As Ukrainian soldiers describe a front line increasingly dominated by drones, Kyiv’s ability to acquire enough of the weapons is emerging as a key problem in its defense against Russia.
“We have so many military targets and too few drones,” said Erik, a Ukrainian soldier working in a long-range drone strike unit. Erik is identified only by his Ukrainian army call sign due to the sensitive nature of his work.
Ukraine’s battlefields are defined by drones. Speaking at a press briefing last week, a senior NATO defense official said there were as many as 6,000 first-person-view (FPV) drone attacks a day on the front line. The official was granted anonymity to discuss the military situation. FPV drones carry a small explosive payload, which detonates when the drone rams its target.
In 2024, Ukraine produced more than 1.5 million of the small FPV attack drones in addition to other drone types including reconnaissance drones, long-range strike drones, and drone bombers, which carry munitions that they drop from above. Russia produced more than 1.5 million drones of various types that same year, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The two militaries are going all-in because the drones are so effective. Nick, a Ukrainian drone operator who is also identified only by his call sign, estimated that his drone bomber unit successfully struck 80 percent of its targets, which included costly Russian weapons systems such as the multimillion-dollar Buk air defense missile launcher.
The longer-range drones that Erik works with have been particularly successful in recent months against Russian oil production facilities, a campaign that has led to fuel shortages within Russia and cut oil production by as much as 1.2 million barrels a day in August. Russian exports of oil and gas accounted for as much as half of its budget revenue over the last 10 years, meaning that a sustained Ukrainian campaign could devastate a key source of funds for Russia’s war.
Russia, though, has also become adept at using drones. On the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers are under constant threat from drones as many as 9 miles from the front lines, Erik and Nick said.
Rotating troops in and out of their positions requires careful planning to avoid being spotted and killed by Russian drones that either strike them directly or coordinate Russian artillery strikes. “It’s like a special operation to get infantry to their position,” Erik said.
Russian FPV drones, which strike in kamikaze-like attacks, will lie in wait on the ground and then rise up to ambush vehicles, Nick said. Movement at night is often safest—but in order to avoid Russian drones using thermal vision, Nick said some troops use heat-reflective blankets.
“We were using [thermal blankets] a lot because we had some areas where we had to cross more than 2 kilometers without any place to hide,” he said.
Returning home for Erik and Nick, meanwhile, is no guarantee of safety. Ukraine’s cities are under near-constant attack from Russian long-range strike drones. Since 2022, Russia has launched almost 50,000 long-range Iranian-designed Shahed drones against Ukraine, with Shahed attacks rising sharply in recent months.
“[The Russians] are using this as psychological pressure,” said Nick, whose family lives in the sort of high-rise apartment building that Russian drones have struck.
Ukraine’s race against Russia to field drones, however, is limited by several problems, according to Erik and a recent report from the Snake Island Institute, a Ukrainian think tank.
For one, some Western-produced drones are not a fit for Ukraine’s battlefields. Erik recounted how, despite his unit’s advice, a Western company sent his unit drones that used GPS to navigate. Russian electronic warfare downed the drones on their first flight before they even crossed the front line.
Driven in part by problems with the West’s production of drones, Ukraine has turned instead to assembling drones domestically.
However, many key components—such as navigation systems or motors—are imported, chiefly from the European Union and China. Chinese components currently make up around 40 percent of the value of imported drone parts, according to the Snake Island report.
These supply chains come with issues. European components, for example, may take months to arrive and in volumes that can’t meet Ukraine’s needs, Erik said. “We’re doing it from China because allies cannot do it quickly,” he said.
Chinese components, meanwhile, come with geopolitical risk. Starting in June 2023, China levied a series of increasingly tight restrictions on drone and drone component exports, culminating in a broad ban on many types of parts in September 2024.
“Each new export restriction has translated into higher costs, delayed deliveries, and battlefield risk,” Snake Island stated in its report.
Russia is theoretically subject to the same export restrictions but in practice has worked closely with Chinese companies to produce drones. Reuters previously reported that a Chinese company was shipping engines for long-range strike drones to Russia and that Chinese experts have flown to Russia to help develop drones. Russia also worked with Iran to produce drones.
In some cases, Russia has even muscled Ukraine out of purchases of Chinese drone parts. One Ukrainian drone manufacturer, speaking to Snake Island, said Russia had blocked its purchase of 100,000 drone motors from a Chinese manufacturer by buying the Chinese company.
Ukraine’s allies, though, may yet ride to its rescue.
Kyiv and Washington are discussing increasing cooperation on drones that could help reduce Ukraine’s dependence on China. These plans include the United States potentially buying Ukrainian drones, a step that would inject cash into Ukraine’s drone companies, or producing Ukrainian drones in the United States.
Europe is also attempting to help boost drone production, with the United Kingdom set to produce interceptor drones for Ukraine and with Denmark and Ukraine last week signing a memorandum that paves the way for Ukrainian companies to build drones in the Nordic country.
“We need to work together,” Erik said. “It’s what the Russians do with Iran and China.”
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