Ukraine's Defense Ministry awarded bonuses to elite drone units on 26 January based on a performance leaderboard—a points system that tracked 820,000 targets hit and 240,000 confirmed kills against Russian forces over the past year.
The Army of Drones Bonus program gives "ePoints" to units based on confirmed battlefield results. Top performers then get priority access to new equipment through the Brave1 Market procurement platform. The best units have reached rates that would have seemed absurd two years ago—some now hit Russian forces every six minutes.
How the leaderboard works
"Modern warfare is a war of data, speed, and precise decisions," Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on 26 January. "The Army of Drones Bonus program has become a game changer on the battlefield."
The system pulls real-time data from the front line: confirmed kills, destroyed vehicles, and successful reconnaissance missions. All of it converts to ePoints. Units that perform get better equipment. Units that don't, don't.
"We have built a system that gives measurable results, here and now." —Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov
The 2025 breakdown: 62,000 strikes on light equipment, 29,000 on heavy armor, and 32,000 enemy drones destroyed.
Ranking of Ukrainian drone units
Birds of Magyar, a full brigade, dominates the scoreboard. Magyar's operators flew over 11,600 sorties in March 2025 alone—hitting more than 5,300 targets in a single month.
The rest of the top ten, recognized at a ceremony with President Zelenskyy, spans Ukrainian defense: SBU's Alpha special unit in second, volunteer formations like Lazarus Group and Phoenix, elite ground forces including the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, and specialized drone detachments like Achilles, Rarog, and NEMESIS.
Why it matters
Drones have become one of Ukraine's primary weapons. At the same ceremony, Zelenskyy said drones carry out more than 80% of strikes against Russian targets. By May 2025, drones had overtaken artillery as the leading killer of Russian troops, accounting for 75% of casualties versus artillery's 20%.
The December 2025 numbers underscore the shift: 106,859 targets hit that month alone—a 31% increase from November—including 35,000 Russian troops killed or wounded, according to Zelenskyy.
"Modern war is won not by mass, but by intelligence, speed and accuracy." —Mykhailo Fedorov
"Each of the awards is a specific result on the battlefield, which we scale to the entire front line," Fedorov added when discussing the Army of Drones Bonus program.
