August 26, 2025: Two months ago, Ukraine once again demonstrated its ability to strike targets deep inside Russia and suffer no casualties while doing it. This was done using over a hundred drones transported deep inside Russia on Russian cargo trucks. Many were driven by Russians with orders to abandon the vehicle at a certain spot. Then under remote control the large crates the truck was carrying opened and launched over a hundred drones at Russian airfields, destroying about a quarter of Russian strategic aircraft. No Ukrainian lives were lost in an operation that destroyed $7 billion worth of aircraft. This cost Ukraine less than $200,000.

Ukraine continues to make drone attacks at military and economic targets throughout Russia. These avoid civilian targets and often hit outlying buildings in civilian airports. Foreigners see this and contradict any false Russian propaganda about the attacks they arrive home. Russian civilians also notice that Ukrainian drone attacks avoid harming civilians.

The growing Ukrainian use of drones means that Ukrainian casualties continue to decline while Russian losses continue to climb. So far Russia has lost over a million soldiers dead and wounded and another million soldiers and military age men who fled the country. Ukrainian losses have been fewer than 100,000 dead, about ten percent of them civilians.

While Russia also copied Ukraine and adopted drone warfare, they continue to use mass frontal infantry attacks that hope to overrun the Ukrainian defenders. That rarely happens because the Ukrainians use surveillance drones to observe the attack preparations and the advance of Russian troops into combat.

Early in the war, Russia had and soon lost most of the 12,000 strong tank force it had in 2022. Currently Russia has fewer than 3,000 tanks and uses them sparingly. Ukrainian drones can quickly and efficiently destroy a Russian tank, or just disable it so the crew will abandon it and the Ukrainians came come along and take possession. Otherwise more Ukrainian drones will come along later to finish the tank off. Most current Ukrainian tanks were captured from the Russians because the tank crews saw no point remaining in their tanks waiting for the drones to come along and kill them.

Ukraine only uses tanks in an operation once they are certain there are no Russian drones in the vicinity. Russia can’t be that certain of the presence of Ukrainian drones because Ukrainian drones usually control the air and can drive most Russian drones out of an area where a Ukrainian offensive is being assembled.

Ukraine is increasingly using land and naval drones. The naval drones took control of the Black sea by early 2024 and that area remains under Ukrainian control so that Ukraine can continue its grain exports which brig in $11 billion a year. These ports are also where most Ukrainian imports enter the country.

Drones and drone warfare were largely invented and continued to be developed by the Ukrainians That includes becoming the largest producer of drones in the world. Currently Ukraine produces nearly 400,000 drones a month and treats them like rounds of ammunition. The drones are more versatile than artillery shells or rockets. Most of the drones are flown by operators ten or more kilometers away in bunkers. If these bunkers are attacked by Russian drones, the inhabitants close the blast resistant door and wait for the attack to end.

Russia has copied Ukrainian drone developments but are always months behind the Ukrainians and suffer heavier drone losses in Ukraine because the many Ukrainian civilians still living near the combat zone act as air defense spotters. Since the first year of the war these civilians have had apps on their phones that automatically report back to air defense control headquarters what is going on in real time. Russia has no such information advantage and suffers heavier drone losses.

After about a year of fighting, drones were accounting for about half the combat deaths. By now that is over 80 percent of deaths, at virtually no loss to the Ukrainians.