Philippines Eyes Ukraine’s Drone Know-How for West Philippine Sea Security

Article by J. Salazar

Published on August 7, 2026 02:00AM

Ukraine’s Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Ihor Zhovkva meets Philippine Defense Undersecretary Salvador Mison, who led an official delegation to Ukraine.

Manila explores partnership with Kyiv to adapt battlefield-tested unmanned systems for maritime surveillance near Luzon, Palawan, and other Philippine islands. ¹ ³

The Philippines is looking to Ukraine’s expertise in drone warfare as it seeks to strengthen its maritime capabilities in the West Philippine Sea, where the country exercises sovereign rights under international law. While analysts see potential in the proposed partnership, they caution that adapting battlefield technology for grey-zone maritime operations will require careful consideration. ² ³

Diplomatic groundwork for drone partnership

On July 24, 2026, Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, met with a Philippine delegation led by Undersecretary of National Defence Salvador Mison in Kyiv to lay the diplomatic groundwork for a proposed “Drone Deal” framework. According to a statement from the Ukrainian president’s office, the two sides agreed to begin work on a possible deal that would deepen a defence relationship building since Ukraine first floated a memorandum of understanding last year covering drone co-production, technology exchange, and cybersecurity cooperation. ¹ ³

The proposed partnership comes as the Philippines seeks to enhance its maritime domain awareness in the West Philippine Sea, particularly around strategic islands such as Luzon, Palawan, Mindoro, and the Kalayaan Island Group.

Strategic potential for Philippine defense

Chester Cabalza, founder of the Manila-based International Development and Security Cooperation think tank, said closer cooperation with Ukraine on counter-drone technology could give a major boost to Philippine deterrence. He called for the Philippines to “aggressively absorb” Ukraine’s drone surveillance know-how to help secure the country’s territorial waters. ¹

Some analysts see the proposed drone partnership as a potential game changer for Manila, offering a shortcut to more agile, asymmetric capabilities as tensions persist in the West Philippine Sea. Ukraine’s use of cheap, adaptable drones to slow Russia’s military advance has become a model for countries looking to modernize their armed forces. ¹

Cautions from experts

However, Sylwia Monika Gorska, a political analyst at the University of Central Lancashire specialising in international relations, warned against treating the agreement as an off-the-shelf transfer of hardware. “Manila should avoid assuming that access to Ukrainian technology would be unrestricted,” she said, noting that Kyiv’s agreements with other partners had ranged widely, from joint research and testing to full co-production. ¹

Export controls, intellectual property rights, and militarily-sensitive technical data were further stumbling blocks, Gorska said, urging Manila to first identify the problem it wanted to solve before deciding Ukraine was the one to solve it. ¹

Knowledge over hardware

What sets Ukraine apart, analysts say, is not any one weapon but a talent for wartime iteration, spotting operational gaps, folding in battlefield feedback, and quickly scaling up production. Arnaud Leveau, a geopolitics professor at Paris Dauphine University, said this organizational knowledge was more valuable than any individual drone, noting that Ukraine had become an expert at linking together operators, engineers, software developers, intelligence personnel, and private manufacturers.

The Philippines could adapt this fast-moving model to build a more flexible defense ecosystem centered around low-cost surveillance drones, first-person-view systems, counter-drone detection, and resilient communications, Leveau said. But he tempered that optimism with a dose of realism, saying that a country still fighting for survival was unlikely to become anyone’s mass supplier of military hardware. ¹

“Kyiv may have more capacity to provide expertise, designs, training and industrial partnerships than to deliver large volumes of finished systems,” Leveau said.

Existing Philippine drone capabilities

The Philippines already fields a growing fleet of military drones, including ScanEagle systems for naval and marine surveillance, Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 aircraft with the air force, and tactical systems used by the army, with indigenous unmanned systems also being developed. Leveau argued that the most valuable lesson the Philippines could learn from Ukraine was its capacity to innovate. ¹

Even modest, affordable drones, paired with intelligence, secure communications, and electronic warfare, can complicate an adversary’s calculations and produce outsized strategic effects. For the Philippines, that could translate into better maritime domain awareness, enhanced monitoring of remote islands, and fewer personnel exposed to risks in contested waters, Leveau said.

“Ukraine’s own development of maritime unmanned systems also shows that drones can affect naval calculations without requiring a traditional blue-water fleet,” he said. “But the South China Sea grey zone is not the Black Sea battlefield.” ¹

Grey-zone operations in the West Philippine Sea

Because Philippine forces were often “operating below the threshold of open armed conflict, in the presence of coastguard, maritime militia and civilian vessels”, Leveau said drones would be more useful for evidence collection and persistent surveillance than combat. ¹ This is particularly relevant for monitoring activities near Philippine islands such as Luzon, Palawan, and features in the Kalayaan Island Group.

Gorska agreed, noting that the objective in the West Philippine Sea was not battlefield attrition but sustained deterrence and the careful management of escalation. She said that challenge was becoming more urgent as China integrated unmanned systems into its maritime operations, including long-endurance surveillance drones such as the BZK-005 identified on Woody Island, part of the Paracels archipelago. ¹

“The operational challenge is not matching China’s drone inventory. It is reducing China’s information advantage, protecting Philippine communications, preserving situational awareness and preventing surveillance superiority from being converted into operational or political advantage,” Gorska said. ¹

Strategic considerations for Manila

China’s objective is to compress the time between detection, decision, and response, according to Gorska, meaning the Philippine military must process information and make operational choices faster and more effectively, rather than just focusing on gathering raw data. ¹ This is particularly critical for monitoring activities near Philippine islands and features in the West Philippine Sea.

For Manila, analysts say the success of the proposed Drone Deal will depend as much on financing, production capacity, and intellectual property rights as how much technology actually changes hands. The real test will be whether the partnership identifies a genuine gap in the Philippines’ own force-development plans, according to Gorska, and whether Ukraine is best placed to fill it.

Leveau said he was optimistic about the outcome of any deal, though he offered an important caveat. “The potential is real,” he said. “But the result will depend on whether Manila treats the agreement as an industrial and human-capital project, not simply as another procurement initiative.” ¹

Regional context and future implications

The proposed drone partnership aligns with broader efforts by the Philippines to enhance its maritime security capabilities in the West Philippine Sea. The country has been actively deploying unmanned systems and other assets to monitor activities near its islands and features, including areas around Luzon, Palawan, and the Kalayaan Island Group. ¹

As the Philippines continues to develop its unmanned capabilities, the potential partnership with Ukraine offers an opportunity to learn from battlefield-tested tactics and adapt them for maritime surveillance and grey-zone operations. The success of this initiative will depend on Manila’s ability to identify specific operational needs and work with Kyiv to develop tailored solutions that enhance Philippine maritime domain awareness while maintaining regional stability. ¹

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Notes:

¹ Business Mirror. Law of the seabed: Manila’s calculated strategy in the West Philippine Sea https://businessmirror.com.ph/2026/08/04/law-of-the-seabed-manilas-calculated-strategy-in-the-west-philippine-sea

² South China Morning Post. Philippines eyes Ukraine’s drone know-how for South China Sea. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3362562/philippines-eyes-ukraines-drone-know-how-south-china-sea

³ President of Ukraine. Ihor Zhovkva and the Philippine Delegation Discussed Defense Cooperation and Partnership in the Indo-Pacific Region. https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/igor-zhovkva-obgovoriv-iz-delegaciyeyu-filippin-rozvitok-obo-105581