Canadian Firm Sentinel Forms Joint Venture to Supply Drones to Ukraine
Canadian drone company Sentinel is working with Ukrainian company Airlogix to manufacture drones in Canada for Ukraine to deploy in its war against Russia.
The joint venture is moving ahead with a government-to-government arrangement set to be signed later this week at CANSEC, a major defence conference being held in Ottawa. This arrangement will outline the operational scope and support an intellectual property licensing agreement between Airlogix and Hamilton-based Sentinel R&D Inc., subject to export controls.
This type of partnership is relatively new for Ukraine after it spent the first few years of its war with Russia closely guarding IP and restricting exports of military technologies. Instead, it encouraged other countries’ companies to establish production lines in Ukraine to access the market.
This is changing through Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “Build with Ukraine” initiative, which he launched in June, 2025, to help diversify the country’s supply chain and have access to more products made away from the front lines. During the war, all products manufactured through the initiative are being sent to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Mr. Zelensky said.
Dmytro Piatrin, chief commercial officer of Airlogix, said it’s in Ukraine’s national interest – and his company’s, too – to ensure manufacturing for critical war supplies can be carried out by his country’s allies.
“As a company, it’s the way to mitigate risk of being destroyed by a Russian rocket anytime,” he told The Globe and Mail.
The joint venture with Canada was set up through the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of Military Assistance Coordination (DMAC), which began working with Sentinel after Canada signed a letter of intent with Ukraine in August, 2025, to finance the joint production of military equipment for Ukraine in Canada.
The size of the deal and how many drones the joint venture will produce is yet to be determined.
Once production starts, per DMAC‘s usual process, the directorate will buy the drones from Sentinel through the Canadian Commercial Corporation and then donate them to Ukraine.
Since the beginning of 2022, Canada has committed $6.5-billion in military assistance to Ukraine, which will carry through to 2029. But this joint venture would be a first of its kind for DMAC, which doesn’t adhere to the same standard competitive process as other defence procurement bodies in Canada.
The government-to-government arrangement to be signed later this week will be specific to the joint venture between Sentinel and Airlogix but, if successful, could set a precedent for similar ventures in the future.
Sentinel currently manufactures its own interoperable platform – allowing it to be used with different systems, devices, or software – called the ReKam 3.2. The fixed-wing uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) is payload-agnostic, meaning it can be used for anything from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to electronic warfare to counter-drone missions, depending on how it’s configured. The drone can be launched in various ways, has a range of around 500 kilometres and a top horizontal speed of more than 180 kilometres an hour.
Sentinel’s specialty is in its composite manufacturing, for which it has exclusively developed the intellectual property and can apply to drones, missiles and interceptors. But Airlogix’s experience in Ukraine brings a whole new level of expertise to the company, said Kath Intson, chief executive officer at Sentinel.
“We’re really excited to be working together with a combat-proven company and being able to marry those capabilities,” she said.
At the same time as Sentinel is learning from Airlogix, Mr. Piatrin said, his company is learning from its Canadian colleagues and the advanced technologies they’ve developed.
“In Ukraine, it’s not so logical to invest future money in advanced technologies, because in any day, it can be destroyed. But in Canada, they have this advanced approach to production, so it’s where we can learn from our partners,” he said.
To fulfill production for the joint venture, which will likely extend into the 2030s, Sentinel and Airlogix will jointly invest in a new facility in either Ontario or Alberta, depending on provincial support, Ms. Intson said. If it lands in Alberta, the whole company will likely relocate to the province.
This isn’t the first joint venture brokered between Ukraine and another country that Airlogix has been a part of. In April, the country signed a co-operation agreement with Germany to finalize a partnership between Airlogix and defence tech company Auterion Inc., which has offices in Munich, Germany, and Arlington, Va.
The idea is that the German company will manufacture thousands of drones per year, using a combination of Airlogix’s airframes and Auterion’s software, to supply Ukraine, according to a press release. In time, Germany could also source from the supply chain. But for now, the contract will be strictly to produce drones for Ukraine under Ukrainian export permissions.
Canada could also benefit one day from the Sentinel-Airlogix joint venture, in the form of drones.
“While there is a full-scale invasion, Ukraine comes first,” Mr. Piatrin said. “But whenever the full-scale invasion has ended, or the demand for such systems is not in such big numbers, all the spare capacities will be used to supply the Canadian Armed Forces.”
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
