Ukrainian units ordered more than 590,000 drones through Brave1 Market in the first nine months of 2026, Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said on 25 September1. Brave1 Market is the ordering platform of Brave1, the state defence-technology cluster. Brigades choose a supplier there and pay with ePoints, credits earned for confirmed results such as hits, reconnaissance and evacuations.
That works out at roughly 65,000 drones a month chosen by the units that fly them rather than by a central buyer. The ministry says the average monthly value of orders has more than doubled since January, and that orders for fixed-wing kamikaze drones peaked at six times their January level. It gave no hryvnia total and no supplier count, so the volume cannot be turned into a price per drone. In August the ministry said Brave1 listed 46 AI products.
The ministry has also codified 650 drone systems since January, among them 238 strike copters and 231 fibre-optic systems2. Codification is the approval a Ukrainian maker needs before the state can buy its product. Fibre-optic drones trail a thin cable instead of using a radio link, so a jammer cannot cut them off, and they now nearly match strike copters among approved designs.
The ministry had reported 413 codified systems by mid-July3. By Lowdown's calculation from those two figures, approvals ran at about 100 a month from mid-July, against about 63 a month before: roughly 1.6 times the earlier pace. A system that pays brigades for results only works if they have a wide catalogue to choose from, and codification is how Kyiv widens it.
