Drone warfare in Ukraine: millions of systems, growing ranges and AI in the terminal phase

In Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, clear trends can be seen in drone warfare: the number of unmanned systems is rising, both in absolute terms and in the variety of types. Their range is growing, they can be used for more and more tasks, and artificial intelligence (AI) has now definitively arrived on the battlefield. In personnel, too, drone units are growing faster than any other military formations.

The Russian armed forces aim to bring their unmanned systems troops, set up in 2025, to 165,000 in a large-scale expansion. Ukraine's service branch "Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine" already had more than 86,000 personnel at the end of January/beginning of February. The target is 100,000 by 1 April.

Drone warfare in 2026: seven million drones as the goal

By estimates, Ukraine procured around four million drones in 2025. Most were single-use weapons, from the first-person view (FPV) drone for tactical battlefield use to the long-range attack drone with a clearly strategic purpose.

Against the background of counter-drone experience around the Iran war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently cited a production capacity of 2,000 interceptor drones a day. In 2026 Ukraine plans to procure seven million drones. Daily consumption, which stood at 10,000 systems or more last year, could thus rise to around 19,000 or more.

A market with more than 1,300 models

Ukraine's Brave1 market offers a "small" overview. It currently lists 1,343 drone models and variants, including 581 radio FPV models, 434 fibre-optic FPV models, 38 heavy-lift drone models/variants and 28 different tactical reconnaissance drones. For comparison: 18 types of supersonic combat aircraft are currently in production worldwide.

Most of these systems are available for immediate delivery. That matches the line openly taken by the head of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces: pilots should not have to wait for drones; rather, drones must be available to pilots at all times.

With 162 unmanned ground systems, this segment too has become hard to keep track of. Ukrainian soldiers can choose from no fewer than 400 systems for electronic warfare and support, plus 67 different drone detectors and more than 1,100 accessories for drone warfare.

One group stands out, still comparatively small but growing: currently 33 AI modules that support drone pilots with a wide range of assistance functions. Software, tactical equipment and simulators come on top. Not included is what soldiers and units buy themselves or receive through donation initiatives.

Moscow relies on long-range attack drones

According to Ukrainian estimates, Russia is shifting money from missile to drone production. Russia is said to be able to launch 350 to 500 long-range attack drones a day at present. This year the figure is expected to reach 600 to 800, with an overall target of 1,000 drones a day.

By its own account, Ukraine had reached drone parity with Russia in the number of long-range strikes as of mid-March. Russian commentators still see their own forces ahead in the sheer quantity of FPV drones. Technically and tactically, however, according to Russian military bloggers, the Ukrainians currently dominate the drone skies.

How far the drones reach

According to recent reports, Ukraine is using tactical drones to interdict the battlefield up to around 150 kilometres behind the front.

Russia struck similarly deep – at least until the Starlink cut-off (-> Starlink cut-off hits Russian troops hard) – hitting Ukrainian supply lorries dozens of kilometres in the rear. In response, Ukrainian net tunnels protecting the main supply routes behind the front from drones are in places already 40 kilometres long. On both sides of the rather notional front line, a strip around 20 kilometres wide is regarded as an absolute death zone.

In the range of long-range attack drones, Ukraine's disadvantage is gradually becoming an advantage. Since the start of the invasion in 2022, Russia has been able to strike targets anywhere in Ukraine – initially with cruise missiles, later increasingly with drones as well.

But Ukraine is catching up and reaching ever larger areas deep inside Russia. Targets previously protected by distance alone are now coming under fire. Alongside the oil and gas industry, key components of the defence industry are clearly in focus.

That Ukrainian long-range attack drones now threaten previously unreachable targets was recently acknowledged by Sergei Shoigu, Russian defence minister until 2024 and since then Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. At an off-site meeting in the Ural Federal District he said:

The Urals, which until recently were beyond the reach of air strikes from Ukraine, are now in a zone of direct threat— Sergei Shoigu

The development of weapons, especially unmanned systems, is such that every region of Russia is under threat.— Sergei Shoigu

The Yekaterinburg region lies more than 2,000 kilometres from Kyiv – the longest range of Ukrainian drones that Russia has publicly confirmed so far.

AI takes over the terminal phase

TFL-1, Ukraine's latest magic box, comes from The Fourth Law. The inconspicuous black plastic unit costs 118 euros and guides a drone autonomously in the final phase of its flight. AI support thus covers the most critical part of the flight under real combat conditions.

During the terminal approach the drone loses altitude and more easily drops below the radio horizon – hills, trees and houses then block the direct line of sight between transmitter and receiver. This makes it possible to fly into the very area most densely protected by electromagnetic jamming systems.

If the pilot loses control in the terminal approach, the TFL-1 autoguidance module takes over. This makes attacks 2 to 4 times more effective. Ukrainian FPV pilots can currently choose from a total of 16 types and variants of such automatic targeting modules – a trend Russia has so far been unable to match.

Ground drones in series production

Ukraine sent around 2,000 ground drones, i.e. unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), to the front in 2024; in 2025 the figure was already 15,000. Monthly numbers currently exceed 7,000 (-> More than 7,000 missions in January: Ukraine increasingly relies on ground drones). In 2026 the aim is an average of 10,000 systems a month, or 120,000 over the year. There are no figures for Russia. There is, however, ample evidence that Russia is also making enormous efforts in this field: the most important types no longer come from DIY garages but from dedicated series production.

The end of Starlink was a setback for Russia, though, and is currently also being felt with its UGVs. Switching to a new control concept, however, is likely to take several weeks at most.

Updates every week

At the front, the pressure to innovate is extremely high and the cycles are shorter than for most civilian or military technologies. Software usually receives new versions or upgrades every three to four weeks, sometimes after just a few days. Hardware cycles take two to three months; in the low-tech sector in particular they are often only a few weeks.

When new technology appears at the front, a process begins that produces the first countermeasures within a few weeks. 3D printing in particular now allows extremely rapid adaptation: airframes, battery compartments and camera housings are constantly redesigned and printed.

Ukraine's battlefield shows the consequences of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, combined with the pressure to survive. Networking, AI and machine learning, big data and data analytics, and additive manufacturing go hand in hand there with constant improvement and renewal.

Western procurement lags behind

Drone warfare in Ukraine in particular has completely broken away from the timelines traditionally customary in the West for development, production, procurement and deployment.

A comparison: Austria's 2022 national defence report mentions the procurement of reconnaissance drones for the combat-technical and tactical levels. The first of 315 combat-technical reconnaissance drones reached the Austrian Armed Forces (Bundesheer) at the end of August 2025. Still outstanding at the tactical level is the replacement of the Tracker drone reconnaissance system, ordered in 2013 and delivered in 2016.

For the troops, the motto "Train as you fight" still applies as far as possible, whereas the procurement cycles of Western armies have become completely detached from the reality of war. The catch: a military conflict, for which one wants to become capable of defence, does not follow the established timelines of Western procurement procedures.

A calculation: what a peace without verification could mean

A theoretical calculation shows how deceptive a peace settlement in Ukraine could be without an accompanying set of rules and their verification.

Assuming the currently estimated Russian production rate of 500 long-range attack drones a day, a stockpile of 135,000 would build up within nine months. If production continued, Russia could then launch one drone every minute for 142 days – 1,440 a day, for almost five months. Only then would use have to fall back to the level of the production rate.

For tactical drones with AI modules, an annual output of seven million systems would produce a theoretical stockpile of 5.25 million after just nine months of peace. For comparison: NATO counts a total of around 3.42 million active soldiers as of 2026.