An FPV drone pilot prepares a drone for flight. (Photo by Ivan Antypenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
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.
The top brass in Kyiv struggle to keep up with this innovation—both the new technology and its use on a highly decentralized battlefield. Drone production is scattered and diverse, with as many as 700 companies and 500 suppliers now churning out UAVs of every description. Active-duty units control their own budgets. With drones and other military kit in short supply, most fighters supplement what they get from the government with items they buy themselves—their own clothing and vehicles, for example—crowdsourcing, and donations from charity foundations. Some units say they count on donations for more than two-thirds of their drones, and most modify the devices they receive to suit their unique battlefield circumstances.
Kyiv is working to tame this chaos with organizational reform—a corps-based command system aligned with NATO practices. But the armed forces also strive to take advantage of decentralization, harnessing it to drive innovation and effectiveness on the battlefield. That’s where the point system comes in—allowing fighters to bypass the bureaucracy in Kyiv and buy weapons directly from manufacturers.
Eight Points For Destroying A Tank, 25 For Killing An Enemy Drone Pilot
Frontline commander Prickly explains how it works. Drone pilots save video clips of the damage they do—whether destroying machinery or killing Russian soldiers. The unit prepares a daily montage and sends it to the Ministry of Defense, where experts comb over the footage to confirm the unit’s claims and confer points for verified destruction.
The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, according to Business Insider, destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve earned to purchase equipment—drones, drone jamming devices, ammunition, and other goods—on Brave1 Market, an online shopping platform not unlike Amazon.
For some battalions, including Prickly’s, this represents a sea change. In mid-summer, his unit, part of the 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade, ranked fifth in the nation in total points earned. “It keeps the weapons coming, so we can kill even more Russians,” he brags. “But what’s different isn’t just how much you get. It’s also the choice available on the marketplace.” In the past, Kyiv sent what it sent—often the most rudimentary equipment—and units struggled to upgrade it for use on the changing battlefield. “Now we’re in direct contact with producers,” Prickly says. “We order exactly what we need, and it comes ready to use.”
The defense ministry also touts other advantages, reflected on the government-run media platform, United24. The general staff reaps data from the point system, enabling it to make better decisions about strategy. Varying the allocation—how many points, say, for a destroyed tank or for killing a drone pilot—gives Kyiv a new tool of command and control. Signals from the field about changing demand—what kinds of drones are selling best on the marketplace—help the armed forces make procurement decisions, and the system is a boon for manufacturers, who can lock in larger, longer-term contracts, enabling them to invest for the future.
Soldiers On The Frontline Offer Mixed Reviews
Other soldiers on the front line offer a more mixed view of the new system. Five drone pilots I catch up with in a café in Sloviansk say it’s making very little difference to the way they operate.
Three of the men, all of whom decline to give their names because they don’t have permission to speak to a reporter, work with standard first-person view drones—small, lightweight platforms with four rotary propellers and a range of three to six miles. The two other pilots man large Vampire systems with six rotors, capable of flying further and carrying heavier payloads.
Boisterous, covered with tattoos and body jewelry, all five men seem younger than many Ukrainian soldiers, and several say they were drawn to the army expressly to work with drones. One carries a UAV in a plastic case plastered with deadhead stickers and a backpack with three attachments: a combat knife, a tourniquet, and little stuffed animal clinging to a strap.
As UAVs hovering over the battlefield make it increasingly hard for infantry units to get near each other, drone pilots are emerging as the new infantry. They are among the fighters who engage most closely with the enemy. They work out of trenches as little as two miles from Russian positions, where they often remain for six or seven days at a time. Some have attended drone school, but the men I met in Sloviansk say they learned their craft in the heat of battle. As UAV warfare intensifies, they are as much at risk as infantry, maybe more, with both sides now putting a premium on killing drone pilots.
Ukrainian minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov recently told the BBC that more than 90% of fighting units are participating in the point system. But the young fighters in the café say they see little sign of the policy. Their unit still gets the lion’s share of its devices from charity foundations, and they say they don’t work for points—the system has no effect on what they target. As one man explains it, they try to kill as many Russians as they can and aren’t really concerned about anything else.
Skeptics of the point system, military and civilian, raise three issues.
Some argue that units waste time and resources tracking their kills—time and resources that should be used killing Russians. According to these critics, the emphasis on tracking also puts well-heeled, elite units in a better position to take advantage of the system, while those that start out with less fall further and further behind.
Prickly concedes that getting video of a hit often requires a second sortie, sometimes three or four. But he doesn’t have a problem with that. “It’s part of the job,” he says. And he has no patience with those who question the ethos of competition. “If you can’t make the cut, it’s your fault,” he says dismissively. “There’s something wrong with your unit.”
A second criticism centers on the possibility of perverse incentives. One intelligence officer who declined to give her name told me that focusing on killing soldiers takes pressure off the Russian weapons—artillery and rockets—that cover enemy fighters as they approach Ukrainian positions, advantaging the other side in a close encounter.
In this case, too, Prickly concedes half the argument: adding points for Russian casualties has focused his unit’s attention on killing soldiers. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped destroying tanks,” he insists. “Targeting is something that happens in real time,” he argues, and decisions are made collectively, with commanders following up on leads provided by drone pilots. “We do what we need to do to prevail,” he maintains. “It’s not about points.”
As for the third criticism—that the point system is gamification, trivializing death and destruction—Prickly dismisses it out of hand. “I’ve been a soldier for more than 10 years,” he says, “originally infantry, and I can tell you—there’s nothing trivial about it. It has nothing to do with games.”
Another pilot I met near the front line, a tall, thin man who goes by the call sign Eagle, in his late 30s, with a long, braided topknot, sees something in both points of view. Like Prickly, he supports e-points and appreciates his unit’s more ample UAV supply. But he also echoes the young pilots. “War is war,” he tells me wearily, “and always will be. The drone point system does nothing to change that.”