Japan’s Ministry of Defense has signed a contract to buy interceptor drones from SkyFall, a Ukrainian maker, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on 9 October. He gave no model, quantity, price or delivery date.
The ministry is “working toward early delivery”, Koizumi said at his regular press conference. SkyFall’s press office confirmed the contract to Ukrainska Pravda and declined to give details.
A week earlier, former defence minister Itsunori Onodera had said in Kyiv that Japan had decided to buy a Ukrainian company’s drones on a trial basis, Kyodo reported.
What SkyFall builds
SkyFall’s interceptors are the P1-SUN family, small drones built to hunt Russia’s Shahed attack drones. In April, Hanna Hvozdiar, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister, said P1-SUN drones had shot down more than 3,000 Shaheds this year, Forbes Ukraine reported.
Russia now flies jet-powered Shaheds as well, which are much faster. In July SkyFall showed a version for them, the P1-SUN JetKiller. The company says it reaches 370 km/h and 30 km, and carries a 500-gram warhead. Koizumi did not say which version Japan bought.
Buying, not sending
In the same press conference, Koizumi said Japan is not considering sending weapons to Ukraine. It has sent vehicles and body armour and treated wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
Buying runs the other way. Koizumi said Japan has “much to learn” from Ukraine’s drone makers, pointing to what he called their rapid feedback cycle. A drone with new capabilities appears every two or three weeks, he said.
Japan is rewriting its three core security documents, which set its defence policy, and plans to finish this year.
