Video-confirmed drone kills are now responsible for 80% of Ukraine’s successful destruction of Russian targets, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The announcement marks another evolution on the battlefield for modern drone warfare and a dramatic shift away from traditional artillery-supported combat.
“In just the past year alone, 819,737 targets were hit by drones,” Mr. Zelenskyy said at an event with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on Monday. A video translated by the president’s office was posted online shortly after the event.
“We clearly record every single hit,” he said.
The most effective drone units in the Ukrainian military were given awards at the event. The military has created a points system for verified strikes that gives first-person view (FPV) operators a chance to buy new equipment in an online marketplace, similar to a video game.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s new minister of defense, revealed in a video posted on Telegram Tuesday night that the government has completed a centralized national system for managing all drone operations.
The video shows FPV pilots controlling multiple types of drones, both in the air and on the ground, to execute missions in the field. Their statistics are then sent back to what the Ukrainian government has dubbed its “Mission Control” system to be monitored, observed and assessed.
The transformation and destruction by the FPV systems represent a complete reversal from the early months of the war, when 155-millimeter artillery shells were in such high demand that U.S. manufacturers aggressively ramped up production with a goal of nearly five times as many shells per year.
Now, cheap, small drones — sometimes handmade and only costing a few hundred dollars — have replaced artillery as the main weapon of war in Ukraine. The majority of strikes are coming from FPV pilots, not indirect strikes.
“The absolute majority are domestically produced drones,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “And it is very encouraging that these drones are made in Ukraine.”
The cost-effectiveness of drones is changing much of the world’s approach to warfare, with AI and FPV pilots able to destroy targets with extreme precision without the cost of more complex bomb and rocket technologies.
Ukraine aims to produce more than 7 million drones in 2026, according to the Ministry of Defense. At the NATO Operational Force Development Framework conference on Monday, Sergiy Boyev, the deputy minister of defense, said Ukrainian-produced drones, air and missile defense systems and extended-range artillery shells were the key priorities for his country’s military in 2026.
“Together with our partners, we have developed a military strategy focused on protecting Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, stabilizing the front, degrading Russian logistics in operational depth, and striking the enemy’s strategic targets,” Mr. Boyev said. That strategy costs $120 billion, with half coming from Ukraine’s security partners around the world.
The goal with this influx of funding for drones is to extend the current front-line strike zone an additional 80 kilometers into currently Russian-controlled territory, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The surge in drone use has caused both sides of the conflict to rapidly adapt tactics and countermeasures, with netting now lining roads to stop small drones from destroying vehicles and entire towns along the front line now covered with thin, fiber-optic wire used by FPVs to avoid jamming.
This change hasn’t gone unnoticed by allied forces. This week, the U.S. military is expected to announce selections for its own Drone Dominance Program, meant to invigorate domestic production of small uncrewed aerial vehicles.
Allied forces around the world have begun to completely forgo old methods of purchasing military technology in a race to incorporate lessons from the Ukraine war into their own militaries.
The new tactics evolution and scale of un-crewed vehicles in warfare cements drones as a dominant force on the battlefield, raising the question of how effective spending on traditional artillery and medium-range rockets will be in the future.
