The Ukrainian drone zeroed in on the two Russian soldiers riding a motorcycle just after 9 a.m. on July 19, closer and closer, until it swooped down to hit its mark and the camera went dark.
It was a high-value target for the drone operator’s regiment: worth as many as 24 points, to be exact. In a real-world game run by the Ukrainian government, regiments are being rewarded with points for successful attacks.
Wound a Russian soldier? Eight points. Kill one? That is good for 12. A Russian drone pilot is worth more: 15 points for wounding one, and 25 points for a kill. Capturing a Russian soldier alive with the help of a drone is the jackpot: 120 points.
“It’s a brutal game — human lives turned into points,” said Stun, 33, a drone commander for the Ukrainian unmanned systems regiment known as Achilles. In keeping with military protocol, he goes by only his call sign.
The Ukrainian government set up the competition in August 2024, although that was more of a soft launch, a beta version. Teams compete for points to acquire Ukrainian-made gear, including basic surveillance drones and larger drones carrying powerful explosives, through an internal Amazon-style weapons store called Brave1 Market. The store first went online in April of this year and was expanded in August.
The more points a unit gets, the better stuff it can buy, ensuring that resources are directed to the teams that best use them. It is a digital-age, instant-gratification twist on time-honored rewards for soldiers like medals and promotions, with the winnings plowed back into the war effort.
Drone teams submit videos of their successful strikes to a central office in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, where experts review them to decide who gets points based on time stamps and verified destruction, said Mykhailo Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, who helped devise the program.
Officials argue that the competition keeps troops energized after three and a half years of war, with drone operators facing constant stress from witnessing violence on live video feeds.
“This helps us stop the enemy,” said Mr. Fedorov, the digital minister. “If this gives additional motivation to our military,” he added, “we are happy to support it.”
Weaponized drones have long raised concerns that they dehumanize war by allowing soldiers to kill with the click of a button, at a remove from the battlefield. When asked if he thought that Ukraine’s drone game might be dehumanizing, Mr. Federov shrugged. “What is inhumane is starting a full-scale war in the 21st century,” he said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have vied for a technological edge, fielding self-destructing drones, long-range drones, jet drones, fiber-optic drones, drones that intercept other drones and, soon, swarms of drones guided by artificial intelligence.
The Russians have their own version of a battlefield competition, paying bonuses like $2,400 for destroying a helicopter or $12,000 for capturing a Leopard tank.
Ukraine’s online weapons marketplace is an extension of the do-it-yourself ethos that has defined the country’s drone procurement since the start of the war, including collecting donations to buy consumer drones and hacking them to make them deadly.
More than 400 drone teams compete. Some infantry units that did not have full-fledged drone units have created them to be able to use the point system and earn equipment, soldiers said.
The contest awards points for hitting both Russian soldiers and their equipment. Demolishing a Russian multiple-launch rocket system can earn up to 70 points. Destroying a tank is worth 40 points; damaging one yields 20.
As tanks have become easy targets for drones, limiting their usefulness on the battlefield, those points have become much harder to earn.
“These days, spotting enemy vehicles is extremely rare,” said a drone pilot working with Stun who goes by the call sign Red and claims 45 confirmed kills. “And if one does show up, like coming out of a forest, there’s basically a line of drones waiting to strike it.”
The Ukrainian government has adjusted the point values to respond to Russia’s changing tactics.
For instance, as attack drones with ever-growing ranges widen and blur the front lines, the Russian Army often tries to gain ground by sending one, two or three infantrymen forward at a time. They move stealthily, trying to evade Ukrainian drone cameras by wearing anti-thermal coats or using greenery as cover. Those who succeed then regroup with any other Russian soldiers who make it forward.
So taking out Russian soldiers has become the priority.
When the competition was introduced, the death of a Russian soldier earned only two points. In October 2024, that increased to six, which was doubled in May.
Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of the Achilles regiment, said that Ukrainian soldiers must kill or gravely injure as many as 25,000 Russian soldiers a month. That is about the number of new recruits Russia is mobilizing monthly, he added.
To do so, Ukraine needs at least two attack drones for every Russian infantry soldier, or at least 50,000 a month, Mr. Fedorenko said.
“Without exaggeration — we are cornered by Russia. Russia wants to annihilate us,” Mr. Fedorenko said, adding that he did not see the war itself as a game. “The realization that successful combat operations also bring additional equipment — that inspires confidence that we will have the means to keep fighting.”
He added that mastering drones had helped him expand his former company of 100 men into a battalion of 500 and now a regiment of about 3,000 that is considered one of the top drone units in Ukraine. Alongside other new drone regiments, Achilles is trying to form a united drone line along the front, strengthening reconnaissance, helping assault brigades in combat and blocking Russian reconnaissance drones.
A video posted in June by Robert Brovdi, the overall commander of the unmanned systems units of the Ukrainian armed forces — a new separate branch of the military supervising drones and robot warfare — shed light on the point system and the internal online marketplace where units acquire drones.
A basic kamikaze drone costs 1.3 points, Mr. Brovdi said in the video. A drone with a thermal camera runs 4.5 points. And a more advanced “vampire” drone, with up to 33 pounds of explosives and a range of up to 19 miles, takes 43 points.
Mr. Brodvi said that his former brigade, the Birds of the Magyar, had hit about 6,500 targets in May, including 2,221 Russian soldiers, earning more than 25,000 points that month. The brigade traded those points for 600 vampire drones.
So far, units across the Ukrainian military have ordered more than 80,000 drones and electronic-warfare systems using points through Brave1 Market, equipment worth more than $96 million, said Mr. Fedorov, the digital minister.
An online leaderboard lists the top 10 drone teams every month, although point totals are not made public.
In first place in September was the Birds of the Magyar, followed by the so-called Alpha Group of Ukraine’s leading internal security agency. The Achilles regiment was ranked sixth.
Both commanders and soldiers say they are already motivated to destroy Russian equipment and kill Russian soldiers . “We’re focused on destroying the enemy, on real objectives, on the mission,” Stun, the drone commander, said. “We go where we’re needed — not chasing after points.”
But they said that the contest could be motivating, spurring competition among drone operators to be the first to hit a battlefield target.
“Of course, there were times when we’d argue in chats over points,” said Stun, who was given his call sign partly because his favorite move in his favorite video game was “stun,” which freezes enemies in their tracks.
“For example, when a vehicle was hit and several units engaged it, we’d argue over who got the actual hit,” he added. “We’d say: ‘That was our target! Don’t touch it!’ ‘We were the first to hit it!’ ‘We did it! That was us!’”
Mr. Fedorov said that the game was constantly expanding to match new technology in the war. Units can now earn points for using robotic ground vehicles on logistics missions like rescuing injured soldiers, for detecting Russian equipment with reconnaissance drones and for destroying targets using guidance systems with artificial intelligence.
There are still kinks — the system is new, after all. Some unit commanders have said that the new drones did not arrive quickly enough, and some soldiers have complained that they destroyed valuable Russian equipment that was not worth any points.
The drone pilot who goes by the name Red said that his team had been lined up recently to try to hit a Russian armored vehicle, but that another team had managed to hit it first — so no points. Red’s team then turned its attention to a log raft, which is used to cross rivers, that the armored vehicle was pulling behind it.
“We burned it,” he said. “Mission accomplished. But unfortunately, no points for rafts.”
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
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