone production line in Kyiv and said the country is manufacturing “thousands” of attack drones every day, offering a rare on-the-record look from a sitting U.S. lawmaker at the scale of Ukraine’s wartime drone industry.

Blumenthal named the company as SkyFall, a Ukrainian defense technology firm, in a post on X that included video from inside the facility.

“SkyFall in Kyiv is doing cutting edge drone manufacturing & changing modern warfare. Its innovation & new technologies are powering Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s bloody slaughter,” Blumenthal wrote.

“Thousands of drones. These are Vampires produced every day here at SkyFall in Kyiv. It is just a miraculous way to defend the country. Innovative, ingenious, and this company is securing the future of Ukraine, but also changing modern warfare through its incredible work,” Blumenthal said in the video.

SkyFall builds several drone systems currently used by Ukrainian forces, including the Vampire heavy bomber drone, known on the front line as “Baba Yaga,” multiple configurations of the Shrike first-person-view drone, and the P1-SUN interceptor, designed to shoot down Shahed-type attack drones. The company also runs SkyFall Academy, a training center for drone pilots, technicians and instructors.

Blumenthal’s visit follows a similar trip by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who toured a SkyFall production facility on July 11 and was shown the same three systems, along with unreleased technology the company plans to field on the battlefield. Graham said afterward that it would be a “huge mistake” for the United States not to work more closely with Ukraine on drone technology, and SkyFall said the two sides discussed potential areas of cooperation in defense innovation.

The back-to-back visits by two senior senators, one Democrat and one Republican, within weeks of each other signal a level of bipartisan congressional interest in Ukraine’s domestic drone industry that has been rare on other aid or policy questions tied to the war. Both lawmakers sit on committees with direct influence over U.S. defense spending and foreign assistance, and both used their visits to publicly argue for deeper U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation on unmanned systems technology rather than framing the trips around traditional military aid requests.

SkyFall has expanded its international profile over the past year, including a July agreement with U.S. defense company Auterion to supply 50,000 first-person-view drones equipped with autonomy software for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and an earlier partnership with Airbus Defence and Space to jointly develop next-generation air defense technologies. The company also participated in the Ukrainian Pavilion at CES 2025 in Las Vegas.