The year 2025 solidified the Russia-Ukraine War as a pioneering conflict of drone warfare, with drones of all types playing more and more decisive roles in the conflict.
Several major changes occurred in drone tactics and production, which fully changed the face of the war. The year was primarily defined by the mass scaling of the production of drones to a previously unimaginable level; the increased range and effectiveness of first-person-view drones, establishing miles-long kill zones behind the front line; the increasing use of drones in asymmetrical attacks by Ukraine; and Russia streamlining drone operations with its elite Rubikon unit.
The Russia-Ukraine War began as a fairly standard 21st-century conventional war, marked by huge armored columns trying to take key cities and military installations, air assaults, close air support, and small arms gunbattles. After a war of attrition settled in in November 2022, artillery became the central element. Widespread experimenting with drones began in 2023, which saw the introduction of large numbers of drones that would drop modified grenades from above. A well-trained drone operator could time the drop to take out single soldiers or light vehicles.
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The following year, 2024, saw the mass introduction of first-person-view drones, which gave operators a live feed to guide the suicide drone into a single target. The attachment of armor-piercing munitions to the drone allowed it to take out more heavily armored vehicles, even modern main battle tanks.
This was taken a step further in 2025, a year that cemented the lasting dominance of the FPV quadrocopters as the workhorse of modern warfare.
One of the biggest barriers to drones is electronic warfare, which disables drones by severing their connection with the user. To solve this issue, Russia pioneered the use of fiber optic drones, attaching a fishline-sized cable from the drone to the operating controls, making it impervious to disruption attempts. Moscow began mass deploying these fiber optic drones during its campaign to oust Ukraine from Russia’s Kursk oblast, then spread their use all across the line beginning in 2025.
The current extent of fiber optic drone usage was showcased by a video in mid-December showing the front-line city of Lyman covered in countless webs of fiber optic cables.
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Russia and Ukraine prioritized the extension of the range of FPV drones, allowing operators to strike deep into the opponent’s supply lines. Russia was able to master this strategy quickly, creating a “grey zone” miles behind the Ukrainian front line, where any vehicle operating was almost guaranteed to be destroyed.
A May report from the Sunday Times illustrated the extent to which Moscow had saturated the front line with FPV drones, and how rapidly its drones’ technology and tactics had improved.
“The changes posed by drones are so fast that concepts we implemented just a month ago no longer work now,” an infantry battalion commander with the 13th Khartiia brigade, callsign “Cuba,” told the outlet. “We live in a space of perpetual fast adaptation. In the past week alone, Russian drone strike ranges have increased by [2.5 miles].”
By May, the “grey zone” was over 6 miles behind Ukrainian lines, marking the area in which FPV drone attacks are common.
“No other weapon type has changed the face of the war here so much or so fast as the FPV drone,” a Ukrainian lieutenant, “Stanyslav” from the 93rd Mechanised Brigade, told the Sunday Times. “Almost any vehicle within [3.1 miles] of the front is as good as finished. Anything moving out to [6.2 miles] is in danger. Drone strikes at [9.2 miles] or [12.4 miles] are not that unusual.”
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The lieutenant even declared that the swarm of drones had rendered tanks and armored personnel carriers obsolete at the front.
“Russian drones swarm our armoured vehicles whenever they get near the zero point,” he added. “The days of the tank are truly over.”
Since the interview, Russia has continued to extend the range of its FPV drones, partially through the use of “motherships,” drone platforms such as the Orlan and Molniya that can carry FPV drones much further and drop them behind enemy lines. An Oct. 9 report from the Institute for the Study of War said the “grey zone” behind the biggest hotspots on the front was over 15 miles.
The “grey zone” is set to continue its expansion, with some newer drones boasting ranges of over 37 miles.
Ukraine has struggled to recreate this success. Ukrainian drone commander Yurii Fedorenko noted that due to Russia’s vastly greater manpower and resources, Rubikon had the ability to rapidly scale up its drone units while Ukraine could not. Ukraine has compensated by embracing a decentralized structure that allows flexibility and adaptation, but at the cost of scale and coordination.
Perhaps Ukraine’s biggest drone success in 2025 was Operation Spider, a complex covert operation that saw shipping containers placed within FPV range of Russia’s heavy bomber airfields in Siberia. Several irreplaceable bombers were destroyed and several more damaged in the first operation of its kind.
Ukraine’s other big drone success in 2025 was its long-range drone strikes against Russian oil infrastructure. Though the strikes failed to have any discernable impact on the Russian economy, as was the goal, they continually revealed Russian security weaknesses and diverted some resources from the front lines to counter the attacks.
Russia took the lead on long-range strike drones as well, streamlining and maximizing production of its Geran drones, based on the Iranian Shahed design. The cheap drones were produced in the tens of thousands for the first time in 2025, a year that saw the greatest use of the drones by far.
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A report from Ukraine’s general staff found that in the three months before August 2024, Russia launched a total of 1,100 drones. It escalated over the ensuing three months to 818 in August 2024, 1,410 in September 2024, and over 2,000 in October 2024. By May, the number was over 4,000, with the number never dipping below 4,000 per month for the rest of the year. An analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security noted a peak of launches in July, with 6,297 launched in total.
Even worse for the Ukrainians was the increase in the quality of Geran drones. The increasing adoption of jets on the drones, fortifying them against electronic warfare through the integration of measures such as 16‑element CRPA antennas, and the integration of live cameras and modems to allow for evasive maneuvers have made the drones much more effective in evading air defenses, and much more destructive.
An ISIS report found a massive increase in successful Geran strikes throughout 2025, with the average successful hit going from 3.42% in January to 18.67% in October. Some strike waves reached an unprecedentedly successful hit rate of 50-60%.
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The figures reflect the increased capabilities of Russia’s Geran drones, but also the success of Moscow’s degradation campaign against Ukraine’s air defenses.
While 2025 saw some of the most rapid advances in military drone technology, 2026 could see even more progress. Outside of areas of focus in 2025, such as widespread adoption of fiber optic cables, improving range, and boosting production, 2026 could witness the integration of Artificial Intelligence, mass production and adoption of drone interceptors, and the full integration of laser weapons to counter cheap drones.
