Suddenly, Ukraine's A.I. Drones Are Everywhere
Autonomous attack drones are pummeling Russian supply lines
For six months between late 2024 and early 2025, Slovak volunteer Jakub Jajcay served with a Ukrainian first-person-view drone team in eastern Ukraine. “When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool,” Jajcay wrote in an essay published by War On The Rocks. “By the end of my deployment, I was a bit disillusioned,” he added.
Standard FPV drones are “highly susceptible to electronic-warfare jamming,” Jajcay wrote. Electronic warfare, in the form of radio noise that can interfere with a drone’s connection to its operator, throwing it off course.
At the time, Jajcay was right to be disillusioned. But times have changed.
In the months following Jajcay’s tour of duty, a technological paradigm shift largely solved the problem Jacjay considered existential to Ukraine’s drone campaign. The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence for terminal guidance is helping Ukrainian drone units fly and strike even when Russian jamming scrambles vital frequencies.
A.I. can steer an explosive drone to a precision hit even when the human operator loses contact with the drone.
Short-range explosive FPV quadcopters were the first to get A.I. targeting on a large scale, beginning in 2025. Fixed-wing “middle strike” drones were next, in 2026. A.I. FPVs were a helpful development for the Ukrainians. A.I.-assisted middle-strike drones, by contrast, may prove to be a decisive development. Ukrainian industry churns out millions of FPVs and tens of thousands of middle-strike drones every year.
Ranging across the crucial logistical zone stretching around 150 miles from the wide, disputed “gray zone” that threads 700 miles across eastern and southern Ukraine, middle-strike drones with A.I. targeting began relentlessly striking Russian supply convoys starting in the spring of 2026.
