Romania Wants to Build a Joint UAV Plant with Ukraine

Romania plans to build its own drone manufacturing plant and, within the framework of the SAFE mechanism, may allocate about 200 million euros for the project. This was reported by unian.net, citing Defense Express, which referred to Romanian Minister of Economy Radu Miruta. “It is necessary to bridge the gap between the Defense Ministry’s demand for advanced technologies and the actual state of the Romanian defense industry,” Miruta stated. It should be recalled that SAFE is a European program involving loans of up to 150 billion euros for the procurement of weapons from European and Ukrainian defense industries. The program is intended to provide Ukraine with the opportunity for full integration into the European defense-industrial space. Not only Romania and Ukraine may be involved in building the new plant, but other European countries as well. It should be noted that Kyiv and Bucharest have long discussed joint production of various types of UAVs. In the summer it was reported that the Romanian Ministry of Defence seeks to reach an agreement with Ukraine on manufacturing drones for subsequent sale to other European countries. In fact, localization of production was discussed. The main obstacle to the start of cooperation was that the Romanians did not have the funds to implement the project. It is also worth recalling that last month Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal discussed with the Romanian side the production of interceptor drones, FPV drones and even long-range UAVs.