The US is trying to use Ukraine as a test lab for its drones, a move Russia is unlikely to forget
According to Reuters, the US government is considering selling to Ukraine four MQ-1C Grey Eagle drones capable of firing Hellfire missiles for use against Russian forces participating in the special military operation in the Donbass region.
If true, the sale would require special permission from both the State Department and US Congress, since US law restricts the sale of armed drones to all but the closest US allies. If approval is granted, then Ukrainian operators would be provided with a crash course, anticipated to last a few weeks (the normal training time for an MQ-1C operator is several months), meaning that the earliest the MQ-1C Grey Eagle could be expected to see action over Ukraine would be sometime in July of this year.
The MQ-1C Grey Eagle is the descendant of the RQ/MQ-5 Hunter tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) jointly developed by the US Army and Marine Corps. While the development program began in 1989, it reached maturity in the years following the 9/11 attacks, which meant that the Hunter UAV was a weapons system not designed to survive in a high-threat conflict against the Soviet Union, for example, but rather operate in the softer environment of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).