1OCT

Brave1 Market takes 590,000 drone orders

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15:21UTC

Ukrainian brigades ordered more than 590,000 drones through Brave1 Market in nine months, paying with points earned for confirmed results.

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TechnologyAssessed

Key takeaway

Ukrainian brigades ordered over 590,000 drones themselves this year as approvals of new designs accelerated.

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.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Ukraine's army uses huge numbers of small drones to scout and to strike Russian forces. Instead of a central office buying all of them, the government runs Brave1 Market, an online shop where frontline units choose drones themselves. Units pay with ePoints, a kind of credit they earn for confirmed results such as destroying enemy equipment. Before a company can sell a drone through the system, the defence ministry must approve, or codify, the design. Some newer drones are steered through a thin cable rather than by radio, so enemy jamming cannot cut them off.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Electronic warfare drove the design shift. Jammers cut the radio link of most small drones, so fibre-optic control, which trails a cable instead, has become a default requirement, and 231 of the 650 approvals now use it.

The ministry's codification by type also shows where the next demand sits: 42 interceptor drones, 32 middle-strike and nine deep-strike systems were approved alongside the copters. Interceptors answer Russia's Shahed-type attack drones, and the deep-strike types reach targets far behind the front.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Fibre-optic control becomes a standard Ukrainian requirement, pushing radio-only designs to the margins of state buying.
Opportunity
Approved Ukrainian interceptor and deep-strike designs give European partners a catalogue to co-produce if exports open.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: In August the ministry said Ukrainian forces strike targets with more than 70 AI and computer-vision systems and that more than 200 companies build AI-enabled drones (ID:5746). The 650 codified systems show the same breadth reaching the formal approval stage, where a design becomes something the state can buy.

Counter-parallel: The Pentagon's Gauntlet I, a central fly-off that chose suppliers for the front, had left a large share of its ordered drones undelivered by late August. Ukraine's model lets units choose and reorder from many approved makers instead of waiting on a few chosen ones.

Nearly 91 per cent of the 1,526 weapon and equipment models newly codified in the first eight months of 2026 were Ukrainian-made, according to the ministry. Drone approvals therefore feed money almost entirely into domestic industry.

The ministry gives no hryvnia total and no supplier count for Brave1 Market. Without them, nobody outside Kyiv can tell whether orders are spread across many makers or concentrated in a few.

Consensus view: Ukraine's Ministry of Defence presents ePoints as a demand signal: brigades spend credit earned for results on the drones that work for them. Its 25 September release says orders for fixed-wing kamikaze drones peaked at six times their January level, which points to units buying deeper strike over short-range FPV (first-person-view) copters.

Counter-view: Ukrainian makers may be outgrowing the home market. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disclosed in March that about ten Ukrainian drone factories had been built abroad to work around the wartime export ban, so makers are already looking past Brave1 Market for buyers.

Key tension: Whether a points-funded domestic marketplace can absorb the output of hundreds of approved designs, or whether Kyiv will have to open exports to keep makers solvent.

Sources:Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (via GlobalSecurity.org)·Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (via GlobalSecurity.org)·Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (via GlobalSecurity.org)

Mentions:Brave1 →Ukraine →Gauntlet I →Pentagon →Kyiv →Volodymyr Zelenskyy →Russian forces →Ukraine's Ministry of Defence →

First Reported In

Update #18 · Four EU states skip tenders on drone defence

Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (via GlobalSecurity.org)· 1 Oct 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Ukraine fields 70-plus AI strike systems

Brave1 listed 46 AI products in August; unit orders through Brave1 Market reached 590,000 by September.

Occurred 18 Aug 2026

Read story →

This Event

Brave1 Market takes 590,000 drone orders

Ukraine has moved much of its drone buying from a central ministry to the units that fly them, and is approving new designs faster.

Different Perspectives

Israel Defense Forces (Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir)

The IDF finalised a new Unmanned Systems and Artificial Intelligence Branch on 10 September, with full inauguration expected by early December. Israel is reorganising its forces around drones while Israeli suppliers pass into foreign hands: US-listed Ondas bought the fuze maker GATE on 14 September.

EHang (chairman and chief executive Huazhi Hu)

EHang withdrew its 600 million yuan revenue guidance on 25 August, blaming a more cautious Chinese regulator after industry air incidents. China's leading pilotless-aircraft maker now seeks first approvals in Sri Lanka and Thailand while US tariffs and FCC rules shut Chinese parts out of allied supply chains.

DroneShield

The Australian firm won one of ten Domestic Shield ceilings, $500m, on 29 September, while its FY2027-and-beyond committed revenue stood at A$46m. Its own filing warns investors that the US award may never turn into orders.

Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War

In a speech at Quantico on 30 September Hegseth announced AUTOWARCOM, a four-star drone command targeted for 1 October 2027 if Congress agrees, and called Drone Dominance and JIATF-401 a good start. He wants one command with its own budget to buy at the scale those two efforts have not reached.

Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA)

A DAPA-chaired committee approved a 2.16 trillion won domestic programme on 15 September for an army vertical take-off reconnaissance drone, running from 2027 to 2036. Seoul is choosing slow domestic development over urgent imports for its divisional surveillance.

Taiwan's Executive Yuan (Cabinet)

After the Legislative Yuan voted 60 to 50 on 27 August for a baseline of NT$40bn a year, in principle, for domestic drones and rejected its special budget, the Cabinet said on 30 August it would expedite funding and indicated it would co-sign the act. Taipei gets a statutory domestic market but loses a ring-fenced multi-year fund.