Ukraine announces plan to boost FPV drone arsenal

Al Jazeera

10-03-2025

Ministry of Defence says it will buy 4.5 million first-person view drones in 2025, triple last year's amount.
10 Mar 2025
Ukraine has announced plans this year to buy about 4.5 million first-person view (FPV) drones, one of the most inexpensive and potent weapons in its war effort against Russia.
In a statement on Monday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said it would allocate the equivalent of more than $2.6bn for the purchases.
Hlib Kanevsky, director of the ministry's procurement policy department, said Ukraine had purchased more than 1.5 million drones in 2024, 96 percent of which were bought from Ukrainian manufacturers and suppliers.
'This year, the figures will be even higher because the capabilities of the domestic defence industry in 2025 are approximately 4.5 million FPV drones,' Kanevsky said, adding that the ministry 'plans to purchase them all'.
Small and cheap, FPV drones are controlled by pilots on the ground and often crash into targets while laden with explosives. In April, a NATO official said FPV drones that cost less than $1,000 had destroyed two-thirds of Russian tanks worth millions.
Ukraine became the world's largest major arms importer from 2020 to 2024, the period when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine's imports increased nearly 100 times over the previous four-year period.
The country, which is seeking strong security guarantees from its partners before agreeing to any peace talks with Russia, is developing its own defence industry to reduce its dependence on its Western allies. It plans to also build long-range drones.
The statement said the ministry for the past three years has purchased most of its drones in the country while the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) supplied to its armed forces had increased significantly.
Kanevsky also said all procurement plans for this year have received money in the budget, which will ensure that the front line is supplied with UAVs as soon as possible.
Both Russia and Ukraine have come to rely on cheaper and more effective alternatives to conventional artillery during the three-year conflict.
In a separate statement on Monday, Kyiv's top general, Oleksandr Syrskii, said Ukrainian drones had destroyed 22 percent more targets last month compared with January, but added that Russian forces were also adapting.
'We simply have no right to lag behind the enemy in those areas of technological warfare where we should be arming and strengthening ourselves by our own resources,' Syrskii said.