Ukraine plans to make one million new drones in 2024

Ukrainian officials have a plan to increase the number of drones the country produces in the new year according to a statement that was made by Volodymyr Zelensky during his end-of-year press conference on December 19th. 

Zelensky revealed that the country would produce one million drones over the course of the next year according to Reuters. “Regarding production… We will make a million. We will do everything to make it so,” he explained. 

Reuters reported that previous government officials had expressed that Ukraine wanted to produce tens of thousands of drones each month by the end of 2023. However, there have been no figures released on production. 

More details on Ukraine’s plan to make one million drones in 2024 were divulged by the country’s Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin on his Telegram Channel, noting the size and scale of Kyiv’s drone plan. 

Ukraine intends to manufacture one million first-person-view (FPV) drones but it also is working on producing eleven medium and long-range drones, all of which have proven to be wildly useful on the battlefields of the war. 

"All production facilities are ready, and contracting for 2024 begins," Kamyshin revealed on Telegram according to a separate Reuters report, noting that 1000 of the new drones produced would have a range of over 600 miles. 

Ukraine’s drones have produced some of the most dramatic and shocking footage of the combat that has unfolded in Ukraine since Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s invasion in February 2022. But they’ve also changed the war. 

Expensive pieces of military equipment like Moscow’s expensive modern tanks haven’t been a match for Ukraine’s off the shelf consumer drones. The ability to destroy nearly anything with a cheap drone is war’s new reality. 

In October, Politico spoke with a Ukrainian drone operator named Firsov who explained how useful his machines were on the battlefield for an army outmanned and outgunned by the Kremlin’s arsenal of Soviet-era equipment. 

The drone Firsov was piloting cost Ukraine about $400 dollars to manufacture but could deliver a charge powerful enough to knock out a $2 million dollar tank, and it's a weapon that weighs and can be made almost anywhere.

“It's hard to handle the emotion when a drone pilot hits a tank. The whole group and the whole platoon are happy like babies. Infantry units are rejoicing nearby,” Politico quoted Firsov as explaining in a Facebook post. 

Bigger drones have also played an important role on the battlefield. The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 arguably helped to save Ukraine in the early days of Putin’s invasion while other drones have been used to strike inside of Russia. 

“Oil facilities, airfields, and energy infrastructure have all been targeted in 2023,” wrote BBC News journalists in a September report regarding the effectiveness of Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian infrastructure targets. 

“We have identified at least nine reported drone attacks on oil depots. One of these was in Sevastopol, a major city in Crimea, which was hit on 29 April, destroying several of its oil tanks,” the journalists noted about their findings. 

What Ukraine could do with one million first-person-view drones and eleven thousand of its homemade medium to long-range drones could be enough to turn the tide of the war, and maybe that’s why Kyiv is looking to boost production. 

Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin already revealed in his Telegram post on Ukraine's drone production that December has seen the country manufacture more than 50,000 new FPV drones for the fight against Russia.