“I am honored to lead this revolutionary force.” With those words Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi took command of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, a branch built to fight with drones and nothing else. Eurasian Times reported the formal launch ceremony in Kyiv on June 11, 2024.
The idea came from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who floated it in February 2024 and then signed the decree creating a separate armed forces branch. Ukraine claims it as the first of its kind. Deputy Defense Minister Ivan Havryliuk put it bluntly at the launch: “Ukraine is the only country in the world that has created the Unmanned Systems Forces.”
The man in charge
Sukharevskyi, 39, goes by the callsign “Borsuk,” Ukrainian for badger. He is a Hero of Ukraine and has fought Russian forces since 2014. Interesting Engineering notes he gave the first order to open fire on Russian fighters during the April 2014 seizure of Donetsk.
He told the audience the new branch marked a break from “conservative approaches.” His line: Ukraine was “preparing for the war of the future, not for the war of the past.” Units already running their own drone control systems stay where they are, he said, so that existing operations are not disrupted.
Why a separate branch
The drone war grew from improvisation. Ukrainian troops started with commercial DJI Mavic models for reconnaissance and dropping grenades, then moved to first-person view drones that hit enemy personnel and vehicles. Over two years they added land and water drones to make up for shortages of heavy weapons, artillery and fighter jets. Naval drones, Ukrainian MP Vadym Ivchenko noted, helped defeat the Russian Black Sea fleet even though Ukraine had no fully fledged navy to speak of.
Numbers back up the push. Sukharevskyi said the state delivered “six times more drones than in the entire year of 2023” to the armed forces in the first five months of 2024. The Kyiv Independent reported a target of one million drones for the year, with thousands more pledged by international partners.
The new force has a stated job: to “improve Ukraine’s work with drones, form special drone-specific units, and improve the production, training, and innovation of unmanned vehicles.” Havryliuk framed the long-term aim as the capacity to “replace a person in the trench, at sea, in the air, and underwater.”
Even the emblem carries a message. An iron swallow, designed with the help of artificial intelligence, stands for Ukraine’s shift from vulnerability to resilience. The Kyiv Independent later reported that Zelensky signed legislation formalizing the branch on September 16, 2024, and described it as the youngest in Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Sources
- Ukraine Launches World's 1st Unmanned Systems Forces; Masters Robotic War Across Land, Sea & Air
- Ukraine Creates World's First Dedicated Drone Force to Counter Russia
- Zelensky Signs Law Establishing Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces
