Ukraine says it will give its armed forces an additional $60 million a month to procure new drones.
The funds will be distributed among combat units, the Ukrainian defense ministry said.
The move is designed to allow brigades to purchase the equipment they need directly.
Ukraine’s defense ministry has announced that its armed forces will get an additional UAH 2.5 billion (almost $60 million) a month to procure new drones.
The funds will be distributed among military combat units and will allow brigades to buy the equipment they need directly, rather than having to rely on centralized acquisition efforts.
The initiative builds on a prior allocation of UAH 2.1 billion (around $50 million) in December, the ministry said.
“We have analyzed this experience and decided to scale up the initiative,” Ukrainian defense minister Rustem Umerov said in a statement.
“Commanders of the units will have the flexibility to use these funds to acquire the drones that are the most effective for carrying out mission requirements at the front,” he continued. “This marks another step towards building a highly flexible system to ensure the military has everything necessary for Ukraine’s defense.”
In December, Umerov announced that commanders would now be able to purchase drones “without unnecessary bureaucratic approvals from the General Staff and other military authorities.”
Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency (DPA) has been leading Kyiv’s centralized drone procurement efforts.
In August, the agency said it had so far spent 30 billion UAH (around $717 million) acquiring drones in 2024. It had signed contracts for more than 350,000 drones so far in the year, it added.
Dmytro Klimenkov, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, said at the time that such efforts were “aligned with the strategic objective of the President of Ukraine to supply our military with UAVs.”
He added that 95% of the drones they had purchased were made in Ukraine, which he said showed “notable progress in enhancing national defense technologies and validates the high quality of domestic products.”
A Ukrainian multi-purpose naval drone called “Magura V5.”Photo by Pavlo Bahmut/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
The war in Ukraine has acted as a kind of incubator for drone innovation.
Uncrewed systems have dominated the battlefield, wreaking havoc in the air, on the ground, and at sea.
The conflict has seen drones deployed against warships and tanks, used for reconnaissance, and as support for medical evacuations.
The rising demand for such technologies has led Kyiv to issue increasingly ambitious production goals. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month that Ukraine wanted to produce “a record number of drones” this year.
In early December, the Ukrainian defense ministry said it had supplied more than 1.2 million uncrewed aerial vehicles to the country’s armed forces in 2024.
Zelenskyy said in October that Ukraine was capable of manufacturing up to 4 million drones a year.
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