Ukraine Says Drones Now Destroy Over 80% of Enemy Targets, and Moscow Is Not Amused

War has always been about who adapts faster, and right now Ukraine is speed running that lesson with a buzzing soundtrack.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and Defense News, more than 80 percent of confirmed enemy targets are now destroyed by drones, most of them built at home, assembled locally, and apparently delivered with extreme prejudice.

In 2025 alone, Ukrainian forces recorded 819,737 video confirmed drone strikes. That is not an estimate, not a guess, and not a Telegram rumor. That is footage, time stamped, cataloged, and politely stored in databases that probably make Russian logistics officers wake up sweating at night.

Nearly a third of those strikes hit enemy personnel. Another 62,000 went after light vehicles, 29,000 against heavy armor, and 32,000 knocked hostile drones out of the sky. If this were a video game scoreboard, Moscow would be asking for a patch, a nerf, and maybe a refund.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made it clear that this is not chaos in the sky, but accounting. Every hit is logged. Every strike earns points.

Those points feed into an internal bonus system that rewards drone operators, and yes, it works exactly like it sounds. Ukraine has effectively turned battlefield performance into a points based economy where competence is rewarded and excuses are not.

“We clearly record every single hit,” Zelenskyy said, explaining a system that sounds less like old school warfare and more like a brutally honest performance review.

This is where it gets uncomfortable for Russia. Ukraine’s Army of Drones program verifies strikes, assigns value to outcomes, and allows units to spend earned points in the Brave1 marketplace on new drones, electronic warfare gear, and other equipment.

In other words, Ukrainian operators blow up a tank, earn points, and buy better tools to blow up the next one. Somewhere in Moscow, a procurement officer is staring at a fax machine and wondering where it all went wrong.

The system has been so effective that Ukraine plans to expand it beyond drones. Air defense units, army aviation crews, and even snipers may soon earn points for confirmed performance. The future of warfare, it turns out, includes spreadsheets and brutal transparency.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called it the first time Ukraine has real, verified battlefield data usable for data driven decisions. Translation: no inflated reports, no imaginary victories, no press releases claiming success while the equipment is still on fire.

Another goal is increasing depth of engagement. Longer range strikes will earn higher coefficients, encouraging operators to disrupt logistics and hunt UAV crews.

It is less about random destruction and more about systematic pain. The Russian supply chain has already learned that lesson the hard way, usually somewhere between a fuel truck and a smoking crater.

Even Western manufacturers are taking notes. Germany’s Quantum Systems saw its Vector fixed wing drone place third in intelligence and surveillance at the Army of Drones awards.

The drone is produced in Ukraine, purchased directly by front line units, and deployed where it actually matters. No ceremony, no parade, no dramatic speeches, just results.

That efficiency highlights an uncomfortable contrast. While Ukraine tracks hundreds of thousands of confirmed drone hits, Russia still seems deeply committed to sending expensive hardware forward with minimal protection and maximum optimism. Tanks roll in. Drones appear. Tanks stop rolling. Repeat as needed.

Of course, drones are not magic. Analysts at CSIS and RUSI have correctly pointed out that drones do not replace infantry, armor, or artillery. They complement them. A drone cannot hold a trench. It can, however, make occupying that trench a deeply unpleasant experience.

Even Zelenskyy acknowledged this reality, noting that artillery still matters, but in a different way. Warfare is evolving into a contest of speed, adaptation, and honest verification. And this is where Ukraine keeps pulling ahead.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to discover that bravado does not jam signals, slogans do not stop FPV drones, and pretending a hit did not happen does not make the video disappear.

The skies over Ukraine have become a meritocracy. The faster you learn, the longer you last. The slower you adapt, the more likely your vehicle becomes content for someone else’s highlight reel.

DroneXL’s Take

Ukraine’s drone war is not just about technology, it is about mindset. Verified data, incentive driven performance, and rapid iteration are beating mass, bluster, and denial.

Drones have not replaced soldiers or artillery, but they have exposed inefficiency like a spotlight on a stage. And right now, Russia keeps wandering into the light, blinking, confused, and wondering why the buzzing keeps getting louder.

Photo credit: Ukraine MOD