5 ms·

One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to

One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle. It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.

homeonthemtn 3mo ago
I hadn't heard this before. Do you have a good article on it? I'd be curious to learn more
- abejfehr 3mo ago
  They might be referring to the e-Points system, where hitting targets awards points and you can trade the points in for drones, etc
  - zhengyi13 3mo ago
    They literally gamified it? Amazing.
    - esseph 3mo ago
      From what I remember: Equipment was worth more than a capture. Capture was worth more than a kill (get Intel, trade for Ukranian captives). Kill was xyz points. The more points, the more weapons, equipment, and support you got. This was several years ago, I'm not sure its still in play.
      - elictronic 3mo ago
        It is. Article from last month. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-steers-units-toward-more-strategic-targets-2026-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-stee...
        fragmede 3mo ago
        That's fascinating, thank you for sharing. A market economy lets individual optimize from the bottom up.
    - holoduke 3mo ago
      People talk like Ukraine is the first one doing this. Already in WW2 pilots had similar gamification where proof had to be filmed or with minimum witnesses. It probably goed back even further.
- Someone 3mo ago
  https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/over-181-000-drones-ug-vs-ew-systems-and-other-equipment-were-supplied-to-the-front-via-the-e-points-system-in-2026 https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/over-181-000-drones-ug-vs-ew-syst... https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-to-be-rewarded-for-sniper-operations-and-lower-tier-air-defense-missions https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-... https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-points-for-drone-and-technology-components https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-point...
tpurves 3mo ago
this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply. However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.
- mcswell 3mo ago
  Reminds me of the Cambrian revolution: suddenly there were all kinds of weird animals. Many of these kinds rapidly disappeared, while a few more successful ones kept on. Or at least that's my reading.
  - QuercusMax 3mo ago
    For more reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
    - shimman 3mo ago
      There's something hilarious, in the truly cosmic sense of the word, about discussing an "explosion" that spanned between 10 to 25 millions of years of its duration. Wonder how xenoanthropologists will discuss the "simian explosion" that we're currently experiencing (barely 300,000 years old ATM).
  - Animats 3mo ago
    Look at 1950s aircraft. That was the decade of really weird aircraft, as people figured out how jets were supposed to work. Supersonics. VTOL aircraft. The X-planes. Rocket-assisted takeoff. After that, more was known about what worked, and designs became more similar.
lopsotronic 3mo ago
You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex. That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
- bix6 3mo ago
  I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports?
  - galangalalgol 3mo ago
    Ukraine seems pretty paranoid about this, having backup suppliers for parts. Looks like they take efficiency hits and build more complicated things out of multiple discrete chips that would normally be ontegrated commercially so that they can go to suppliers in Oceania, eurasia, or eastasia depending on who is being helpful.
  - cyberax 3mo ago
    Which supplies? Batteries are produced everywhere. Power electronics are dime-a-dozen. IMUs, GPS chips, and CPUs are produced in Taiwan anyway.
    - klooney 3mo ago
      If China/Taiwan kicks off, you're not getting new parts from Taiwan
      - cyberax 3mo ago
        The US can produce these chips. South Korea can also do that.
tim-tday 3mo ago
Procurement innovation wins the war.
LPisGood 3mo ago
The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture than they do for a kill.
tencentshill 3mo ago
Because it's a defensive war for their own homeland, not just a job.
- Zancarius 3mo ago
  This is true. The outcome is also terrifying. The asymmetric warfare that has been enabled by inexpensive drone tech has so many vast implications that I'm not even sure we've seen every possible avenue this could explore. If either side isn't willing to completely obliterate civilian manufacturing centers, it enables long-term protracted warfare without an obvious end. On the other hand, even obliterating civilian areas might not be an "end game" in its own right if external interests were to keep flooding the front lines with drones. FPV capabilities make conventional guidance systems a little less important, and while fiber has its weaknesses and wireless systems can be jammed, the psychological aspect of never quite knowing when a drone could be waiting in the midst of one's unit is deeply unsettling.
holoduke 3mo ago
Ukraine / Russia war is not a real war yet. It's a gentleman's war. If parties want to go all in, even without nuclear weapons it would mean a lot of civilian casualties. Millions would die. It's waiting for when this is gonna happen. Only then we know what real war means.
- s1artibartfast 3mo ago
  It's a real war but not a total war, and the degree is different per side. I would say it's closer for Ukraine, which has implemented forced conscription, which is pretty far down the path to a total war. There are of course tactics and strategies they have not enacted, that's not obvious which of those would be beneficial to the war effort in a non obvious way. All wars but specially modern Wars have to balance the possibility of publicity blowback or the population giving up the will to fight
pj_mukh 3mo ago
Woah cool! Any write up’s on this?
- jefe_ 3mo ago
  Interesting & detailed interview with founder of a Ukranian drone manufacturer. Talks about procurement around 10 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlSMz_vtSwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlSMz_vtSwg
ExoticPearTree 3mo ago
As a "sitting on my couch" war expert, I think future combat should be country level semi-organized guerrilla combat style. When every structure, forest etc. tries to kill you, it might changed the adversary's opinion on how much they want your land. On the other hand, if they just want to kill you for the sake of killing you, that's another story and the enemy will probably resort to "carpet bombing".
helsinkiandrew 3mo ago
Units can also collect e-points to purchase more equipment: > The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, Business Insider reported that destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve earned to purchase equipment—drones, drone jamming devices, ammunition, and other goods—on Brave1 Market, an online shopping platform not unlike Amazon. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarjacoby/2025/09/19/kyivs-e-points-drone-marketplace-an-amazon-for-frontline-units/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarjacoby/2025/09/19/kyivs-e-...
- pheaded_while9 3mo ago
  Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out.
  - wahern 3mo ago
    There's nothing new about earning "points" for kills. Warriors have always tallied their kills and displayed their numbers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping, though the rewards were typically accolades, and only indirectly access to more materiel.
    - pheaded_while9 3mo ago
      There is nothing new under the sun. You fail to address my clear moral objection with these irrelevant historical instances. It has no rhetorical value in this context.
      - wahern 3mo ago
        The point was just that gameification is just a modern word that doesn't reflect any change in behaviors. Presumably you were familiar with these practices under previous descriptors. And your moral objections would have been shared by many millions before you, long before gameification was coined. On the other side of the coin to thinking there's something new about the way war is waged are the people who think they can wage war without the same consequences as befell nations before. It's fundamentally the same err, IMO. So I take moral objection to the pretense that there's something morally novel to criticize. This stuff is what happens in war, always. And things can get way worse than this, and will get worse the longer we tolerate open hostilities among nations.
ifwinterco 3mo ago
It’s a mixed blessing because while the competition should lead to better designs it also leads to massive fragmentation in the drones used which has negative consequences for maintenance, training etc compared to the Russian approach of making huge numbers of a few proven designs
throwaway85825 3mo ago
I think the actual purpose of the market is to reduce corruption. When everyone has to publish prices and Pavel pays his mate 3x for the same drone it's easier to flag for auditing.
stevenwoo 3mo ago
I posted this in another reply, but this is relevant to your point about the market place (deeper in article) and for the hacker news audience - the current Defense Minister for Ukraine is a 35 year old from the tech industry, Mykhailo Fedorov https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theory-victory-putin-zelensky-crimea-missiles-deep-strikes-oil-refinieries/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theo...

homeonthemtn 3mo ago

I hadn't heard this before. Do you have a good article on it? I'd be curious to learn more

abejfehr 3mo ago
They might be referring to the e-Points system, where hitting targets awards points and you can trade the points in for drones, etc
- zhengyi13 3mo ago
  They literally gamified it? Amazing.
  - esseph 3mo ago
    From what I remember: Equipment was worth more than a capture. Capture was worth more than a kill (get Intel, trade for Ukranian captives). Kill was xyz points. The more points, the more weapons, equipment, and support you got. This was several years ago, I'm not sure its still in play.
    - elictronic 3mo ago
      It is. Article from last month. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-steers-units-toward-more-strategic-targets-2026-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-stee...
      - fragmede 3mo ago
        That's fascinating, thank you for sharing. A market economy lets individual optimize from the bottom up.
  - holoduke 3mo ago
    People talk like Ukraine is the first one doing this. Already in WW2 pilots had similar gamification where proof had to be filmed or with minimum witnesses. It probably goed back even further.
Someone 3mo ago
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/over-181-000-drones-ug-vs-ew-systems-and-other-equipment-were-supplied-to-the-front-via-the-e-points-system-in-2026 https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/over-181-000-drones-ug-vs-ew-syst... https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-to-be-rewarded-for-sniper-operations-and-lower-tier-air-defense-missions https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-... https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-points-for-drone-and-technology-components https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-point...

tpurves 3mo ago

this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply. However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.

mcswell 3mo ago
Reminds me of the Cambrian revolution: suddenly there were all kinds of weird animals. Many of these kinds rapidly disappeared, while a few more successful ones kept on. Or at least that's my reading.
- QuercusMax 3mo ago
  For more reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
  - shimman 3mo ago
    There's something hilarious, in the truly cosmic sense of the word, about discussing an "explosion" that spanned between 10 to 25 millions of years of its duration. Wonder how xenoanthropologists will discuss the "simian explosion" that we're currently experiencing (barely 300,000 years old ATM).
- Animats 3mo ago
  Look at 1950s aircraft. That was the decade of really weird aircraft, as people figured out how jets were supposed to work. Supersonics. VTOL aircraft. The X-planes. Rocket-assisted takeoff. After that, more was known about what worked, and designs became more similar.

lopsotronic 3mo ago

You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex. That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.

bix6 3mo ago
I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports?
- galangalalgol 3mo ago
  Ukraine seems pretty paranoid about this, having backup suppliers for parts. Looks like they take efficiency hits and build more complicated things out of multiple discrete chips that would normally be ontegrated commercially so that they can go to suppliers in Oceania, eurasia, or eastasia depending on who is being helpful.
- cyberax 3mo ago
  Which supplies? Batteries are produced everywhere. Power electronics are dime-a-dozen. IMUs, GPS chips, and CPUs are produced in Taiwan anyway.
  - klooney 3mo ago
    If China/Taiwan kicks off, you're not getting new parts from Taiwan
    - cyberax 3mo ago
      The US can produce these chips. South Korea can also do that.

tim-tday 3mo ago

Procurement innovation wins the war.

LPisGood 3mo ago

The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture than they do for a kill.

tencentshill 3mo ago

Because it's a defensive war for their own homeland, not just a job.

Zancarius 3mo ago
This is true. The outcome is also terrifying. The asymmetric warfare that has been enabled by inexpensive drone tech has so many vast implications that I'm not even sure we've seen every possible avenue this could explore. If either side isn't willing to completely obliterate civilian manufacturing centers, it enables long-term protracted warfare without an obvious end. On the other hand, even obliterating civilian areas might not be an "end game" in its own right if external interests were to keep flooding the front lines with drones. FPV capabilities make conventional guidance systems a little less important, and while fiber has its weaknesses and wireless systems can be jammed, the psychological aspect of never quite knowing when a drone could be waiting in the midst of one's unit is deeply unsettling.

holoduke 3mo ago

Ukraine / Russia war is not a real war yet. It's a gentleman's war. If parties want to go all in, even without nuclear weapons it would mean a lot of civilian casualties. Millions would die. It's waiting for when this is gonna happen. Only then we know what real war means.

s1artibartfast 3mo ago
It's a real war but not a total war, and the degree is different per side. I would say it's closer for Ukraine, which has implemented forced conscription, which is pretty far down the path to a total war. There are of course tactics and strategies they have not enacted, that's not obvious which of those would be beneficial to the war effort in a non obvious way. All wars but specially modern Wars have to balance the possibility of publicity blowback or the population giving up the will to fight

pj_mukh 3mo ago

Woah cool! Any write up’s on this?

jefe_ 3mo ago
Interesting & detailed interview with founder of a Ukranian drone manufacturer. Talks about procurement around 10 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlSMz_vtSwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlSMz_vtSwg

ExoticPearTree 3mo ago

As a "sitting on my couch" war expert, I think future combat should be country level semi-organized guerrilla combat style. When every structure, forest etc. tries to kill you, it might changed the adversary's opinion on how much they want your land. On the other hand, if they just want to kill you for the sake of killing you, that's another story and the enemy will probably resort to "carpet bombing".

helsinkiandrew 3mo ago

Units can also collect e-points to purchase more equipment: > The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, Business Insider reported that destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve earned to purchase equipment—drones, drone jamming devices, ammunition, and other goods—on Brave1 Market, an online shopping platform not unlike Amazon. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarjacoby/2025/09/19/kyivs-e-points-drone-marketplace-an-amazon-for-frontline-units/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarjacoby/2025/09/19/kyivs-e-...

pheaded_while9 3mo ago
Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out.
- wahern 3mo ago
  There's nothing new about earning "points" for kills. Warriors have always tallied their kills and displayed their numbers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_marking or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping, though the rewards were typically accolades, and only indirectly access to more materiel.
  - pheaded_while9 3mo ago
    There is nothing new under the sun. You fail to address my clear moral objection with these irrelevant historical instances. It has no rhetorical value in this context.
    - wahern 3mo ago
      The point was just that gameification is just a modern word that doesn't reflect any change in behaviors. Presumably you were familiar with these practices under previous descriptors. And your moral objections would have been shared by many millions before you, long before gameification was coined. On the other side of the coin to thinking there's something new about the way war is waged are the people who think they can wage war without the same consequences as befell nations before. It's fundamentally the same err, IMO. So I take moral objection to the pretense that there's something morally novel to criticize. This stuff is what happens in war, always. And things can get way worse than this, and will get worse the longer we tolerate open hostilities among nations.

ifwinterco 3mo ago

It’s a mixed blessing because while the competition should lead to better designs it also leads to massive fragmentation in the drones used which has negative consequences for maintenance, training etc compared to the Russian approach of making huge numbers of a few proven designs

throwaway85825 3mo ago

I think the actual purpose of the market is to reduce corruption. When everyone has to publish prices and Pavel pays his mate 3x for the same drone it's easier to flag for auditing.

stevenwoo 3mo ago

I posted this in another reply, but this is relevant to your point about the market place (deeper in article) and for the hacker news audience - the current Defense Minister for Ukraine is a 35 year old from the tech industry, Mykhailo Fedorov https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theory-victory-putin-zelensky-crimea-missiles-deep-strikes-oil-refinieries/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theo...