Drone warfare as a points game: Ukraine rewards hits on Russian soldiers with points

With an incentive system strongly reminiscent of video game mechanics, the Ukrainian military is now rewarding military performance in drone warfare. Units and soldiers have recently been receiving points when they prove with an uploaded video that their drones have hit Russian targets.

The points can then be redeemed for new equipment on a newly established marketplace called “Brave 1 Market”.

“‘Brave 1 Market’ will be like Amazon for the military. It will enable military units to buy directly the technologies they need at the front”,
says Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine – and responsible for the “Army of Drones Bonus” system.

Importantly, “Brave 1 Market” does not replace the regular supply of the troops. The marketplace merely supplements it – units can order what they currently need and what, in their own assessment, makes their operations more effective. Delivery within one week is promised.

The government in Kyiv is currently testing the motivation system and monitoring how changed point values affect the battlefield. Fedorov gives an example: “For instance, we increased the number of points for eliminating infantry from two to six – as a result, the number of enemies destroyed doubled within a month”.

The videos are uploaded via an interface in Ukraine's Delta military communications and situational awareness system. Points are only awarded after a higher authority has thoroughly checked and confirmed the hit.

Currently in the lead – unsurprisingly – is the Birds of Magyar unit, which had collected 16,298 points by the end of April.

Points table in drone warfare

This is how the current table rates successful hits:

• Russian soldier killed: 6 points
• tank damaged: 20 points
• tank destroyed: 40 points
• mobile missile system destroyed: up to 50 points
• high-value air defence system destroyed: 80 points

In return, the following can be purchased, among other things:

• small 7-inch first-person view (FPV) drone: 2 points
• FPV drone with night vision: 6 points
• heavy Baba Yaga bomber drone: 43 points

Publicly visible point values do not yet exist on the “Brave 1 Market”. Based on drone prices, however, one point can be estimated at around 115 to 120 euros. In sober terms, a dead Russian soldier thus earns new materiel worth around 700 euros.

Figures from Major Robert Brovdy, commander of the Birds of Magyar, show how far this materiel goes. In March, his unit lost 52 Baba Yaga bomber drones, which survived an average of 69 missions before being shot down. In addition, 228 Mavic reconnaissance drones were lost after an average of 45 missions each. A further 7,874 FPV drones were expended.

For April, the Birds of Magyar most recently reported: 1,804 Russian soldiers hit, 1,041 of them killed; 93 tanks hit, 18 of them destroyed; 21 field rocket launchers hit, 8 of them destroyed; 22 self-propelled guns hit, 6 of them destroyed. In total, 5,840 targets hit are on the list, of which 2,001 were accordingly also destroyed.

In a recent video, Magyar says: “There are many numbers, but they are important”. And further: “We have a long and hard fight ahead of us.”

Author's afterword: This text reports on the war in Ukraine. I deliberately refrain from making a moral or ethical assessment; that is left to each reader.