Ukraine has launched a new program called the Army of Drones Bonus which rewards soldiers with digital points when they provide video evidence of successful drone strikes on Russian targets.
According to Politico, these points can be redeemed for new military equipment through an online platform called Brave 1 Market.
The system is modeled after video games. Soldiers upload drone footage of verified hits to the military’s Delta communication platform. Once confirmed, points are awarded based on the type of target.
Damaging a tank earns 20 points, destroying one gives 40. Eliminating a mobile rocket system can bring up to 50 points depending on its size, and each confirmed enemy soldier killed is worth six points. The more precise and destructive the drone strike, the more points a unit earns.
Brave 1 Market now lists over 1,000 items for military purchase. Soldiers can review equipment on the platform, helping other units make informed decisions.
“Brave 1 Market will be like Amazon for the military, [it] will allow military units to directly purchase technologies they need on the war front,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation told Politico.
It remains unclear when the program officially launched, but Fedorov noted that nearly 90 percent of Ukraine’s drone units have already earned points. “They started killing so quickly that Ukraine does not have time to deliver new drones,” he said.
Fedorov highlighted one high-performing unit, Magyar’s Birds, which has accumulated over 16,000 points. He said that total is enough to purchase hundreds of first-person view (FPV) drones, dozens of reconnaissance drones, and around 100 heavy-payload Vampire drones nicknamed Baba Yaga, each costing 43 points
Ukraine’s domestic drone industry has expanded rapidly, producing over 50,000 FPV drones in December 2023 alone. Currently, the country manufactures more than five million FPV drones annually and is advancing development of hybrid drone-missile systems such as Palianytsia and Peklo.
