Ukraine Drone Production Tops 2.5 Million a Year, Aircraft Numbers on Track to Grow

Ukraine is on track to manufacture 2.5-3 million military-use drones in 2025 and that’s not the limit, a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday.

Ivan Havryliuk, First Deputy Minister of Defense, in video comments, said that currently, Ukraine-state, private-industry, and volunteer-financed weapons manufacturers are producing about 200,000 drones a month, the heavy majority of which are kamikaze FPV (first-person view) drones carrying an anti-tank munition or an anti-personnel grenade.

Ukrainian producers were delivering about 20,000 of the dish-plate-sized quadcopters a month at the start of 2024, but increased investment and better-organized supply chains and manufacturing processes spiked output to 200,000 aircraft a month in January 2025, Havryliuk said.

Production of more expensive and sophisticated observation and long-range attack drones was expanding as well, thanks to foreign ally investment in Ukraine’s aerospace sector, he said.

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Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense had, thanks in part to allied financial and technical assistance, contracted the domestic manufacture of 1.6 million UAVs of various types for about $2.47 billion by October 2024, the Ukrainian defense publication Miltarniy reported. Aircraft produced include long-range kamikaze drones, conventional configuration reconnaissance drones, and single-wing reconnaissance drones, the report said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday led a tour for Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, head of the NATO Military Committee, of a secret Kyiv underground facility manufacturing Ukraine’s jet-propelled Peklo drone. The aircraft is a low-cost cruise missile with a range of 700 kilometers (435 miles) and a maximum speed of 700 kilometers per hour (435 miles per hour), about three times the speed of earlier propeller-driven drones.

Ukraine in late-2023 began isolated long-range drone attacks deep into Russia. Initial targets were Russian aircraft and air bases, military headquarters, and ammunition depots. In early 2025, Ukrainian planners widened drone targeting of Russian oil and gas infrastructure. The bombardment, sometimes with dozens of explosives-toting kamikaze aircraft reaching 1,000+ kilometers (621+ miles) into western Russia, has hit and set afire dozens of refineries and fuel storage sites.

According to industry reports, Russian oil production in January 2025 fell to a 20-year low, in part because of damage caused by Ukrainian drone strikes.

Officials told Dragone Ukraine manufactures more than 100 Peklo (Ukrainian пекло = Hell) drones a month. The last confirmed Peklo strike, hitting two oil pumping stations in Russia’s Rostov region, was on Feb. 8.

Ukrainian manufacturers also are expanding the development and production of ground robotic systems used for delivering supplies to frontline troops, emplacing and detonating mines, and evacuating wounded, Havryliuk said. Ground-based drones used by AFU combat units are limited but growing. In most units, if available ground drones on tracks or legs are still experimental and usually used for sending food or ammunition to the front line, Ukrainian military analysts say.

A relatively simple and easy-to-build aircraft costing $300-$500, the FPV drone has, by many measures, revolutionized warfare over almost three years of combat in the Russo-Ukraine War to become the single most deadly weapon used against Russian forces.

Typically flown by a three-man crew living in and operating from a minibus, an FPV drone can pick out a target as small as a tank cannon barrel or the open hatch of an infantry fighting vehicle, out to a range of 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles). Some drone units have reported successful FPV strikes using technology like signal repeaters or mother ships out to 40 kilometers (25 miles).

Depending on the individual Ukrainian combat unit’s statistics, currently, between one-half and two-thirds of all Russian personnel losses and destroyed combat vehicles are drone-caused, Kyiv Post research has found. A 2024 review made public by Ukraine Armed Forces (AFU) commander Oleksandr Syrsky in January said that all weapons systems employed by the Ukrainian military drones had inflicted “almost half” of all Russian casualties over the past twelve months.

The cost of a conventional 155mm artillery shell that is less accurate than an FPV drone and requires a multi-million-dollar howitzer to fire it is, according to open-source reports, about $3,000. A high-end anti-tank guided missile able to home in on the thin top armor of turret, like the US-manufactured Javelin, is around $80,000 for the missile and $200,000 for the launcher.

Ukraine’s military in early 2024 was forced to make an emergency shift away from artillery to drones as its main weapon against Russian attacks. Ukraine had hoped to receive about three million shells over the year but, promised European deliveries failed to materialize due to production delays or arguments about which countries’ munitions industries would get the shell orders. The US cut Ukraine off from all arms support, including artillery shells, from December 2023-April 2024.

Ukrainian drone operators and manufacturers have argued that the low cost and high accuracy of home-made FPV drones insulates the Ukrainian forces from stoppages and delays of artillery ammunition and heavy weapons deliveries from allies.

Havryliuk, in Friday comments published by the Defense Ministry, said that Ukrainian drone manufacturing was far ahead of Russian drone manufacturing both in quality and quantity. Ukraine’s government expects that gap to widen, he said. As of Jan. 2024, Ukrainian enterprises were producing 96.2% of all UAVs used by AFU, and in 2025 Ukraine is on track to produce 30,000 bomber drones, Militarniy reported, citing government officials.