Ukraine says it's taken the top spot in the race to make combat drones

Ukraine has become the largest producer of tactical and strategic drones, its defense minister said.
Ukraine has ramped up its drone production since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
In total, Ukraine delivered over 1.3 million drones to soldiers in 2024, its commander in chief said.

Ukraine has become the world’s largest producer of key military-use drones, the country’s defense minister said.

“We’ve become the biggest drone manufacturer in the world, drones of tactical and strategic level,” Rustem Umerov said during a Sunday press conference at Ukraine’s “Year 2025” forum.

Tactical drones support smaller-scale battlefield actions, often at close ranges, by gathering intelligence and supporting strikes, either as the munition or by providing targeting data.

Strategic drones, meanwhile, are often higher-end, high-altitude systems with the endurance to advance operations against higher-priority targets.

Speaking at the same press conference, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander in chief, said the country delivered over 1.3 million drones to front-line soldiers in 2024. The general added that its long-range drones can strike targets up to 1,700 kilometers inside Russia.

At a separate press conference on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country produced 2.2 million drones in total in 2024 and planned to ramp up production further in 2025.

Ukraine’s defense ministry didn’t respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

Up-to-date and comprehensive data on various countries’ respective drone production is scarce, making direct comparisons difficult.

June 2024 data from Statista Market Insights, a data analysis service on market trends, said China was set to be the world’s largest overall drone manufacturer in 2024 and was on track to produce 2.9 million drones. However, the data does not include drones for military purposes, though off-the-shelf drones for civilian use have been heavily repurposed for military use in Ukraine and further afield.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ramping up its own drone production to nearly 1.4 million in 2024, a tenfold increase from the previous year.

Drones are increasingly being used in conflicts around the world for intelligence and reconnaissance, bombing missions, precision strikes, and other military purposes by both state-level and non-state actors.

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This has led to an increased demand for counter-drone capabilities.

In December, the Pentagon released a new counter-drone strategy aimed at coordinating how different branches of the US military are responding to the threat of drones and making “countering unmanned systems a key element of our thinking.”

Drones have been a hallmark of the war in Ukraine, with both sides using the evolving technology to devastating effect.

Even so, Ukrainian tactical drones face significant challenges, according to a February report by the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, with a 60-80% failure rate in hitting targets “depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators.”

Despite this, it said that they still account for 60 to 70% of damaged and destroyed Russian military systems.

In an October speech to executives from dozens of foreign arms manufacturers, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was capable of producing 4 million drones a year, up from the one million he predicted in December 2023.

Kyiv has tried to smooth the process of drone acquisitions for its troops.

Last week, Umerov said Ukraine’s defense ministry was launching a new drone supply model to facilitate a “fast and uninterrupted supply of the best UAVs for our soldiers,” and to provide its armed forces with an additional $60 million a month to purchase drones.

Ukraine’s growing defense industry has led some to believe that drones, among other military capabilities, could play an important role in Ukraine’s postwar economic recovery.

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