Ukraine deployed six times more long-range strike drones in 2025 than in the previous year, a surge that has outstripped Russia’s own rapidly growing aerial assault campaign. The expansion reflects a deliberate bet on decentralized manufacturing, with more than 160 domestic companies now producing first-person-view drones and long-range platforms capable of reaching targets well beyond 2,000 kilometers from launch. Yet both sides face production constraints that could determine whether this aerial arms race tips the war’s attrition calculus in 2026.
What is verified so far
The strongest data on Ukraine’s drone buildup comes directly from Kyiv’s own security establishment. The National Security and Defense Council reported that Ukrainian long-range drones now exceed 2,000 km in range, and that the country employed six times more of these platforms in 2025 than in 2024. The same RNBO assessment claims that strikes carried out under the Deep Strike program disabled about 20 percent of Russia’s relevant capabilities, a figure the council attributes to sustained targeting of energy and logistics infrastructure. As of 2026, the RNBO places the Deep Strike segment’s production capacity at approximately USD 25 billion.
On the tactical level, the numbers are even more striking. Ukraine’s FPV drone sector, built around small, cheap, expendable quadcopters guided by operators wearing headsets, has scaled dramatically. The RNBO states that more than 160 firms produce FPV drones in Ukraine, and that by 2026 the country can manufacture more than 8 million of these units per year. The council also claims FPV drones account for approximately 60 percent of Russian army losses, a statistic that, if accurate, would make these low-cost platforms the single deadliest weapon system on the battlefield.
Procurement records reinforce the production story. The Ministry of Defense contracted 1.8 million drones totaling nearly UAH 147 billion for 2024 through 2025, working alongside the Ministry of Digital Transformation. In the first 10 months of 2024 alone, 1.6 million UAVs were contracted for UAH 114 billion, and 1.28 million of those were delivered at a cost of UAH 81 billion. An additional 366,940 UAVs were scheduled for delivery by the end of 2024, with 2025 contracting covering 155,205 UAVs worth UAH 32.33 billion. These figures suggest that, at least on paper, Ukraine is backing its ambitious rhetoric with substantial orders and budget allocations.
Russia, for its part, has dramatically increased its own drone tempo. Moscow now launches swarms of drones against Ukraine nightly, with single-night volumes that exceeded some entire months of attacks in 2024. That escalation has pushed both countries into a production race where output, not just technology, determines who absorbs more punishment. Ukraine’s long-range strikes into Russian territory and Russia’s persistent bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure are now mutually reinforcing trends, each side seeking to overwhelm the other’s air defenses and repair capacity.
What remains uncertain
Several of the most consequential claims in this story rest on self-reported Ukrainian government data that has not been independently audited. The RNBO’s assertion that strikes disabled about 20 percent of Russia’s capabilities is a powerful talking point, but no third-party verification, whether from Ukraine’s legislature or independent energy analysts, has confirmed the figure. The same caution applies to the claim that FPV drones cause 60 percent of Russian army losses. Battlefield damage attribution is notoriously difficult, and Kyiv has an obvious incentive to highlight its drone program’s effectiveness when seeking continued Western support and domestic investment.
On the Russian side, the data gap is even wider. No official Kremlin production totals for 2025 drone output are publicly available. What exists instead is investigative reporting showing that Russia’s manufacturing push has relied on unconventional and sometimes coercive labor practices. An Associated Press investigation found that African workers recruited to Russia said they were duped into building drones at the Alabuga facility. Leaked documents detailed in the same reporting describe Russia and Iran’s drone production arrangements, with goals in the thousands per year. But “thousands per year” is a vague benchmark compared to Ukraine’s claimed millions, and it remains unclear whether those leaked targets reflect current output or aspirational planning from an earlier period.
The feasibility of Ukraine’s 2026 projections also deserves scrutiny. Producing more than 8 million FPV drones annually requires stable supply chains for motors, batteries, cameras, and electronic speed controllers, many of which originate in China or pass through intermediaries vulnerable to sanctions. No primary source in the available reporting addresses how Ukraine plans to secure these components at scale if trade disruptions, export controls, or enforcement efforts tighten. The USD 25 billion production capacity figure for the Deep Strike segment is similarly presented without a breakdown of what that number includes, whether it reflects existing assembly lines or planned investments, or what assumptions about foreign component access and budget support drive it.
There are also unanswered questions about operational sustainability. High-volume FPV use demands not just airframes but trained pilots, reliable communications links, and electronic warfare resilience. The RNBO data focuses on manufacturing capacity and headline battlefield impact, but it does not quantify loss rates from jamming, misfires, and operator error, or how many drones must be launched to achieve a single confirmed hit on a high-value target. Without those ratios, it is difficult to translate impressive yearly production numbers into a clear sense of how much combat power Ukraine can actually project over time.
How to read the evidence
The strongest evidence in this story falls into two categories: Ukrainian government procurement records and RNBO production statistics on one side, and investigative journalism documenting Russian manufacturing weaknesses on the other. Neither category is neutral. The RNBO data is primary in the sense that it comes from the institution responsible for coordinating Ukraine’s defense industry, but it is also promotional. These are year-end results briefings designed to showcase progress to national leadership and international partners. Readers should treat the numbers as the upper bound of what Kyiv wants the world to believe, not necessarily as independently verified battlefield outcomes.
The AP reporting on Russia’s Alabuga plant and Iran collaboration, by contrast, is institutional journalism based on leaked documents and interviews with workers. It provides concrete details about labor conditions, production targets, and foreign involvement, but it is necessarily partial: it illuminates one major facility rather than the entire Russian drone ecosystem. The absence of official Russian data means analysts must extrapolate from these snapshots, a method that can miss parallel production lines, clandestine imports, or rapid scaling efforts elsewhere in the defense sector.
When placed side by side, the Ukrainian and Russian evidence sets suggest an asymmetrical contest. Ukraine is moving toward a “mass through many small producers” model, emphasizing modular designs and dispersed workshops that can adapt quickly to battlefield feedback. Russia appears to be concentrating more of its high-end production in a smaller number of industrial hubs, supplemented by foreign designs and components. Each approach carries different vulnerabilities: Ukraine’s to supply-chain shocks and funding gaps, Russia’s to targeted sanctions, labor shortages, and potential disruption of key facilities.
For readers trying to understand where the drone war is heading in 2026, the safest conclusions are narrow ones. It is well supported that Ukraine has dramatically expanded both long-range and FPV drone production, backed by substantial state contracting and an explicit strategy to industrialize unmanned warfare. It is also well documented that Russia has intensified its drone attacks and is investing heavily in domestic manufacturing, including controversial labor schemes and foreign partnerships. What remains less certain is the precise scale of each side’s output, the real combat effectiveness of these systems relative to traditional artillery and missiles, and how long either country can sustain current expenditure rates.
Until independent auditors, multilateral monitoring missions, or more detailed leaks emerge, the drone numbers circulating in public debate will continue to blend hard data with strategic messaging. The key for observers is not to discard these figures, but to read them with context: as indicators of direction and intent rather than precise measures of capability. In that sense, the most important takeaway from the available reporting is not whether Ukraine can truly build 8 million FPV drones a year or whether Russia has already hit its target of thousands of new strike platforms. It is that both governments now see unmanned systems as central to the war’s outcome, and are reorganizing their economies, industrial bases, and diplomacy around that belief.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
