Trained on Classified Battlefield Data, AI Multiplies Effectiveness of Ukraine's Drones

![Military mobility of Ukrainian soldiers continues in Chasiv Yar](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2025/03/250305_ukraine_fpv_drone_pilots_GettyImages-2195601382-e1741213707203.jpg)Ukrainian soldiers, nicknamed ‘Doc’ and ‘Dean’, work together on piloting a FPV as 112th brigade of 244th battalion from Ukrainian army operates surveillance and FPV drone attacks against Russians defending their positions in the horizon in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine on January 17, 2025. (Photo by Andre Luis Alves/Anadolu via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Ukraine has taken publicly available AI models, retrained them on its own extensive real-world data from frontline combat, and deployed them on a variety of drones — increasing their odds of hitting Russian targets “three- or four-fold,” according to a new thinktank report.

“By removing the need for constant manual control and stable communications … drones enabled with autonomous navigation raise the target engagement success rate from 10 to 20 percent to around 70 to 80 percent,” writes Ukrainian-American scholar [Kateryna Bondar](https://www.csis.org/people/kateryna-bondar), a former advisor to Kyiv, in a [new report](https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-future-vision-and-current-capabilities-waging-ai-enabled-autonomous-warfare) released today by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “These systems can often achieve objectives using just one or two drones per target rather than eight or nine.”

To be clear, Ukraine has not built the Terminator. “We’re very far from killer robots,” Bondar told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview. But in contrast to the more cautious bureaucracy of the West, she said, “the Ukrainians are more open to testing and trying anything and everything that can kill more Russians.”

The AI in question, Bondar explains, relies on the human to select a target; only then can the AI make the final approach on its own, autonomously flying the last 100 to 1,000 meters. While very limited, this autonomous final approach is still a huge improvement over most drones on both sides of the war, which require a human hand on the controls to guide them all the way to impact. If that human hand is too tired, shaking with fear, or just poorly trained, or if the control signal is disrupted by increasingly omnipresent frontline [radio jamming](https://breakingdefense.com/tag/electronic-warfare/), the remote-controlled drone will crash uselessly into the countryside.

For now, Bondar found the vast majority of Ukrainian drones still require human control all the way to the target. Of nearly 2 million put on contract by Kyiv in 2024 — 96 percent of which, incidentally, were built in Ukraine — the report says only 10,000 that definitely used AI guidance, less than half of one percent. (The actual total may be much higher, she cautioned). While 10,000 may seem a lot by the standards of anemic Western peacetime procurement, [by some estimates](https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/

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