As of February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been at war against Russia. This war began after the annexation of Crimea turned into an invasion into Ukraine.
Throughout this war many different tactics have been used but by far the most prominent is the use of drones. Drones have been used in so many ways in this war. The two most common ways these drones are used is for surveillance and drone attacks/strikes. Drones have increasingly become more used for drone strikes and attacks in the past year. These attacks used to be limited in use but within the past year have become a daily occurrence on both sides of the fight. In 2025 alone there were more than 50,000 drones released and around 29,000 of those drones were used for attacks.
Using drones is saving money for each side’s military. With the use of drones these militaries have switched from using missiles which cost between 1-4 million dollars depending on the missile to the drones which range from 20-50 thousand dollars per drone.
Another advantage to using drones rather than missiles is how accurately they are able to be because this allows the militaries to be able to be more precise with what they are choosing to hit. Using this accuracy Ukraine has been able to target things like the Lukeoil oil refinery in Ukhta, Russia and allowed them to carry out Operation Spiderweb where they were able to target major Russian airbases which were deep in Russian territory.
These attacks disrupted the Russian economy because of how heavily they rely on their oil exports as well as slowed down the Russian air force due to some of their most important air bases being taken out. On the other side Russia has used these drones to target urban areas such as Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Dnipro. Russia has also used them to strike critical infrastructure within Ukraine examples of this critical infrastructure include but are not limited to energy facilities, electrical substations, ports, and grain export facilities.
This will affect not just the military and economy of Ukraine but also the quality of life for the Ukrainian citizens. When energy facilities and energy substations are taken out the residents of Ukraine will experience blackouts for extended periods of time, some will not have access to electricity to heat their homes during the winter months, and there will be long lasting damage to Ukraine’s power grid.
As of right now neither side is winning the war but there are still heavy attacks coming from both sides. It is said that drones will become the deciding factor in this war so each side is continually using them and just last month there were 6600 Russian drones sent to Ukraine and 7300 Ukrainian drones sent to Russia.
