Ukraine Unleashed a STRIKE STORM So Vast the Sun DISAPPEARED Over Russia

00:00:00 - Ukraine's Crimea Liberation Plan Is So PERFECT… Russia Saw It Coming and STILL Can't Stop It
17:03:00 - Ukraine Just LOBOTOMIZED Russia's War Machine
00:33:12 - Ukraine Is Sending Something MASSIVE Toward Crimea… Russia's Worst NIGHTMARE
00:51:39 - How Ukraine Just BROKE Russia's 18-Month Offensive... And Started WINNING
01:08:13 - Something EERIE is Happening in Luhansk... Russian Troops Are Too SCARED To Fight

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Transcript

00:00:00By the time you finish watching this video, Ukraine will have hit 60 more Russian targets

00:00:05with its drones. If you had any doubts about the sheer mastery that Ukraine exhibits in drone

00:00:10warfare, then that statistic alone should be enough to quell them. Ukraine has been unleashing

00:00:15a strike storm so vast that it's literally blotted out the sky. The sun no longer shines

00:00:21for so many of Putin's patsies on the front lines and beyond, and the last six months are the

00:00:26darkest days of all for Russia's military. What Ukraine did in that time will go down

00:00:32in history. The masters of drone warfare have hit another massive milestone that shows just

00:00:38how far ahead they are of their Russian enemies. Ukraine's Defense Minister Mikhailo Fedorov

00:00:44gives us the headline number in a June 22nd telegram post.

00:00:47Since the beginning of the year, unmanned systems units have hit over 800,000 verified enemy targets,

00:00:53Fedorov declares. That's an insane number. And remember, this is all verified. That means

00:00:59Ukraine has photographs and videos of each of the targets that it's hit, all of which

00:01:03are likely uploaded to its Delta system. 800,000 targets also doesn't mean 800,000 drones. Many

00:01:11would have been hit by multiple drones, meaning Ukraine has likely used several million of its

00:01:16unmanned aerial vehicles to create an absolute catastrophe for Russian military planners.

00:01:21And that's the perfect word to describe what's happening to Russia, because there are more

00:01:25numbers. All told, Fedorov claims Ukraine's drone strikes have killed or wounded 167,000 Russian

00:01:32occupiers since the beginning of 2026, which is another huge number. It breaks down to an average

00:01:38of about 27,833 Russian casualties per month caused by Ukrainian drones. And don't forget that there is

00:01:45still more of June to go, eight days of it from Fedorov's announcement, so that average is very

00:01:50likely to creep up. According to a June 22 report by United24 Media, Russia's daily troop losses have

00:01:57stayed above 1,000 for a full month for the first time since March 2025. It quotes a figure of

00:02:03between

00:02:031,130 and 1,550 troops lost on almost every day in June so far, with only three days during

00:02:11the period

00:02:11resulting in losses that were just above 1,100. We can do a little maths here, and there's going

00:02:17to be more in a few minutes, so keep that in mind. If we take the middle of the range

00:02:21that United24

00:02:21media quotes, that gives us a very rough average of 1,340 Russian casualties per day in June.

00:02:28Fedorov says that drones now account for a little more than 90% of enemy strikes, so we'll assume

00:02:33the same for casualties. That gives us a daily average of 1,206. Multiply that by 8 and you get

00:02:39another 9,648 casualties caused by drones by the end of June. We just mentioned the monthly average

00:02:45we calculated earlier will rise. Add these 9,648 casualties to the 167,000 killed or wounded that

00:02:53Fedorov claims, and you get 176,648. Divide that by 6 months in the first half of 2026,

00:03:00and you get a new monthly average of 29,441. That's veering far too close to 30,000 casualties

00:03:07per month for Putin. And all of this has been caused by drones. What we're seeing here is the

00:03:12result of a consistent escalation in Ukraine's drone-based strategy. And up until this point,

00:03:17May 2026 has been the biggest month recorded by that unstoppable army of drone operators yet.

00:03:23On June 11, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Alexander Siersky, revealed that

00:03:28Ukraine's drones had struck almost 180,000 military targets, which marked a 12.7% increase over the

00:03:35number of targets hit during April. Not even an extra day in the month can account for such a

00:03:39substantial increase. This is Ukraine building on a drone advantage that is getting bigger by the month.

00:03:45Beyond the bodies, the money that this is costing Russia is also insane.

00:03:50Let's just take one day out of June to showcase that. On June 9, United24 media reported that

00:03:55Ukrainian strikes over the previous 24 hours had cost Russia an estimated $331 million in equipment.

00:04:01Those losses included 75 artillery systems, a pair of air defense systems, four tanks,

00:04:07five armored vehicles, and four multiple launch rocket systems. We're not going to assume that Ukraine

00:04:13is doing this amount of financial damage to Russia every single day, but we can clearly see from this

00:04:17day alone that Russia is losing several billion dollars worth of equipment in Ukraine every month,

00:04:23which may well sting callous and cruel Putin more than the casualty count. After all,

00:04:28Putin doesn't care about people. But if you hit the Russian military in its collective pocketbook,

00:04:32the psychopath suddenly starts paying attention. Now, we made a certain claim at the beginning of the

00:04:37video. We told you that by the time you're done watching, Ukraine will have taken out another 60 Russian

00:04:41targets. Did the numbers back that up? Let's find out. Federov made his claim of 800,000 targets so

00:04:48far in 2026 on June 22nd. So if we only account for that far into June, we get 173 days

00:04:54total.

00:04:55Divide 800,000 targets by 173 and we get a rough average of 4,624 targets hit every single day.

00:05:03That gives us 192 per hour, which works out to a little over 48 strikes every 15 minutes.

00:05:09Our videos usually last for somewhere between 16 and 18 minutes. So we may have ever so slightly

00:05:14overestimated, but not by much. For a 17-minute video, you're looking at 57.6 Russian targets down

00:05:20at a rate of about 3.38 per minute. We can barely even comprehend the sheer volume of drones that

00:05:26are

00:05:26required to do something like this. And it all just goes to show how heavily Ukraine is leaning

00:05:31into its drone-based strategy. Russia has no answer for any of this.

00:05:36Okay, so enough with the numbers now. Our heads are spinning.

00:05:38Let's look at what Ukraine is hitting. It's not just casualties that are a problem for Putin.

00:05:43Losing cannon fodder weakens Russia on the front, sure. But the real problem behind all of this

00:05:48is that Ukraine is hitting every single type of military-related target that you can imagine with

00:05:52its drones. Federov identifies the basics. Beyond personnel, Ukraine's drones are hitting artillery,

00:05:58multiple launch rocket systems, air defenses, vehicles, command posts, ammo depots,

00:06:03electronic warfare stations, and even Russia's ground robotic platforms. In other words,

00:06:08everything. And this doesn't even include targets such as oil refineries and depots or things like

00:06:13the supply-carrying ferries that Ukraine destroyed at Russia's Port Kavkaz just a couple of days before

00:06:18Federov revealed his mind-blowing number. We don't even need Federov to tell us that these are the types

00:06:23of targets being hit. We see it every single day. On June 23, UNN reported that Ukraine had taken out

00:06:30626 vehicles and fuel tankers during the previous 24 hours. That's a single-day record, and it comes

00:06:37on the back of Ukraine's setting and then resetting that record several times in May and June.

00:06:42The logistical lockdown program that has been designed to isolate Crimea is paying massive dividends,

00:06:47and we see it in the burning wrecks of hundreds of vehicles every single day. Ukraine's drones are

00:06:53now blanketing the middle ground up to 300 kilometers behind the front lines, which is what's

00:06:59making these sorts of attacks against vehicles possible, along with most of the other types of

00:07:03targets that Federov mentions. It's not just Russian manpower and equipment on the front that is at risk

00:07:08anymore. Ukraine's strike rate is increasing so dramatically because 2026 has heralded the dawn of

00:07:14a new generation of drones, which means nothing is safe in the Russian near-ear anymore.

00:07:20This middle-strike campaign is so damaging to Russia that it's causing fuel shortages and

00:07:25forcing the Kremlin to consider importing fuel. That shouldn't be happening. Russia usually makes

00:07:31more than enough fuel to serve its domestic needs and make billions from sales. On the long-range front,

00:07:36Ukraine's strikes have been growing more intense to go along with the swarms on the front and the

00:07:41middle-range massacre. The Washington Post reports that Ukraine broke its own record for monthly

00:07:46deep-strike drone launches in March, exceeding 7,000 UAVs sent into Russian territory. Ukraine

00:07:53hasn't slowed down since then. It's been overwhelming Russia with massive, long-range drone strikes that

00:07:58penetrate as deep as the very heart of the motherland. Moscow is under threat. In a June 18 attack that

00:08:04covered huge portions of Russia and the occupied territories, including Russia's capital, Russia's

00:08:10defense ministry claims to have shot down 992 Ukrainian drones in just 24 hours. That sort of

00:08:16volume in every aspect of the war is why Ukraine has been able to hit 800,000 targets in just

00:08:22under

00:08:22six months. The drones just keep coming. They blot out the skies, confuse air defenses, and make it

00:08:29impossible for Russia to stop them all. What we see here is Ukraine's drone advantage and the reason why

00:08:34more than 90% of the targets the nation is hitting are being taken out by drones. The big question

00:08:39now

00:08:40is can all of this be sustained? The simple answer is yes. But we can dig much deeper than a

00:08:46single

00:08:46worded response. But before we do, there's a lot more where this came from. If you're getting value

00:08:51from the military show, then hit subscribe and then dive straight back into the video.

00:08:56When it comes to sustainment, we can approach the subject from two angles. Maintaining drone volume and

00:09:02continuing to hit the number of targets the Fedorov reports, if not building on that number.

00:09:06We'll start with the second of the two. Ukraine has the ability to sustain its results for a few

00:09:11reasons. First, there's the E-Points system. Fedorov makes special mention of this himself,

00:09:17pointing out that Ukraine's drone operators receive E-Points via this system, which they can

00:09:21exchange on the BraveOne market platform for more drones, equipment, spare parts, and even small arms.

00:09:27That system includes leaderboards along with these incentives, which somewhat gamifies Ukraine's

00:09:32entire process of using drones to devastate Russia. Even more than that, it also shows Ukraine which

00:09:38of its units is using drones most effectively and crucially, which types of drones should receive

00:09:42investment. Fedorov points that out, stating, Thanks to the E-Points system, we can see which

00:09:48technologies and units are delivering the best results, and we can quickly scale these solutions

00:09:52across the entire military. According to defense leaders, almost 95% of Ukraine's drone units are now

00:09:58enrolled in this program, competing with one another to score the most hits against Russian targets.

00:10:03And though there are arguments to make that turning war into something akin to a video game's

00:10:08score attack mode is worrisome in terms of the dehumanizing aspect of it all, that doesn't change

00:10:13the fact that Ukraine is getting results. More targets are being hit than ever before,

00:10:18Ukraine is developing a deeper understanding of which drones work and which ones don't,

00:10:21and it's even able to use this platform to push units towards using the types of drones

00:10:26that are most effective for their work. This is incentivization with a clear purpose.

00:10:32And the results are there for all to see. Now that it has a system in place, Ukraine isn't

00:10:37going to stray away from it. Rather, it will lean into what it's been doing. We see this with the

00:10:41logistics lockdown program. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense says that the funding allocated to that

00:10:46program is going to be distributed via the E-Points system, with the recipients being the teams that

00:10:51specialize in strikes that hurt Russian logistics. This is basically Ukraine saying,

00:10:55you're good at this, so here's more money to do more of it, which is a very effective way to

00:11:00ensure that soldiers lean into their strengths and achieve maximum efficiency on the battlefield.

00:11:05That efficiency is enhanced by a Russian problem of Ukraine's creation,

00:11:09which will also help Ukraine to sustain its strike volume. Russia's air defenses are in a very bad way

00:11:14right now. Fedorov touched on the air defenses being targeted by Ukraine's drones in his report,

00:11:19but he didn't go into detail. So we will. From 2025 and into 2026, Ukraine has been destroying

00:11:25valuable air defenses all over Russia and the occupied territories. It knows that Russia is

00:11:31struggling to build new systems and radars, mostly due to sanctions and supply issues,

00:11:35so every air defense system destroyed creates gaps that can be exploited.

00:11:40Between June 2025 and early March 2026, Ukraine carried out 492 strikes against air defense systems,

00:11:48the Kyiv Independent reports. Speaking of March, UK are informed says that month was a massacre for Russia's

00:11:53air defenses, as Ukraine took out 39 surface-to-air missile systems and 15 radars in that month alone.

00:12:00Bit by bit, Ukraine has been picking Russian air defenses apart, and the result has been a higher

00:12:05success rate for medium- and long-range drone attacks. Defense blog reports that drones that cost

00:12:10a few thousand dollars to build are now bypassing Russian air defenses, or simply not encountering them,

00:12:15to generate a penetration rate of between 20 and 30 percent for Ukraine's deep-strike campaigns.

00:12:20That number is higher than it has ever been before, and it shows us just how much Russia's aerial shield

00:12:26has been degraded. Much like the E-points system, this strategy feeds into itself.

00:12:32The more that Ukraine encourages strikes against air defense systems, the more openings are created to

00:12:36hit other targets. Even if Russia moves air defenses around to cover areas that have been made vulnerable,

00:12:41that just means weakening other regions. And as Ukraine increases its strike rate, the problem only

00:12:47grows, creating a devastating cycle from which Russia can't escape. And finally, on the sustaining the

00:12:53success rate of strikes side of things, there's Ukraine itself. Its strategy over the last few

00:12:57months has been brilliant. A large part of the reason why the number of targets hit is so high

00:13:02is that Ukraine has realized how effective its middle strikes are. That's the point of the logistics

00:13:07lockdown program. Ukraine is using a new generation of drones to strike targets that Russia never

00:13:12expected would be vulnerable to drones. Thus, those targets aren't defended as well as they could be,

00:13:17which only enhances Ukraine's success rate. What we see with this strategy is a twist in the

00:13:22tale of the Ukraine war, and it's given Ukraine enormous amounts of momentum. Ukraine now has a

00:13:27multi-layered drone strategy that covers the kill zones on the front, which are loaded with FPV

00:13:32drones and likely responsible for the majority of the casualties Ukraine has achieved during the first half of

00:13:37the year, the middle strike range that is being destroyed by drones, and the deep strikes that

00:13:41Ukraine has been using to shatter the Russian war machine from the inside. Combine all of that,

00:13:45and you get weaker Russian assaults on the front, caused by an inability to coordinate and sustain

00:13:51frontline troops via the rear. As Russia weakens, pressure on Ukraine eases, which creates more time

00:13:56and opportunities for drone strikes. Again, it's a cycle. The more often Russia is hit, the easier it

00:14:02becomes to strike again. At this point, the Russian military is like a punch-drunk boxer, stumbling

00:14:07from shot to shot while unable to get its hands up. So, Ukraine is absolutely going to be able to

00:14:12sustain and build upon the number of targets that it's hit during the first half of 2026 in terms of

00:14:17its strategy and approach to this new form of aerial warfare. However, all of this is contingent on

00:14:22maintaining volume. Can Ukraine do that? If what we've seen so far in 2026 is any indication,

00:14:28the answer is a resounding yes, and then some. In a June 16 report, Liga revealed that Ukraine's

00:14:35President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed from the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit that Ukraine

00:14:39is on track to build 10 million drones by the end of 2026. That's a massive improvement over the

00:14:45already impressive 4 million drones that Ukraine built in 2025, which itself was 40 times more

00:14:51drones than the US made in the same year, Liga reports. There are now 500 companies operating in

00:14:57Ukraine's drone and robotics sectors, Zelenskyy adds, and far more worryingly for Russia,

00:15:02Ukraine's President says that his country could double up to 20 million drones annually if that

00:15:07is necessary and Ukraine has the required funds. Volume simply isn't a problem when you see those

00:15:13kinds of numbers, and they go a long way to explaining how Ukraine hit 800,000 targets during

00:15:18the first half of 2026. Plus, don't forget that Ukraine is becoming increasingly savvy with its drone

00:15:24diplomacy. Ukraine knows that it's the frontrunner in the entire world when it comes to the

00:15:29understanding and development of drone technology. Everybody in the Western world wants some of what

00:15:34Ukraine has, which is why Ukraine is able to set up things like the Drone Deal Initiative.

00:15:39That program, which is designed to aid integration between Ukraine and its global partners,

00:15:43while also securing funding for Ukraine's long-term defense financing, now has 27 members,

00:15:49including 15 NATO members. Ukraine is building enough already, and it's putting the frameworks

00:15:54in place to ensure it can build more. Russia is trying to keep up. According to the Moscow Times,

00:16:00Russia is aiming to build 7.3 million FPV drones in 2026, along with thousands of long-range drones.

00:16:06But Russia isn't at Ukraine's level when it comes to drones, be that in terms of volume or quality.

00:16:12On the volume front, UkraNews reveals that Siersky claims that Ukraine holds a 1.5 to 1

00:16:17advantage in FPV drones in many areas of the front. We're starting to see Ukraine match Russia shot for

00:16:22shot in the middle and long-range aspects too. Simply put, Russia is still several steps behind

00:16:27Ukraine, and Ukraine is doing everything that it can to ensure Putin's army stays behind.

00:16:32So what does 800,000 targets hit in the first half of 2026 really mean? This isn't a crescendo.

00:16:39Ukraine hasn't peaked. What we're seeing here is a warning shot. Ukraine is letting Russia know just

00:16:44how many targets it's hit because it wants Putin to realize that things will only get worse for

00:16:48Russia from here. Ukraine has the strategy, it has the production volume, it has the partners,

00:16:54and it can build on all of this to make 800,000 a milestone in the road,

00:16:58rather than the climax of the drone's strategy. Much more will be coming.

00:17:04Ukraine's geniuses have been tinkering away, and what they've come up with is a home-made weapon

00:17:08that isn't just lethal, it's a potential game-changer. This strange new bomb has been

00:17:14in development for over a year, now it's finally here, and Russia just felt the full force.

00:17:21The Vorovnyuvach has its first strike, and that's the last time I'm going to pronounce that.

00:17:26Ukraine has unleashed its leveller on Russia, and it did exactly what it says on the tin.

00:17:31It completely levelled the Russian lines.

00:17:34On June 24, United 24 media provided the basics of the strike. It reported that a newly developed

00:17:40Ukrainian bomb, which has been dubbed both the leveller and the equaliser due to it being a

00:17:45weapon that will finally bring parity to a key aspect of the war, has been unleashed.

00:17:50Two of the bombs were launched from a MiG-29 fighter jet to strike a Russian frontline position.

00:17:56Both were kitted out with special wing correction kits that level the bombs out,

00:18:00landing a second dimension to the name. And this terrifying twosome impacted Russian defensive

00:18:05trenches, leaving massive craters in their wake. And we don't just have a written report making

00:18:10these claims, there's footage of the strike. Shared by Militanyi, though published first by the

00:18:16Sonja Shnik Sunflower Telegram channel, the video only lasts for 18 seconds, but that was more than long

00:18:21enough. The footage starts with a still shot of the trenches being targeted, presumably filmed by a

00:18:27Ukrainian reconnaissance drone hovering overhead. There are a few seconds of calm. The Russian

00:18:32soldiers inside those trenches would have been going about their work, perhaps preparing for

00:18:36yet another frontline assault. Fear would have already been in the air. Climbing over the trenches

00:18:41inevitably means blindly running into Ukraine's drone-infested kill zones, where you're more

00:18:46likely to be cut down than not. But this time, something worse was coming for the unsuspecting

00:18:51soldiers. The first leveler was on its way, and it lands on the three-second mark. Another leveler

00:18:58follows up just a couple of seconds later, with both causing large explosions that lead to smoke

00:19:02billowing into the air. The Russian trenches are blanketed, we don't see the aftermath.

00:19:08The footage ends on a still shot of the smoke, but the aftermath matters less than what this video

00:19:12really shows us. One of Ukraine's most lethal new weapons is in play and, crucially, is offering the

00:19:19levels of precision that Ukraine needs it to offer for it to become one of the most effective tools

00:19:23that Ukraine has for shattering the frontline and destroying the near-rear that supplies the

00:19:28soldiers that Putin sends to the front. This footage should terrify Putin as much as experiencing it

00:19:33would have horrified the Russian soldiers caught up in the blast. But for Ukraine, this first strike

00:19:38has been a long time coming. The leveler is, essentially, Ukraine's version of the guided bombs that

00:19:44Russia has been using to pelt Ukraine's cities for years. And if we're being honest,

00:19:48it's taken far longer than Ukraine would have wanted to reach the battlefield.

00:19:52It was way back in June 2024 that the Chief of the Aviation Force Command of the Armed Forces of

00:19:57Ukraine, Serhii Golubsov, announced that Ukraine was preparing a test domestic version of the cab

00:20:03bombs that Russia had started to use a few months before. The first of those tests was scheduled to

00:20:08begin in a few weeks, Golubsov said at the time, with the goal being to develop aviation kits for the

00:20:13Soviet-era bombs in Ukraine's possession that would provide a high level of accuracy

00:20:17and increased flight range compared to the bombs that Russia was using.

00:20:20The promise was there. Ukraine has a huge stockpile of the bombs that Russia stored on its territory

00:20:26during the days of the Soviet Union, so it has plenty to turn into guided weapons that can wreak

00:20:31havoc across and behind the Russian front. But after the claims of incoming tests surfaced,

00:20:36things went quiet for a few months. It wasn't until September 2024 that the Combat Aviation of Ukraine

00:20:42Telegram channel published a video that appeared to show a Ukrainian Su-24 bomber being used to test

00:20:48an early version of the weapon that would come to be known as the Leveller.

00:20:52That footage showed some early promise. The guided bomb was undocked successfully,

00:20:57and the footage offered some early insight into how the bomb kit was being designed.

00:21:00We saw folded wings and a rounded fairing on the nose to improve the bomb's aerodynamic qualities.

00:21:06Then, everything went quiet for almost two years. For whatever reason, Ukraine hasn't been forthcoming

00:21:12an explanation. It took until 2026 for the bomb that has become the Leveller to truly emerge.

00:21:17We can speculate about why Ukraine took so long to bring the bomb from concept to combat.

00:21:22Perhaps Ukraine needed to work on the range, allowing its fighter jets to launch from deep

00:21:26enough behind the lines to face no threat from Russian air defenses. Or maybe Ukraine decided that

00:21:31focusing on the development of drones was a priority, especially as it was receiving JDAM and

00:21:36Asim Hammer kits from the West that could serve a similar function to its new bomb.

00:21:40Whatever the case may have been, the Leveller took its time getting here.

00:21:44But it's here now, and Ukraine will be delighted to see its first successful use.

00:21:49What Ukraine now has on its hands is the perfect foil for the UMPK kits that Russia has been using

00:21:54to transform its own dumb bombs into semi-guided weapons that can cause serious amounts of destruction.

00:21:59Those Russian kits can be attached to Russia's Fab 250 and Fab 500 general-purpose airdropped munitions,

00:22:06and they allow Russia to strike targets several dozen kilometers behind the front lines.

00:22:11The Leveller could be mistaken for a clone of these types of kits, but it's so much more than that.

00:22:16Though inspired by the UMPK kits, the Leveller builds on everything that Russia

00:22:20came up with and innovates in ways that Putin's patsies would never have thought to do.

00:22:25After the Leveller was unveiled at the Eurosatari 2026 exhibition in Paris,

00:22:29a few details about what Ukraine has developed started to leak out.

00:22:32The bomb kits enable a dumb bomb to be launched at altitudes ranging from 500 to over 10,000 meters,

00:22:39Pravda reports. It also has a higher range than most similar kits that Russia has produced,

00:22:44as the Leveller can strike targets located between 10 and 130 kilometers away from the aerial platform

00:22:50that launches it. We also note the kit can be attached to bombs weighing 250 kilograms,

00:22:56though it isn't yet clear if Ukraine intends to further develop the technology

00:22:59so that it can be used for larger or smaller bombs. Business Insider provided a few more details

00:23:05about the bomb in its report, noting that it can be launched from Ukraine's Soviet-era platforms,

00:23:09as we saw from the early tests and the fact that Ukraine used a MiG-29 for its first strike,

00:23:15and that it is compatible with the F-16s and Mirage fighter jets that Ukraine has at its disposal.

00:23:20That compatibility doesn't mean that we'll be seeing the Leveller dropping from the wings of

00:23:24those jets immediately. The Leveller needs additional certification for both before it can be used,

00:23:29though that seems to be a problem that can be solved relatively easily.

00:23:33But perhaps the biggest difference between Ukraine's bomb kit and the ones made by Russia

00:23:38is that the Leveller has also been loaded with modern guidance algorithms that provide increased

00:23:42accuracy beyond the satellite navigation that is likely used for the bombs. This suggests that AI is

00:23:48used somewhere along the line. If the first full strike carried out with the bombs is any indication,

00:23:53that algorithm is doing exactly what it's designed to do. Russia's good enough approach has worked

00:23:58for its glide bombs. As long as those weapons hit something, even if they are hundreds of meters off

00:24:03target, that's good enough for Putin. Ukraine wants precision to the point where it can hit a narrow

00:24:08trench dozens of kilometers away. The Leveller provides that precision. And as Militani points out,

00:24:15the version of the bomb kit that we've just seen used on the Russian trenches is likely

00:24:18from an experimental batch that was delivered to the Ukrainian Air Force in May. Future batches will

00:24:23have any kinks ironed out and will be even more accurate than the ones we've seen in the footage.

00:24:28And finally, there's the big reason why Ukraine really wants to get the Leveller into mass production

00:24:33as soon as possible. The price tag. You may remember we mentioned that one of the possible

00:24:38reasons for Ukraine taking so long to take the Leveller from testing, the practical use, was that it had

00:24:43stockpiles of Western bomb kits, such as the US-made JDAM, that it could use instead. The JDAM is

00:24:49certainly effective. In fact, it's one of the world's best examples of these types of guided bomb

00:24:54kits. However, it also comes with the complication of a relatively high price tag, especially now that

00:25:00Ukraine has to purchase US-made weapons via the Pearl Initiative rather than receiving them as

00:25:05military aid. The Leveller solves this particular problem. According to a May 19 Militani report,

00:25:11Ukraine's new guided bomb kit costs about a third of the price of a JDAM kit. That's huge for Ukraine.

00:25:17It means that it gets three guided bombs for the price of one that it might receive from a key

00:25:21Western

00:25:21ally. Triple the firepower results in triple the damage, and that is bad news for Russia's forces.

00:25:27They'll never know when they're clear of a guided bomb strike because there'll always be a possibility

00:25:31that Ukraine could follow up with more due to their version of the glide bomb being cheaper to build

00:25:35than any version that they can buy. And the level of being Ukraine's version of a guided bomb is

00:25:40massive too. Ukraine has had something of a rollercoaster relationship with the US since Donald

00:25:45Trump became president, even having to deal with the US halting all aid deliveries at one point.

00:25:50The relationship is much better now. Trump even told Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky

00:25:54that he admired how Ukraine is handling itself during the 2026 G7 meeting.

00:26:00Still, the concern over access to US weapons, along with the strings that can be attached to them,

00:26:04will always be in Ukraine's collective mind. The leveler comes with no strings attached in terms of

00:26:10how Ukraine uses it, and Ukraine can have as many as it can build. What we see in this weapon

00:26:16and the

00:26:16first recorded combat use of the leveler is that Ukraine has just leveled up its campaign against

00:26:21Russia. We know that's terrible, but it's also true. This guided bomb kit has the potential to be a

00:26:27game changer for Ukraine, and there are two reasons why. But before we get to them, this is a reminder

00:26:31that you're watching the military show. If you're getting insight from the channel, hit subscribe

00:26:35to make sure that you see what we have coming next. So first up, there's what the leveler represents to

00:26:40Ukraine, the leveling of the playing field when it comes to guided bombs. Achieving parity with Russia

00:26:47in the glide bomb aspect of the war is massive for Ukraine, and it's one of the reasons why the

00:26:51leveler is also known as the equalizer. But to understand more, we need to explore how Russia

00:26:56has been using its glide bombs against Ukraine. Sheer volume has been key for Russia. In April,

00:27:02Russia launched almost 7,000 guided aerial munitions against Ukraine, which followed on

00:27:07from a March total of 7,987. That was a monthly record for the entire war, as Russia launched 1

00:27:14,500

00:27:15more glide bombs than it did to set its previous record in February. And according to Russia Matters,

00:27:20it seems likely that Russia will end 2026 having launched around 75,000 guided bombs at Ukraine,

00:27:26which is a 25% increase over the 60,000 launched in 2025. The point here is that Russia knows

00:27:32how

00:27:33dangerous these types of bombs are, and frankly, having this glide bomb advantage has been one of

00:27:37the few bright spots for Putin in his campaign to subjugate Ukraine. Precision isn't the goal with

00:27:43these bombs, which can weigh up to 1,500 kilograms. For Russia, it's all about damage, clouding the skies

00:27:49with glide bombs allows Russia to hit targets all over Ukraine, including the cities that Ukraine

00:27:54has fortified. And even cities that Russia has yet to reach are still home to thousands of civilians.

00:27:59We don't have exact numbers on how many Ukrainian civilians Russia's glide bombs have killed.

00:28:04The United Nations has verified 16,126 Ukrainian civilian deaths as of May 31st, and many of those

00:28:12deaths would have been caused by Russian glide bombs. Ukraine has come up with ways to counter these

00:28:17bombs, which it has had to do over and over as Russia tweaks them. On April 3rd, for instance,

00:28:22Forbes reported that Ukraine had come up with a new type of jammer that makes many of Russia's glide

00:28:26bombs useless. The effectiveness of the cabs dropped to zero, a spokesperson for the developers of this

00:28:31new jamming system named the Lima Quant told Forbes, before adding, On a roughly 700-kilometer stretch

00:28:37of the front, the enemy dropped 869 cabs in one of the previous months. The consequences of these

00:28:43strikes were minor injuries to eight servicemen. Still, countering Russia's guided bombs is one

00:28:48thing. Being able to deliver the same devastation back to Russia using bomb kits that have

00:28:53Made in Ukraine stamped on them is quite another. As Ukraine moves the leveler into mass production,

00:28:58it will develop thousands of its own guided bombs to turn the tables on Russia.

00:29:02Only there'll be a difference. Russia targets cities with its glide bombs, Ukraine won't do that.

00:29:08Precision was always the key to the leveler, and now that we know that the bomb is accurate,

00:29:11Ukraine is likely going to use this weapon to build on something that is already crippling Russia

00:29:16on the front, the middle strike campaign. That campaign is the second reason why the emergence

00:29:21of the leveler is a potential game-changer. It's also far and away the most important.

00:29:26Achieving parity with Russia is great on a symbolic level, but having a bomb that feeds into a campaign

00:29:31that is already extremely effective is vital. Up until this point, Ukraine's 2026 middle strike

00:29:37campaign has mostly centered around its use of a new generation of drones that can hit a couple

00:29:42of hundred kilometers behind the front lines, and it's been extremely effective. Ukraine's drones have

00:29:48been targeting the logistical arteries that feed into Crimea in particular, as Ukraine looks to isolate

00:29:53the peninsula and make it unviable for Putin as a strategic option. But beyond that, Ukraine has been

00:29:59striking targets in the Russian near-rear with drones and Western-made weapons for well over a year,

00:30:04the Kiev Independent reports. Among the targets have been supply and fuel trucks, air defense systems,

00:30:09ammunition depots, drone launch sites, and the command and control centers that Russia relies on

00:30:14to organize its troops on the front. The big difference between now and a year ago is that

00:30:19Ukraine's middle strike campaign has ramped up to a level that Russia never expected. Photographs shared

00:30:24by Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty showcase just a small amount of damage as we see the shattered and

00:30:30burnt-out husks of vehicles and fires at key oil depots. Ukraine has figured out that crippling Russian

00:30:35logistics in the rear severely damages Russia's attempts to launch assaults along the front.

00:30:40A lot has been said about the new generation of drones that has made this middle strike campaign

00:30:45possible. The Hornet has been the headline maker. AI-enabled and developed by a US company,

00:30:50the Hornet is able to identify targets automatically, and it's cheap enough for Ukraine to use dozens of

00:30:55them every single day. Other standouts include the new Behemoth drone, which can hit targets at a

00:31:01range of 300 kilometers with a 75-kilogram tandem warhead that combines a penetrator with a thermobaric

00:31:07charge, making it ideal for dealing with fortified targets. The secretive Morrigan drone is another.

00:31:13Business Insider reports that this drone has been key to Ukraine turning the R280 road that connects Russia,

00:31:19Crimea, and the occupied regions of southern Ukraine into an absolute hellscape for Russian vehicles.

00:31:25These, along with other middle strike drones, have played a huge role in shifting the momentum of

00:31:29the war into Ukraine's favor. Beyond the campaign to isolate Crimea, Ukraine's middle strikes have

00:31:35so weakened Russia on the front that Ukraine is actively making gains while completely stifling the

00:31:40grand summer offensive that Putin believed was going to deliver the Donbass region by September.

00:31:45That already isn't going to come closer to happening. Now imagine the leveller being added to all of this.

00:31:50On top of all the drones, which Russia is already finding it difficult to stop, forces in the rear

00:31:56now have to deal with powerful glide bombs that can deliver far more firepower than most of the

00:32:00middle strike drones. There is great potential for levellers to be made in the thousands,

00:32:05allowing Ukraine to pelt Russian positions over and over. We envision the development of a layered

00:32:10campaign. The FPV drone-infested kill zones on the front lines kill Russian soldiers by the

00:32:15thousands. Behind them, levellers are deployed to destroy trenches, command posts and other facilities,

00:32:21also causing casualties and forcing exposed survivors to try their luck in the kill zones

00:32:25long before they are ready. And behind that, deeper in the Russian rear, middle strike drones take out

00:32:30supply trucks and other Russian targets, destroying the logistics that are supposed to be supporting the

00:32:35troops that are now being hit with FPV drones and levellers. That's one potential future that Russia now faces,

00:32:40and it's a future that Putin doesn't even want to imagine. The leveller is officially here,

00:32:46and it's already proven that it lives up to its name with its first recorded combat deployment.

00:32:51Ukraine's homemade weapon changes everything. The next step is to move it into mass production on a

00:32:57scale that will make Russian soldiers too terrified to even consider approaching the front. With the leveller,

00:33:02Ukraine has showcased its ability to build on existing concepts with innovation of its own,

00:33:06weapon. And that's precisely what it's been doing with a British weapon that is making a remarkable

00:33:11comeback. Russian soldiers have started using a chilling nickname on the battlefield – Silent

00:33:16Death. Not because it's fast, not because it's powerful, because by the time they realise it's there,

00:33:22it's already too late. Some units report hearing nothing until the final seconds, others never hear it at

00:33:28all. And unlike artillery, missiles or traditional drones, many of these systems can keep hunting,

00:33:34even when Russia tries to jam, block or disrupt them. That's becoming a serious problem for the Kremlin,

00:33:40because the weapons spreading across the front isn't just harder to stop, it's getting smarter,

00:33:45and it's changing the way wars are fought. Enter the autonomous drones and robots, aka Silent Death.

00:33:53Now, to understand why Ukraine is betting on these machines that can essentially think for themselves,

00:33:58you have to understand the problem the machines were built to solve – electronic warfare. From

00:34:04early in the full-scale war, both armies flooded the front with first-person-view drones – small,

00:34:09remotely piloted aircraft carrying explosives that a pilot steers directly into a target through a video

00:34:15link. They're cheap, they're precise, and for a time, they were transforming the battlefield in Ukraine's

00:34:20favour. But a drone that depends on a radio link is only as good as that link, and both sides

00:34:26quickly

00:34:26learn to attack the link itself. Jammers blanket the front, severing the connection between a drone

00:34:31and its operator. Spoofers corrupt satellite navigation, feeding the drone false coordinates

00:34:37or denying its GPS entirely. For a stretch of the war, those electronic defenses were winning.

00:34:43A jammed drone is a failed drone, and along the most heavily contested stretches of the line,

00:34:48the majority of FPV missions were failing in the final seconds before impact, exactly where the

00:34:54jamming is more active. This is the bottleneck that artificial intelligence was brought in to

00:34:59break. The idea is straightforward, even if the engineering is not. If the drone can't rely on

00:35:05a human pilot and a live radio link all the way to the target, then give the drone enough onboard

00:35:10intelligence to finish the job by itself. This can be done by equipping it with image recognition

00:35:15software and visual navigation, so that once the operator points it at a target, it can fly the last

00:35:21stretch on its own, recognizing what it's looking at, and correcting its own course even after the

00:35:26signal is cut. The decision making is then moved on to the drone itself, effectively making it immune

00:35:32to traditional jamming. The effect of that shift is measurable, and the numbers explain why every

00:35:37brigade in Ukraine now wants it. According to Katarina Bondar from the Center for Strategic and

00:35:43International Studies, who has studied Ukraine's autonomous systems, adding this kind of terminal

00:35:48autonomy to navigation and targeting raises the success rate of a drone strike from somewhere

00:35:53around 10 to 20 percent up to roughly 70 to 80 percent. That's a three to four-fold improvement,

00:36:00and it means that two AI-assisted drones can now accomplish what previously took eight or nine.

00:36:05For an outnumbered military, that multiplier is the entire point. Every drone that hits is a drone you

00:36:11didn't have to build twice, a pilot you didn't have to risk, and a target you didn't have to send

00:36:16inventory to take. There is a second multiplier hidden here. Since the AI handles the hardest

00:36:22parts of the flight, the skill required of the pilot drops sharply, and that matters enormously for a

00:36:27country fighting a manpower crisis. You no longer need a virtuoso operator for every single drone,

00:36:33and as autonomy improves, the ratio between operators and machines begins to shift from one pilot

00:36:39painstakingly flying one drone toward one operator launching many at once. Analysts tracking this

00:36:45trend describe it as an approaching inflection point, the moment when a single operator can send

00:36:51up to 20, 50 or 100 drones in one coordinated push. That's the moment the economics of the war

00:36:57change, because it de-occupies the number of strikes you can mount from the number of trained

00:37:01pilots you have. It's important to be precise here, because this is the part of the story that gets

00:37:07exaggerated. Ukraine hasn't really built armies of fully autonomous killer robots just yet.

00:37:13The use of artificial intelligence in weapons is arguably in its infancy. In mid-2026,

00:37:19it's most useful in target recognition, helping a drone pick out a camouflaged tank tucked into

00:37:24a tree line and in guiding that final approach through a wall of jamming. For example, of the

00:37:29roughly 2 million drones Ukraine created in 2024, only about 10,000 had these AI enhancements,

00:37:36and even those still relied on a human to choose the target and start the mission.

00:37:40In 2026, the needle had moved on the production scale, with plans to end 2026 with 7 million

00:37:47annual drones. But there are no precise counts of AI enhanced drones, suggesting that it's indeed

00:37:52a small minority of them out on the front line. Still, we can't discount the actual value of these

00:37:58drones. While the air war was being reshaped by intelligence, a parallel revolution was crawling

00:38:04along the ground. Robots Ukraine has poured resources into unmanned ground vehicles, robots

00:38:10on wheels or tracks that haul ammunition, evacuate the wounded, carry heavy weapons, and increasingly,

00:38:17mount assaults of their own. And the Ukrainian soldiers operating them have learned something

00:38:21from their Russian prisoners. The Russians even have a nickname for these machines – Silent Death.

00:38:27That nickname points to a genuine tactical property, one worth slowing down to understand,

00:38:32because it explains why a slow, ungainly robot can be more terrifying than a fast one.

00:38:37On a modern battlefield, a soldier's earliest warning system is his own hearing. You hear the

00:38:42buzz of an approaching FPV drone, the engine of a vehicle, the whine of a motor. And that sound

00:38:48buys you the two or three seconds you need to drop into cover. A near-silent ground robot deletes that

00:38:54warning entirely. According to reporting from CNN, embedded with Ukrainian units running these

00:38:59machines, Russian soldiers say they often cannot hear the robots coming until they're within about

00:39:0410 meters. And a ground robot at 10 meters carrying a heavy explosive charge is already well inside its

00:39:10own blast radius. By the time you hear it, hearing it no longer helps you. There is no reaction window

00:39:16left. Now two things compound that advantage. The first is payload. A four-wheeled chassis can carry

00:39:23far more than a small aerial drone, whether that's a large explosive charge or a heavy machine gun with

00:39:28hundreds of rounds of ammunition. So that machine arriving in silence is also disproportionately more

00:39:34lethal. The second is the role silence makes possible. Infiltration. In one assault, the opening

00:39:41blast from the first robots were used as a distraction, deliberately drawing attention while four other

00:39:46machines slip behind the enemy line. Something no weapon that announces itself could ever do.

00:39:51The psychological toll is visible in the way defenders react. One Ukrainian commander,

00:39:56operating under the call sign Cyber, described deploying a robot against an enemy position and

00:40:02watching the Russians simply panic, crawling, pressing themselves flat against the ground,

00:40:06with no idea how to respond to a threat they could neither hear nor locate. Silence strips a soldier of

00:40:12the two things he relies on most, his senses and his time. The hardware itself is notable here too.

00:40:19Cyber's unit fields a robot built around a heavy browning machine gun mounted on tracks,

00:40:24wrapped in cameras that give it a wide field of view. It can sit hidden in foilage for days at

00:40:29a

00:40:29stretch, because unlike the men it replaces, it needs no food, no water, and never tires or cramps.

00:40:35The only thing that forces it back to base is ammunition, as once it has burned through its rounds,

00:40:40it has to return to reload. When interviewed, Cyber's unit was already preparing a faster successor,

00:40:46capable of moving at around 10mph and carrying small arms into battle. In a matter of months,

00:40:52these vehicles have gone from rare curiosities to something approaching standard issue, hauling supplies,

00:40:58pulling wounded men out of kill zones, and mounting attacks that once would have cost a platoon of

00:41:03infantry. That last point is where the ground robots connect back to the central logic of the entire

00:41:08Ukrainian strategy. One robotic strike unit of Ukraine's 3rd assault brigade, designated NC-13,

00:41:16ran the calculation on its own operations. Across 164 assaults, the unit estimated it would have needed

00:41:22roughly 2,300 infantry to achieve the same effect its robots delivered, and it would have expected to

00:41:28lose around half of them, dead or wounded, in the attempt. In the unit's own accounting,

00:41:33that means the machine saved on the order of 1,000 Ukrainian lives. This succinctly explains why Kyiv is

00:41:40pouring everything it has into automation. Every assault a robot mounts is an assault a human didn't

00:41:46have to die in, and that matters since Ukraine started the war on the back foot. The scale of this

00:41:51shift is, by Ukraine's own account, enormous. In April, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that

00:41:57Ukrainian forces had carried out the first capture of a Russian position using robots and drones alone,

00:42:02with no infantry on the ground, and out of that since the start of the year, unmanned machines had

00:42:07conducted some 22,000 missions. Those are Ukrainian government figures, presidential claims made in

00:42:14a speech celebrating the country's defense industry, and they carry the natural caveats of any wartime

00:42:19announcement. But the broad direction they describe is corroborated by reporters on the ground and by

00:42:25analysts abroad, and it points to a war in which large parts of Ukraine's efforts are now genuinely

00:42:30unmanned. And sitting at the center of this transformation is the man Zelenskyy appointed to

00:42:35accelerate it. Mikhailo Fedorov is 35 years old, four months into his job as defense minister,

00:42:42and he's never served a day in the military. His background is technology, not tactics. He grew up in

00:42:48the steel city of Zaporizhia, the same city that's seen heavy fighting in the war. Got his start through

00:42:53the video games of his teenage years, built a digital advertising business before he'd finished

00:42:58university, and became a partner with Facebook, selling targeted ads. Zelenskyy first hired him

00:43:04to run social media for the 2019 presidential campaign, then made him, at the age of 28,

00:43:10the minister responsible for digitizing the Ukrainian state. When he moved to the defense ministry,

00:43:15he brought that world with him, a team of young advisors and data analysts in sweatshirts,

00:43:20a ping pong table in the hallway, and the instincts of a man who sees the war,

00:43:24the way a Silicon Valley founder sees an industry ripe for disruption. In the same way apps remade

00:43:30taxis and food delivery, Fedorov believes warfare can be remade by offloading the fighting onto machines.

00:43:36In an interview with the New York Times, Fedorov argued that the world needs security,

00:43:41and only autonomous weapons can ensure it. He compared them to nuclear weapons, suggesting that countries that

00:43:47invested in automation were bound to win future wars. It's a vision of deterrence built not on warheads,

00:43:53but on algorithms. And it's worth stressing that this is a vision of where Fedorov wants to go,

00:43:58not a description of where Ukraine is today. The same article from the New York Times reiterated

00:44:03that AI and Ukrainian weapons was at that point mostly a matter of target recognition. The autonomous

00:44:09future is the aspiration. The camouflaged tank in the forest is the reality. Underneath the futurism

00:44:16sits a concrete strategy, devised by Fedorov and endorsed by Zelensky, and built to force Russia

00:44:21to the negotiating table. The New York Times reports that it's called air-land economy,

00:44:26and it has three prongs. In the air, intercept at least 95 percent of incoming Russian drones and

00:44:32missiles. On land, kill or seriously injure more Russian soldiers than Moscow can recruit to replace

00:44:38them. And against the economy, strike the oil export terminals that fund the war. It's a strategy of

00:44:45attrition, but a deliberately engineered mathematical kind of attrition. Fedorov calls this phase of the

00:44:51war targeted destruction, and he's put numbers on the goal. By his account in the New York Times,

00:44:56Russia was losing somewhere around 35,000 to 40,000 soldiers per month by mid-2026,

00:45:02and he aims to drive that rate above 50,000, a level he believes would halt the invasion altogether.

00:45:08This is combined with the systemic manpower bleeding that Russia has suffered. An estimate from

00:45:13British intelligence puts total Russian deaths between 325,000 and 500,000. Ukraine's own

00:45:20general staff claims casualty figures close to 1.4 million, and while that can be disputed,

00:45:26the scale of casualties is such that Russia hasn't lost this many troops since the Second World War,

00:45:31and it's straining to replace them. This is the point where the opening math of the war comes full circle.

00:45:36It's tempting to say that the tables have simply turned, that Ukraine now outguns and outnumbers its

00:45:42enemy. That's not true. Russia still fields the larger military overall, with something on the

00:45:48order of 1 million active soldiers and several hundred thousand deployed in or near Ukraine.

00:45:53By most assessments, it has a raw numerical advantage on the battlefield and has also closed much of the

00:45:58early gap in drone production in some categories matching or exceeding that of Ukraine. But before

00:46:04we get there, make sure you're subscribed to the military show. We post daily videos that cover all

00:46:10the major events in global geopolitics. Now, the actual version of the reversal is narrower and more

00:46:16interesting than a simple flip. The overwhelming advantage Russia held in February 2022 has been ground

00:46:22down to something far closer to parity. In the specific technologies now deciding the front,

00:46:28the unmanned systems and the intelligence guiding them, Ukraine has actually seized the initiative.

00:46:33A war that began as a contest of mass has become a contest of adaptation, and adaptation is the one

00:46:39field where the smaller country has consistently moved faster. That adaptation runs on an industrial

00:46:44base that looks nothing like a traditional arms industry. When Fedorov tours Ukraine's defense

00:46:50exhibitions, he moves through rows of weapons that look soldered and duct taped together in someone's

00:46:55garage, because many of them were. There are spools of fiber optic cable that let a drone be flown

00:47:01down a literal thread of glass, immune to jamming because it uses no radio signal at all. There are palm

00:47:07-sized

00:47:07surveillance drones, balloon-borne weapons, and unmanned ground vehicles that look like a table bolted to

00:47:13a miniature bulldozer. Everything has to be cheap and disposable, because on a front saturated with drones,

00:47:19a great deal of them will be shot down or blown up before it ever reaches a target. The genius

00:47:25of

00:47:25the approach is not any single weapon, it's the willingness to build cheaply, lose freely, and iterate

00:47:31fast. Fedorov has also turned the war itself into a source of data, which may prove to be one of

00:47:37Ukraine's

00:47:37most valuable long-term assets. The fighting has generated an immense archive of battlefield footage,

00:47:43a library of millions of annotated battlefield videos shot by surveillance and strike drones,

00:47:48including footage of how human beings behave in the final moments as a drone closes in.

00:47:53The Defense Ministry has begun opening these datasets to companies from allied nations so they can

00:47:59train their own artificial intelligence models on real combat data in a project called Avenger Labs.

00:48:05This is also a glimpse of a future in which the most valuable spoil of a war is not territory,

00:48:10but training data. But for all the momentum behind Fedorov's vision, it's run into something it can't

00:48:16simply disrupt the Ukrainian military's own commanders. All of its futuristic talk of robot

00:48:22warfare has provoked real pushback inside the armed forces, to the point that analysts describe an open

00:48:27power struggle between the minister and the generals. The objection from the field is not that the

00:48:32technology is useless, but that the promised transition to unmanned battle is moving more

00:48:37slowly in reality than it does in Fedorov's speeches. That talk of empty battlefields fought

00:48:43by machines can feel disconnected from the actual war, which is still very much a matter of muddy trenches

00:48:48and broken bodies. But the picture is not even so one-sided. Ukraine's commander-in-chief, General

00:48:54Oleksandr Sersky, has continued to win battles using traditional combined arms tactics, armor and infantry

00:49:01maneuvering in the field, the methods that produced some of Ukraine's biggest victories earlier in the war.

00:49:06At the same time, many frontline brigades have embraced every technological edge they can get.

00:49:11The commander of the K2 brigade, an early adopter of FPV drones, praised having a young,

00:49:17technology-minded defense minister who speaks the same language as the units, someone to whom they

00:49:22no longer have to explain anything. The reality of the war sits in the space between these positions,

00:49:28not a clean choice between men and machines, but a messy, contested integration of the two.

00:49:33And it's worth remembering, underneath all of this, why the machines are being reached for in the first place.

00:49:39The robots are not a flex, but a response to exhaustion. CNN's reporting from the front

00:49:44mentioned two Ukrainian soldiers who had spent over 11 months in frontline dugouts without rotation,

00:49:50hunted constantly by drones, at one point running out of sandbags to build the defenses that might keep them alive.

00:49:56One of them was walking 20 miles to safety at dawn, having not spoken to his wife in an earlier

00:50:01year,

00:50:02communicating only through recorded radio messages. These are the men the automation is meant to spare.

00:50:08The robots exist because there aren't enough of these soldiers, and because the ones who remain

00:50:12are being pushed past the limits of what human beings can endure. That's the engine of the whole revolution,

00:50:17not enthusiasm for technology, but a shortage of men and an unwillingness to keep spending them.

00:50:22Which brings us finally to where Fedorov believes all of this is heading, and to the unease that trails close

00:50:28behind.

00:50:29In his vision, the kill zone, that miles wide strip along the front where anything that moves is hunted by

00:50:35drones,

00:50:36will eventually empty of human beings entirely. Machines will fight machines, in the air and on the ground,

00:50:42and the scale of human loss that defines this war will come to be seen as unsustainable, forcing warfare to

00:50:48evolve

00:50:49into something almost bloodless with the side that automates first. It's a seductive vision,

00:50:54and it's the logical endpoint of everything Ukraine has built. It's also, the New York Times was careful

00:50:59to note, the kind of vision that should give pause because wars rarely follow clean logic. They spiral in unpredictable

00:51:06directions,

00:51:07and taking human judgment out of the loop, handing the decision to kill to a machine acting on its own,

00:51:12could compound that unpredictability rather than tame it. Human rights organizations have drawn a hard line

00:51:18against weapons that select and engage targets without meaningful human control, and that line is exactly the one

00:51:25Fedorov's aspiration points toward crossing. For now, Ukraine is fighting an assisted war rather than autonomous one,

00:51:32using intelligence to stretch a smaller force across a longer front, and to make a bigger enemy bleed faster

00:51:37than he can replenish. Ukraine's unmanned arsenal has evolved enormously over the last couple of years.

00:51:44We've seen Kyiv's defense sector produce a dizzying array of innovations, from jet-powered bomber drones to AI-powered

00:51:50kamikaze killbots. But the latest addition may be the biggest and most impressive yet. Introducing the Sea

00:51:56Trident, a ten-ton beast of the seas, packing enough firepower to threaten the very existence of the

00:52:02Kremlin's Black Sea Fleet. It's no exaggeration to say that this new drone could prove to be a game

00:52:08changing asset, opening whole new avenues of both offensive and defensive operations to Ukraine's

00:52:14armed forces, while giving Russia a truly massive new threat to worry about. The Sea Trident was shown

00:52:19off for the first time at the Eurosatarii 2026 event in Paris. Held every two years, Eurosatarii

00:52:26is the largest international exhibition for the land and air, land defense and security industry.

00:52:31It attracts tens of thousands of guests, with thousands of exhibitors from dozens of countries,

00:52:37showing off their latest military innovations, from vehicles like tanks and trucks to small arms,

00:52:42communication systems, and so on. Recent iterations of this event have seen a growing

00:52:46presence from the Ukrainian defense sector, which has quickly become one of the biggest and best in

00:52:51the world. And at the 2026 exhibition, Keeve-based defense firm Global Mark was in attendance to wow

00:52:58the world with its enormous underwater unmanned vehicle. Measuring up at a whopping 10 meters,

00:53:0332.8 feet in length, with a width of 2 meters, 6.5 feet, and a height of 1.5

00:53:09meters, 4.9 feet,

00:53:11this is no ordinary drone. It's more like a super-sized torpedo, at least in terms of its aesthetics.

00:53:17Tipping the scales at a colossal 10,000 kilograms, 22,000 pounds, it easily ranks amongst the heaviest

00:53:24drones in the Ukrainian arsenal, and is capable of carrying a similarly huge payload of up to 1,000

00:53:29kilograms or 2,200 pounds. Global Mark representatives also reveal that this drone has an operational range

00:53:37of up to 2,000 nautical miles, and a maximum operational depth of 60 meters, approximately 200 feet.

00:53:44It can travel at a maximum speed of 10 knots, or 18.5 kilometers per hour, or 11.5 miles

00:53:50per hour,

00:53:51with a cruise speed closer to 6 knots, around 11 kilometers per hour, or 7 miles per hour.

00:53:56The developer also revealed that the Sea Trident has been designed with a wide array of mission types

00:54:01in mind. Even though it may seem like a purely offensive asset at first glance,

00:54:05Global Mark claims it could be used for the likes of logistics and transport tasks,

00:54:10such as cargo deliveries, as well as strike missions and defensive operations,

00:54:14such as intercepting and neutralizing opposing underwater unmanned vehicles, for example.

00:54:19It's worth noting, too, that the company hasn't yet revealed how far along the platform's

00:54:24development is, or how soon it could be rolled out to service in the Ukrainian armed forces.

00:54:29However, the very fact that Global Mark was willing to show off this drone at the Euro Saturday event,

00:54:34suggests that it's likely quite deep into the development process.

00:54:38And the Sea Trident already has Russia running scared. One of the country's military experts,

00:54:43Vladimir Yeran-Osyan, an associate professor at the Financial University under the government

00:54:48of the Russian Federation in Moscow, shared his thoughts about the Sea Trident in an interview

00:54:52with one of the country's biggest weekly newspapers, AIF. Initially, Yeran-Osyan attempted to play

00:54:58down the innovation, claiming that the Sea Trident wasn't actually a true Ukrainian innovation,

00:55:04but was instead likely to be made up of different parts produced in Western countries,

00:55:08like the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. He also suggested that Global Mark might

00:55:13have been lying or exaggerating about the drone's technical specifications and capabilities,

00:55:18before admitting that it could be used to strike numerous pieces of port and coastal infrastructure,

00:55:23for example, sea terminals, or loading stations of oil and gas products, bridges, dams, and possibly

00:55:29hydroelectric power plants. The expert then added, surely the enemy will try, with the help of Sea

00:55:35Trident, to sink large warships or submarines of the Russian fleet. He went on to spout the usual

00:55:41Kremlin-style propaganda, claiming that there's no real reason to worry, as Russia has faced numerous

00:55:46Ukrainian and Western drones in the past, and adapted to them. He outlined a list of potential

00:55:51defenses the Kremlin could set up to counter this threat, like port entrance barriers, special

00:55:57listening posts to scan for the sounds of incoming threats beneath the surface, and even military

00:56:01divers patrolling key coastal locations. In reality, however, none of these measures would necessarily

00:56:07be enough to counteract the massive threat that the Sea Trident poses. Its advanced navigation systems

00:56:13could allow it to easily evade or circumvent Russian barriers, adjusting its depth and trajectory to

00:56:18strike its targets with impunity. Additionally, while Yeranosyan claims that the Kremlin's forces

00:56:24have successfully dealt with Ukraine's drones in the past, there is an enormous amount of evidence

00:56:29to disprove that. Indeed, the war has now reached a point where barely a single day passes, without

00:56:34fresh reports of yet another Ukrainian drone strike on Russian assets and infrastructure.

00:56:40Kyiv's forces have been systematically eradicating Russian targets one by one, damaging and destroying

00:56:46everything from naval vessels to oil terminals and ammo depots, and the Kremlin's army has repeatedly

00:56:52failed to stop them. Its radars have been too sluggish, its air defenses have been insufficient,

00:56:58and its forces have been caught off guard over and over again. This is equally true on land as it

00:57:03is at

00:57:04sea, as we've seen Ukraine's forces make strong use of their air and water-based drones, as well as

00:57:09missiles to carry out numerous successful strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea and beyond. In fact,

00:57:16these attacks began way back in 2022, during the opening exchanges of the war. Mere weeks into the

00:57:22conflict, for example, in March 2022, Ukraine used a Tochka-U ballistic missile to sink a large Russian

00:57:29landing ship in the occupied port of Berdyansk. Only a month later, Ukraine's forces celebrated one of the

00:57:35most iconic victories when they used their own Neptune anti-ship missiles to eliminate the Black

00:57:40Sea Fleet's flagship vessel, the Moskva missile cruiser. In the months that followed, we saw the

00:57:46likes of landing craft, assault boats, and support vessels either damaged or entirely destroyed,

00:57:51and as Ukraine's forces grew even stronger over the years, more and more of the enemy's vessels were

00:57:56eliminated. Even Russia's submarines weren't immune to these strikes. In September 2023, for example,

00:58:02Ukrainian missiles penetrated the hull of the Rostov-on-Don, and in December 2025, Ukraine used

00:58:09both aerial and surface drones to strike a Russian Project 636 submarine. Kiev's forces have also

00:58:15destroyed the rail ferries that helped Russia funnel supplies to Crimea, slowly starving the occupied

00:58:21peninsula of ammo and other military equipment, and every single year of the conflict has seen numerous

00:58:26ships of various sizes and classes sink to the briny depths or have to be towed away for costly repairs.

00:58:32These attacks have proven so effective and impactful that they've almost entirely nullified the Black

00:58:37Sea Fleet. As the Kremlin's commanders saw that more and more of their ships were being damaged and

00:58:42didn't have the necessary defenses to deal with Ukraine's UAVs and missiles, they began to move them

00:58:46further and further back from the conflict zone. As time went by, there were fewer Russian ships sailing

00:58:52across the Black Sea, with most of them simply sitting in ports or shipyards, hiding out and hoping that

00:58:57Ukraine would leave them alone. This in turn meant that there were fewer vessels actively launching the

00:59:02likes of caliber-class missiles at Ukrainian towns and cities. In other words, by counteracting the Black

00:59:08Sea Fleet, Ukraine was able to decrease the power of Russia's bombardments and save countless lives in

00:59:14the process. In short, it transformed the Black Sea Fleet from an active and potent threat into a veritable

00:59:20liability for Russia. Rather than using its naval vessels to strike its opposition and extend its

00:59:25advantage on the ground, the Kremlin is now unable to extract almost any value from these assets and

00:59:31instead has to spend most of its time, money and resources either protecting them or repairing them.

00:59:36And the most incredible part of all of this is that Ukraine pulled this off without a conventional navy.

00:59:42It relied mostly on drones and missiles to defeat what was supposed to be one of the strongest naval forces

00:59:47on Earth. And the Sea Trident has the potential to take its naval operations to an exciting new level.

00:59:53Now, before we get into how this new underwater drone might be used and the unique advantages it brings,

00:59:59there's more where this came from. So if you're getting value from the military show, don't forget to subscribe.

01:00:05Ukraine has used water-based drones before. There's the Maritime Autonomous Guard Unmanned Robotic

01:00:10Apparatus or Magura V-5, for example. Developed for the use by the Main Directorate of Intelligence of

01:00:17Ukraine , and capable of carrying out a range of tasks, including surveillance, reconnaissance,

01:00:23maritime patrols, mine countermeasures, search and rescue and combat missions, these drones entered

01:00:28service in 2023, with subsequent years witnessing the arrival of the V-6 and V-7 models.

01:00:35Costing around $273,000 per unit, the Magura V-5 has proven incredibly effective on the battlefield,

01:00:42directly contributing to the destruction of numerous Russian vessels, including a Kula-class landing

01:00:47craft, Tarantul-class missile corvettes and patrol ships. But the Magura has its limits.

01:00:53The V-5 has a maximum payload capacity of around 300kg, or 660lb for example, and an operational range

01:01:01of around 800km, or 500 miles. Even the more advanced V-7 version can only carry a 650kg, or

01:01:091,433lb forehead, at distances of up to 1,000km, or 620 miles.

01:01:16The Sea Trident is better in almost every aspect. It's bigger, bulkier, and capable of carrying

01:01:22significantly more firepower over far greater distances. The fact that it can carry up to

01:01:271,000kg, or 2,200lb of explosives, puts it in a completely different class from most other drones

01:01:33Ukraine currently uses. While smaller drones may only be able to deal superficial damage to Russian

01:01:39vessels, the Sea Trident packs more than enough firepower to take out even the biggest targets.

01:01:44Plus, since this heavy drone operates under the water's surface, it should be able to strike the

01:01:49likes of submarines and cruisers in their weakest locations, blowing holes in their hulls that could

01:01:54quickly cause them to flood and sink before their crews can carry out emergency repairs.

01:01:59The Sea Trident's vast range is another distinct advantage that elevates this asset above most other

01:02:05drones Ukraine has used up to this point. Since it can travel up to 2,000 nautical miles,

01:02:10the equivalent distance of traveling from Odessa on the southern coast of Ukraine to the coastlines

01:02:15of Spain or Algeria, the Sea Trident would have no trouble traversing the entirety of the Black Sea.

01:02:21In fact, it has enough range to travel from Ukraine to Russian port cities,

01:02:26like Novorossiysk or even the occupied Crimean port of Sevastopol, before heading back to Ukraine

01:02:31without any risk of running out of fuel. That opens up countless opportunities for Ukraine's armed

01:02:37forces to plan and execute their operations in the foreseeable future. With a weapon like this in

01:02:42their arsenal, they'd find it easier than ever to orchestrate devastating strikes on Russia's naval

01:02:47assets, and the Kremlin would effectively have no way to protect its ships. Even if it relocated some

01:02:52of them through the Kerch Strait and into the Sea of Azov, towards other port cities, the Sea Trident

01:02:57would still be able to find and destroy them. The fact that the Sea Trident travels below the surface

01:03:02also makes it a very different proposition for Russia to deal with compared to a surface-level

01:03:07drone like the Magura V-5. While surface drones are designed to be difficult to detect,

01:03:13they can still be spotted by planes or drones overhead. However, by traveling up to 60 meters

01:03:18underwater, the Sea Trident will be impossible to spot from above. Russia will have to rely on the

01:03:23likes of underwater dive teams and advanced radar or sonar systems to have any chance of spotting these

01:03:29drones. This too should help Ukraine when it comes to carrying out surprise strikes on enemy vessels

01:03:34from below. And the very fact that a drone like this exists will strike fear into the hearts of

01:03:39Russian sailors and navy personnel, because even if the water seems clear, they'll know that a 2,200

01:03:45pound warhead could still be heading their way, hidden beneath the waves. The Russian Black Sea Fleet

01:03:50has already been running scared for several years, and the Sea Trident gives it a whole new nightmare to

01:03:55fear. This may make the Kremlin's naval commanders even more reluctant to use their ships, preferring

01:04:01instead to keep them close to the coast or docked in port, rather than sending them out to sea to

01:04:05fire missiles and launch drones at Ukrainian targets. And the benefits don't stop there.

01:04:10During the Eurosatari exhibition, Globalmark also announced that the Sea Trident is equipped with

01:04:16autonomous control systems and adaptive navigation. That means it can carry out its long-range

01:04:21missions with minimal operator involvement. In other words, this beast doesn't even need a pilot.

01:04:27Most of the time, it can rely on its own built-in AI systems to help get it where it

01:04:31needs to go,

01:04:32adjusting its course while en route to its destination, in order to give it the best

01:04:36chances of achieving any objective it's given. And as stated by the developer itself,

01:04:41this drone can be assigned a surprisingly broad range of objectives. Its most obvious use would be to

01:04:47carry its payload all the way to an enemy vessel and ram it from below, triggering a devastating

01:04:52explosion that would quickly sink most ships. However, it doesn't necessarily need to carry any

01:04:57explosives at all. Globalmark notes that it could be used for transporting supplies across bodies of

01:05:03water, which could prove useful in the future if Ukraine's forces were attempting to fully liberate

01:05:08Crimea, for example, or if they needed to move ammunition and other resources from one coastal

01:05:13location or port to another, with minimal chance of them being intercepted on the way.

01:05:18The operational opportunities simply go on and on, with the manufacturer also noting

01:05:23that Sea Trident drones could be used to patrol friendly waters and intercept enemy drones as well.

01:05:29In short, this is a remarkably versatile addition to the Ukrainian drone army. Of course,

01:05:34like any other drone, it's not perfect. It has its limitations that Ukraine's unmanned system

01:05:39forces will have to adapt to, if they decide to introduce this weapon into the war with Russia.

01:05:44For example, it's not the fastest drone around. The Magura V5 can reach peak speeds of around 42 knots,

01:05:51approximately 78 km per hour, or 48 mph, and cruises at around 22 knots, 41 km per hour, or 25

01:05:59mph,

01:06:01while the Sea Trident moves significantly slower. This could potentially put it at risk of being

01:06:05intercepted more easily, if Russia can find out how to spot it. However, it's clearly been crafted with

01:06:11the element of surprise in mind, and the fact that it moves so slowly may make it less likely to

01:06:16appear

01:06:16as a threat on Russia radar screens. It may look more like a large fish or a floating piece of

01:06:21debris

01:06:22than an imminent explosive risk, for example. Additionally, even though the Sea Trident can operate

01:06:27below the surface, it can't go too deep. Its 200-foot maximum dive distance would make it unsuitable for use

01:06:34in

01:06:34the likes of deep sea or ocean-based strikes, meaning that it will mainly be used in shallow water and

01:06:39coastal locations. As far as Ukraine is concerned, however, that doesn't really matter. Ukraine's

01:06:45forces don't need to worry too much about attacking Russian ships at sea, since so many of them spend

01:06:50most of their time sitting in shallow water docks and ports, the exact locations that the Sea Trident

01:06:55was created for. This gives Russian commanders a veritable catch-22 dilemma. If they move their ships

01:07:01out of port and into the open sea, they become much more vulnerable to aerial drone or missile strikes,

01:07:06which could sink them before they're able to make it back to base. If, however, they leave their vessels

01:07:11in port, the lethal Sea Trident drones can pick them off with ease. On top of that, this new heavy

01:07:17drone could also be used in attacks against key pieces of infrastructure, like the support beams of

01:07:22the Crimean Bridge, for example, or ports where oil and other resources are loaded onto Russian Shadow

01:07:27Fleet tankers. Overall, it's yet another valuable addition for Ukraine. It's also a testament to

01:07:34the ingenuity of the country's defense industry, which continues to go from strength to strength.

01:07:39While Russia is struggling to cope with countless problems, from its failing economy to its stalling

01:07:44frontline forces and catastrophic losses, Ukraine is quietly but confidently going about its business,

01:07:50both at the front and far behind. Its soldiers and drone operators continue to deal devastating

01:07:55losses to their enemy, while its defense contractors continue to innovate and excel,

01:08:00producing an ever-expanding array of weapons, vehicles and unmanned systems with the potential

01:08:05to help Ukraine become even stronger than ever before. Ukraine also continues to benefit from

01:08:10the generous support of its NATO allies. When you picture the world's most formidable air forces,

01:08:16your mind goes to the obvious places. The United States Air Force, the combined air arms of NATO,

01:08:22made up of squadrons of fifth-generation fighters, million-dollar procurement budgets,

01:08:27and decades of carefully refined doctrine. But over the past four years, something's been taking

01:08:32shape in the skies above Ukraine that doesn't fit any of those categories. In the shortest possible

01:08:38terms, the raw number of people flying combat drones into battle every single day has quietly grown

01:08:44to a scale that few militaries anywhere in the world can match. Ukraine has built an aerial fighting

01:08:49force on a scale that even NATO, with all its money and all its institutional experience,

01:08:55has never once attempted. And the story of how they built it tells you almost everything you need

01:09:00to know about how this war is now being fought. Let's start with the numbers, because they're genuinely

01:09:06hard to believe. According to official statements from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, roughly 80,000 service

01:09:12members are now involved in drone operations in one form or another. The exact number of trained pilots

01:09:18inside that figure is classified. Ukraine doesn't publish it, and as you'll see, it has very good

01:09:23reasons not to. But frontline operators and unit commanders estimate that somewhere between 25,000

01:09:29and 40,000 of those troops are active combat drone pilots. These are men and women flying robotic

01:09:36aircraft against Russian forces across every branch of the military. Those are also estimates from the

01:09:42people doing the flying, not a published order of battle. And the real figure sits behind a wall of

01:09:47operational secrecy. But even the conservative end of that range is extraordinary. To understand why,

01:09:53you have to set it against a traditional air force. Take Italy's air force and count everyone,

01:09:58the pilots, the mechanics, the weather forecasters, the cooks, the generals, and all of their staff

01:10:03officers. The official count is somewhere between 35,000 and 43,000 people. Of course,

01:10:09only around 1,500 are actual pilots. The United States, for its part,

01:10:15stations roughly 30,000 to 35,000 airmen across the whole of Europe, and only 2,000 to 3,000

01:10:21of them

01:10:21fly. Now let's do the bigger sum, adding up every NATO pilot outside of North America. Every fast jet

01:10:28pilot, transport, tanker, and helicopter crew across every European member state on the map adds up to

01:10:34around 15,000 aviators. That's the entire pilot air power of NATO's European wing. Ukraine's combat

01:10:41drone pilot force, by the low-end estimate, already exceeds that number. By the high-end estimate,

01:10:47it's more than double that. That kind of comparison reframes what Ukraine has actually built. This is

01:10:52not just a drone program, but functionally, the largest combat aviation force in the western world,

01:10:58and it was assembled almost from nothing and entirely during wartime. Now, within that force

01:11:03sits an elite corps called Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, or SBS, using the Ukrainian abbreviation.

01:11:10This is a dedicated military branch that didn't even exist as such a few years ago, and in 2026,

01:11:17numbers around 15,000 personnel in its own right. But the SBS is only the most visible,

01:11:22most professionalized slice of the whole. Beyond it, dedicated drone units now operate inside more

01:11:28than a hundred maneuver brigades and close to 500 separate battalions and regiments.

01:11:33This is the key point that the headline figure can obscure. Drones are not a specialist capability

01:11:38bolted onto the side of the Ukrainian army. They've become the army's primary way of combat,

01:11:43and that's not an exaggeration. Consider what these pilots are actually responsible for on the

01:11:48battlefield. In early May 2026, Ukrainian officials and independent analysts estimated

01:11:54that drones account for somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of all Russian casualties.

01:11:59The Polish Research Institute, OSW, reached a similar conclusion even earlier, in October 2025,

01:12:07attributing roughly 70 to 80 percent of Russian losses and close to 85 percent of destroyed frontline

01:12:12equipment to unmanned systems. Of course, no one can audit the battlefield in real time,

01:12:18and Ukrainian sources have every incentive to emphasize their successes. But analysts across

01:12:23multiple institutions keep landing in the same range, which itself is telling.

01:12:28The Ukrainian side even put hard numbers to it. Mikhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Digital

01:12:33Transformation and the official overseeing the drone effort, said that Ukrainian strike and bomber

01:12:38drones carried out almost 820,000 confirmed hits over the course of 2025. Notably, all of these were

01:12:45verified by drone video. By that accounting, more than 80 percent of all Russian targets destroyed

01:12:51that year were destroyed by drones, the overwhelming majority of them domestically built.

01:12:56The commander of the SBS claimed that Ukraine's tracking system recorded more than 156,000 Russian

01:13:02soldiers killed or wounded by drones alone in the five months between December 2025 and April 2026.

01:13:10Even if the figures are slightly overblown, the sheer scale they describe is consistent with what outside

01:13:15observers are seeing and with how stalled the frontline is in terms of lack of Russian advance

01:13:20throughout 2025. The cumulative effect here has actually physically reshaped the battlefield.

01:13:26It's not disingenuous to describe Ukraine's war as a machine war, in which the front is increasingly

01:13:32held not by mass infantry, but by small drone crews and the aircraft they control. Internal Ukrainian data

01:13:39found that drones accounted for roughly 69 percent of strikes on Russian troops and 75 percent of

01:13:44strikes on vehicles and equipment as far back as 2024, and the share has only grown since.

01:13:51A drone kill zone now reaches some 20 kilometers behind the frontline, choking Russian logistics,

01:13:57forcing supply convoys to break apart and move in ones and twos, and turning the simple act of bringing

01:14:02food and ammunition forward into a daily ordeal. Ukrainian commanders can have fewer soldiers hold long

01:14:08stretches of front and survive precisely because drones increase their reach and operational capabilities.

01:14:14None of this would be possible without an industrial base that Ukraine built from the ground up.

01:14:19As of early 2026, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense, Sergei Boyev, said he's confident the

01:14:26country had the capacity to produce more than seven million FPV drones that year. This is nearly quadruple

01:14:32for what it made in 2024. The entire industry has over 160 companies building FPV drones domestically.

01:14:39This is the opposite of how Ukraine started in early 2022, importing cheap drones from China and

01:14:46outfitting them with makeshift grenades and mines. So not only does Ukraine have the people who can fly

01:14:51drones, it has various drone models all on its own that are tailor-made for the field situation.

01:14:57And the best part is that the drones aren't even confined to the frontline.

01:15:00The same industrial base produces long-range strike drones that have reached targets more than 1,500

01:15:06kilometers inside Russia. For the past several months, Ukraine has been striking oil refineries,

01:15:12ammunition depots, and military airfields at distances Western governments have previously

01:15:17been reluctant to permit with their own supplied weapons. Back in 2024, there was a months-long debate

01:15:23about using ATAKAMs, which has a range of a few hundred kilometers. In 2026, Ukraine is reaching

01:15:29600 kilometers regularly, and some of the more ambitious models like Firepoint FP5, technically

01:15:36a cruise missile, have a range of 3,000 kilometers. Ukraine's leadership has taken to calling this

01:15:42the long-range sanctions campaign, a deliberate effort to degrade the infrastructure feeding the

01:15:47Russian war machine. So, the aerial force we're describing operates across the entire depth of the

01:15:52war at once. Tactical FPV drones killing within a few kilometers of the trenches, interceptors guarding

01:15:58the cities far behind them, and long-range strike drones reaching the deep interior of Russia.

01:16:04So, how did a country that was importing hobbyist quadcopters four years ago end up here?

01:16:09If we go back to 2014, to the first Russian incursion into the Donbas, the earliest Ukrainian drone pilots

01:16:16were semi-hobbyists. They taught themselves tactics, bought commercial aircraft with their own money

01:16:21or with donations, and improvised reconnaissance during the years of low-intensity fighting in the

01:16:26East. When the full-scale invasion came in February 2022, that improvised knowledge suddenly had to

01:16:32scale across an entire army overnight, initially for reconnaissance as units scrambled to put eyes in

01:16:38the air across Ukraine. What began as a niche capability quickly became one of the defining features

01:16:44of the war. Facing a Russian army that still held a heavy advantage in conventional firepower,

01:16:50Ukraine had to find something cheap, abundant, and lethal to fill the gap, which turned out to be

01:16:55strike drones. In the bluntest possible terms, drones became the new artillery, and the shell shortage

01:17:01only further reinforced the need for more drones. This created a positive feedback loop, where each

01:17:06successful drone mission was hailed, and helped fund more like them. By 2026, Ukraine had one of the

01:17:12most robust drone operator training programs in the world. Civilians were suddenly signing contracts,

01:17:18and serving soldiers switching specializations are expected to pass certified flight training before

01:17:23they deploy. The country has a network of flight academies that converts novices into capable operators

01:17:30in roughly one or two months. Most importantly, these are composed of several layers, such as schools run

01:17:35by individual combat units for profit businesses, and programs funded directly by the drone manufacturers

01:17:41themselves. That's because Russia actively hunts these facilities to kill the instructors and

01:17:46trainees inside them, so their locations and numbers are kept strictly classified, and the distributed nature

01:17:52means it's far less likely that a lucky strike removes a bulk of Ukraine's training capabilities.

01:17:58A few of these schools have allowed glimpses inside. There's a Center of Special Training, or CST,

01:18:04based in the Zaporizhia region, founded in mid-2024 by a volunteer group whose director had previously

01:18:10spent 14 months commanding a frontline drone strike unit. It runs on a cost-recovery basis, training new

01:18:17inductees, veterans, and active operators, and in 2026 switched focus to operating interceptor drones,

01:18:24the next major category that could spearhead Ukraine's defensive efforts.

01:18:28The major manufacturer Skyfall turned flight training into a service offered alongside its hardware. A

01:18:34company representative told the Kyiv Post that between 2023 and 2026, Skyfall's flight schools

01:18:41have trained more than 20,000 operators, with the whole effort financed entirely by the company,

01:18:47and frontline units run their own pipelines too. In the 4th Heavy Brigade, recently deployed in the

01:18:52brutal Konstantinyuka-Druskivka sector, passing basic school is only the start. Graduates are assigned as

01:18:59junior pilots to a small drone section, and spend their first months flying under the close supervision

01:19:04of veterans before they're trusted to run missions on their own. The military-run 239th Center of Unit

01:19:11Training, meanwhile, offers a window into just how structured this has become. It maintains an

01:19:16instructor-to-student ratio of roughly 1 to 10, and its courses are tailored to specific aircraft. For

01:19:22example, qualification on a basic Chinese-made Mavic quadcopter takes 39 days, a Vampyr Heavy

01:19:28bomber drone 40 to 45 days, and a full first-person view combat qualification close to two months.

01:19:35These are genuine combat-oriented courses. The operator uses a gaming controller and chair

01:19:41instead of a rifle. The short training time and large throughput are in part because Ukraine

01:19:46precisely needs that level of haste. Now, before we get to that, make sure to subscribe to The Military

01:19:51Show. We cover daily stories so you can stay up to date with global geopolitics.

01:19:56Now, the reason why Ukraine is so hell-bent on training more drone operators than any other

01:20:02country is due to internal pressure to replace manpower with drones. The military frequently lists

01:20:07UAV operators as the most sought-after military roles, and the pool is wide and well beyond the

01:20:13stereotype of the young gamer. Women now make up a growing share of those entering UAV training,

01:20:18and pilots interviewed at a 2026 competition in the west of the country ranged in age from their early

01:20:2420s to their 50s. What unites them, those pilots said, is not reflexes or a gaming background,

01:20:30but discipline, teamwork, and constant adaptation. And then there's the part of this story that comes

01:20:36closest to a true technological edge, the simulators. Modern Ukrainian drone training leans heavily on

01:20:42advanced software, and the standard example is a program called FPV Battleground, built by a small team

01:20:49at a Ukrainian company called Bazu for a reported $50,000. To grasp why that's remarkable, consider

01:20:55the alternatives. The military had previously trained on a far simpler simulator that ran basic

01:21:01missions in a tiny 2km virtual space. Russia, for its part, released an arcade-style FPV game on

01:21:08steam in 2024. Bazu went in the opposite direction, chasing extreme realism. FPV Battleground gives

01:21:15trainees a massive 40x40km sandbox, with a flight physics model that simulates real-world wind,

01:21:22drift, varying rotor torque, and changing weather. Notably, the simulator replicates the exact moment

01:21:28of pilot dreads, losing video and signal if the FPV drone flies into the radius of a Russian jammer

01:21:34during the final seconds of an attack run, when the operator is blind and the drone is on its own.

01:21:39So Ukraine is actually training pilots to handle that in a simulator, before they ever face it over a

01:21:45real target. And the program has grown into something beyond training. Before ground assault,

01:21:50brigade and core staffs now build precise digital models of their objectives inside the simulator,

01:21:56then run strike iterations to optimize how drones will support the attack. The simulator can accurately

01:22:01rehearse the battle before it happens. Now we have to circle back to one category of drone worth going

01:22:07in-depth, because it's rewritten Ukraine's air defense, interceptor drones. These are small,

01:22:13fast quadcopters built specifically to chase down and ram Russian attack drones in flight.

01:22:18The concept emerged in 2024 as a cornerstone of Ukraine's defense against Russia's nightly

01:22:24Shahid barrages. By some estimates, in May 2026, Russia launched 8,160 Shahid drones at Ukraine,

01:22:32and some attacks involved as many as 800 of them in one go. By late May 2026, interceptors accounted for

01:22:39roughly 30% of all Russian aerial threats shot down, meaning that every third kill has been scored

01:22:45not by a missile, but by another drone. The entire point here is economics. An interceptor drone costing

01:22:51a few thousand dollars is being used to destroy threats that would otherwise demand a surface-to-air

01:22:56missile costing hundreds of times more. But the pilots flying drones often need to sit close to the

01:23:01front, watching the sky. That makes them a target. And here, the Ukrainian manufacturer's answer was to

01:23:08remove the pilot from the danger zone entirely. According to Skyfall, the company has developed

01:23:13a way for interceptor pilots to operate from hundreds or even thousands of miles from the

01:23:18front line via satellite-based internet. In some cases, the setup can be done on another continent

01:23:23altogether. Wild Hornets, the maker of the Sting interceptor, built a comparable system called

01:23:29Hornet Vision Control. The records being set with that technology border on the surreal.

01:23:34Wild Hornets claim that an operator can accurately control a drone from a distance of 2,000 kilometers.

01:23:40Of course, these are the manufacturer's own claims, promoted in their own footage,

01:23:45so there's a chance that the number is a bit of an overestimate under ideal scenarios. But regardless

01:23:50of that, the underlying logic is sound. If your most valuable and most hunted personnel never have

01:23:55to be physically near the targets they're hunting, you've solved a survivability problem that every

01:24:00other military on Earth still lives with. What ultimately makes the whole system work is its

01:24:05pragmatism. There is a near continuous feedback loop running between the pilots flying combat missions,

01:24:10the schools training the next wave, and the companies building the aircraft.

01:24:14A tactic that worked yesterday on the front can be written into the curriculum within days.

01:24:19A Russian countermeasure spotted in the morning can reshape an afternoon's training.

01:24:23The instruction adapts week to week to real-world conditions, something we've previously seen in

01:24:28the drone acquisition platform and the gamification for drone operating squads.

01:24:33So, let's step back a bit. NATO has bigger budgets than Ukraine could dream of. It has stealth fighters,

01:24:39aerial refueling, satellite constellations, airborne early warning, and generations of accumulated

01:24:44air power doctrine. In almost every conventional category, the alliance is far ahead.

01:24:49So, what exactly has Ukraine built that NATO couldn't? The answer is that Ukraine had to build

01:24:55the whole system from scratch. NATO has never had to generate a mass combat aviation force out of

01:25:01ordinary civilians in a matter of months. It's never run training schools whose curricula are rewritten

01:25:07week to week by direct feedback from pilots fighting that same day. It's never fielded distributed,

01:25:12remotely operated air defense at this scale, born from the simple necessity of keeping its operators

01:25:18alive. NATO hasn't built these things because it's never been forced to. Ukraine was.

01:25:24The irony is that the traffic and expertise now runs the other way. Ukrainian drone manufacturers have

01:25:29been traveling across Europe to share what they've learned, and NATO planners are racing to stand up a

01:25:34layered counter-drone system along the alliance's eastern flank. Denmark became the first country to fund

01:25:40Ukrainian weapons production in 2024, and after a July 2025 defense agreement, Ukraine launched its

01:25:47first joint drone production line in Denmark in September 2025. Germany followed suit by launching

01:25:54a program to manufacture exact Ukrainian UAV models. Similar things happened to the UK, Romania and France,

01:26:01with each either manufacturing drones from Ukraine or outlining cooperation projects. Even the EU as a

01:26:07whole has set up a drone alliance with Ukraine to bolster cross-communication and allow any company

01:26:12in those countries to apply and become a part of the program. And at the core of this is one

01:26:17single

01:26:17factor that's practically impossible to replicate anywhere else in the world, real-life experience.

01:26:24Ukraine has had millions of flight hours in drones, all made to defend the country against an invader,

01:26:29that's by all accounts much larger. And through that, Ukraine has managed to establish its place as a

01:26:34potential world superpower, at least where drone combat is concerned. And Russia is paying the price,

01:26:41with the country's forces, economy and even political system collapsing in real time.

01:26:46To learn more, check out this video and make sure to subscribe to the military show for more news on

01:26:52global geopolitics.

Ukraine Unleashed a STRIKE STORM So Vast the Sun DISAPPEARED Over Russia | Other War Stories

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