Vladimir Putin has quietly built a vast new arm of his military that now outnumbers the entire British Army, a shift that crystallises how drones are remaking modern warfare. Instead of tanks and infantry, Moscow is pouring people and money into remote‑controlled aircraft and ground robots, betting that massed unmanned systems can overwhelm slower moving Western forces.
The scale of this new force, measured in tens of thousands of specialists and plans for well over one hundred thousand drones, exposes a stark gap between Russia’s ambitions and the United Kingdom’s more cautious approach. I see it as a wake‑up call, not only for Britain but for every NATO state that still treats drones as a niche capability rather than a core pillar of defence.
Putin’s new drone army and how it dwarfs UK manpower
Russian officials have created a dedicated formation for unmanned warfare, with reports describing RUSSIA’s newly formed drone force as larger than the ENTIRE British Army. According to accounts from Moscow, There are 87,000 soldiers in Moscow’s Unmanned Systems formation, a single branch that now exceeds the roughly 70,000 troops in uniform on the UK side. The symbolism is hard to miss: Putin has effectively raised a parallel army built around drones, while Britain is still debating how small its conventional forces can safely become.
Other estimates suggest the Kremlin is already thinking beyond that initial 87,000‑strong cadre. Ukrainian and European observers say As Russia plans to double its drone army to over 165,000 by 2026, the Kremlin is locking in a long‑term shift toward unmanned warfare. A separate report framed the same development in more rounded terms, describing a Russian “90k Drone Army” that already exposes how thinly stretched British forces look by comparison, particularly as the UK Army shrinks and struggles to recruit.
Mass production and recruitment: how Russia is scaling up
Behind the headline numbers sits a vast industrial and human pipeline. Ukraine’s top commander has warned that Russia is racing to increase output of attack drones, with plans for a production rate of up to 1,000 Drones Per Day. That warning, echoed By Reuters in its own coverage of Ukraine’s Top Commander Warns of a massive Shahed Production Surge, underscores how central cheap, expendable aircraft have become to Russia’s strategy against Ukraine and, by extension, NATO.
To crew and maintain this arsenal, the Russian military has launched a recruitment drive specifically for drone units. Official notices describe new roles for operators of reconnaissance quadcopters, long‑range strike systems and Uncrewed ground vehicles, with Uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) playing a growing role in logistics and casualty evacuation. Analysts who track these adverts say the main bottleneck is no longer hardware but training capacity, which is precisely why Moscow has carved out a dedicated Unmanned Systems branch to professionalise the field.
British forces exposed: a shrinking army in a drone age
The comparison with the UK is stark. Figures cited in British reporting note that the British Army now fields around 70,000 regular soldiers, a number that has fallen steadily even as threats on NATO’s eastern flank have grown. When Putin can deploy an 87,000-man drone‑focused formation on top of his conventional forces, the UK’s reliance on a smaller, more “agile” army starts to look like a vulnerability rather than a virtue.
London is not blind to the problem. In a recent statement, the MOD said it is spending 4 billion pounds to boost Britain’s drone capabilities and confirmed that 3,000 Army personnel will be re‑rolled into new drone and electronic warfare units. That is a significant shift for Britain, but it still pales beside a Russian system that is already measured in tens of thousands of specialists and is being scaled toward 165,000 platforms. The UK Ministry of Defence, profiled on its own government portal, now faces the task of rebalancing its entire force structure around this reality.
Ukraine’s response and the wider battlefield shift
Ukraine, which has lived under daily drone attack since the full‑scale invasion, is adapting in parallel. As Russia plans to double its drone army to over 165,000, Ukraine is expanding its own unmanned forces and forming specialist units to hunt them. Kyiv’s commanders have spoken openly about building “drone armies” of their own, pairing cheap first‑person‑view quadcopters with long‑range strike systems that can hit depots and airfields deep inside Russia.
Those efforts are driven by hard experience. Ukraine’s top commander has said Russia plans a big boost in drone production, a warning carried By Reuters that aligns with the 1,000‑per‑day production goal cited by other Ukrainian officials. I read those numbers as confirmation that the drone race is not a side show but the central contest in the war, one that will shape how both Russia and NATO fight for years to come.
What this means for Britain and NATO strategy
For Britain, the uncomfortable truth is that Putin’s drone‑centric build‑up has exposed structural weaknesses that were already there. Years of cuts have left the British Army smaller than at any point in the modern era, even as Russia has created a dedicated Unmanned Systems branch that, according to multiple reports, now outnumbers UK ground forces. Coverage of Putin’s terrifying new drone force, including detailed breakdowns of how RUSSIA’s newly formed units compare with the British Army, has hammered home that the UK can no longer rely on prestige and legacy kit alone to deter Moscow’s ambitions.
Some British commentators have described the development as “genuinely worrying”, a phrase that surfaced in analysis of Vladimir Putin’s new drone force being bigger than the entire British Army and in follow‑up pieces that also touched on domestic issues such as how State pensioners can cut their BBC licence bill to £0. Those domestic details, highlighted in State and BBC coverage, underline a broader point: Western governments are juggling domestic pressures with the need to fund a generational shift in defence technology. In my view, the lesson from Putin’s giant drone army is simple. Either Britain and its allies treat unmanned systems as a core combat arm, on a scale that matches adversaries like Russia and Ukraine, or they risk discovering in a future crisis that their soldiers are outnumbered not just by enemy troops, but by swarms of cheap, expendable machines.
That strategic choice is already visible in the media ecosystem that has chronicled these changes. Reports on how Putin’s terrifying new drone force is bigger than the ENTIRE British Army in blow to UK’s defences, including Irish coverage that repeats the warning about RUSSIA’s newly formed drone force, have filtered into public debate in both Britain and Ireland. Parallel analysis of Russia’s 90k Drone Army, shared widely on Britain‑focused channels and on YouTube, has reinforced the sense that the UK is playing catch‑up. Even social platforms, where As Russia and Ukraine trade narratives about their respective drone armies through posts like those on Ukraine‑linked pages, have become part of the information front in this contest. I see all of this as evidence that the drone race is no longer a niche military story. It is a central test of whether Western democracies can adapt as quickly as their adversaries to a battlefield dominated by machines.
At the heart of the alarm is a simple comparison that has been repeated across multiple outlets. Putin’s new formation, described in several places as bigger than the ENTIRE British Army, is built around drones, while the UK still treats unmanned systems as enablers rather than the main event. Detailed pieces on how Putin and RUSSIA have structured this force, including Irish retellings that stress the blow to the British Army, have hammered home that imbalance. For me, the message is clear. If London wants to avoid being permanently outpaced, it will need to move beyond incremental announcements and match the scale, urgency and focus that Moscow has already brought to its own drone revolution.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
