The tall, bearded officer, code-named Prickly—like all Ukrainian fighters, he uses a call sign to protect his identity—is proud as a peacock of what he has done in six months at the helm of his frontline drone unit, and he gives some of the credit to Kyiv’s new “e-point” system, Army of Drones Bonus.
He and several of his men explain how the system works in an interview near a former farmhouse in eastern Ukraine. The yard is littered with military equipment and junk, including the farmer’s much-worn living-room furniture, now arranged around a makeshift fire pit. Several stray cats and a mangy dog come and go as we talk. “We’ve improved our performance by a factor of 10,” the commander boasts. “We know that thanks to the drone points system, which measures how many men we kill and how much equipment we destroy.”
After more than three and a half years of fighting, drones have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine. Every operation depends on uncrewed platforms, either to carry out the mission or protect soldiers. Units work with an increasingly varied drone arsenal—large and small devices, powered by rotors and fixed wings, guided by radio waves and fiber optic cable. Kyiv and Moscow are locked in a deadly technology race, constantly competing to counter the other side’s latest developments, and things change so fast that an wounded fighter returning to the front after just a few months away can no longer recognize his unit’s tactics. Estimates suggest that unmanned aerial vehicles are responsible for up to 80% of battlefield casualties.
