August 17, 2026: When Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea 14 years ago, the Ukrainians were jolted into making a nearly continuous string of military reforms to the present. These began with accepting NATO offers to retrain the Ukrainian military to operate using more innovation and flexibility. These were advantages the previous Soviet Union-style military lacked. Ukraine became independent in 1991 when the Soviet Union went bankrupt and collapsed.

Ukrainians recognized the importance of initiative and entrepreneurial spirit. Once in the military, new soldiers reached back home to friends and family for needed equipment, especially drones. The development of drones in Ukraine was enhanced by all the friends and family members of Ukrainian soldiers who didn’t just send their soldiers what they said they needed, but searched around on the internet, social networks, and among friends for ideas and help in developing those ideas into something useful in a combat zone.

The Ukrainian army is organized into brigades, and each brigade commander and his staff can deal directly with manufacturers to obtain new equipment or items developed by soldiers. Not just drones but additions to combat uniforms, anti-drone nets, and anything the brigade members found useful with their handmade prototypes of new items. The brigade commander has a budget for this, which is often augmented by the friends and families of soldiers under his command. While army-wide standardization suffers, the combat gains and other brigades' ability to copy successful ideas make it all worthwhile. This is obvious when you read the internet and social networks chatter of soldiers who survived because of some civilian’s crazy idea that worked.

Ukrainian drone proliferation began when many individual Ukrainians, or small teams of civilians, designed and built drones. The drones became candidates for widespread use and mass production. This proliferation of designers and manufacturers drove rapid evolution in drone capabilities and uses. Those who could not keep up were less successful in combat and suffered higher losses. Each month, Ukrainian factories and home workshops built nearly 400,000 drones. Most of these workshops are informal, located in spare rooms, garages, barns, empty industrial space, or anywhere protected from the weather and aerial surveillance. Russia will hit any drone manufacturing sites they can identify.

One result of the Ukraine War was the emergence of inexpensive drones as a decisive weapon as well as a reconnaissance and surveillance system. In 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainians were building their own drones, often at home or in scattered workshops. By late 2024, Ukrainians were producing over 15o,000 drones a month. In 2025, Ukraine produced over 4 million drones. By purchasing components in bulk, thousands of Ukrainian men and women are building these drones for the armed forces or for someone they know in the military. Troops at the front also build and modify drones to fit their immediate situations. For the soldiers, designing better drones is often a matter of life or death.

This competitiveness led to First Person View (FPV) drones, as well as drones guided via Fiber-Optic cable Guidance, or FOG. Electronic jamming was useless against the FOG drones. The only limitation was cable length. This meant the operator had to be at one end of the kilometers-long cable. Operators could be farther away if they had time to lay another kilometer or two of cable farther back. Ukrainian drone operators often worked in drone workshops before entering the military and were accustomed to upgrading drone operator equipment while in the combat zone. They shared successful innovations with workshop operators across Ukraine.

This is how the Ukrainians maintain a lead over the Russians in drone technology and production. The Russian government discourages, or even outlaws, individuals building drones and centralizes drone production. This gives the Ukrainians an edge in drone quantity and quality. The Ukrainians are defending their homeland, and Russia is having an increasingly difficult time justifying continued fighting and over a million Russians killed or disabled in Ukraine.

NATO countries are trying to adopt drone technology and use it for their own armed forces. Ukraine has received over $200 billion in military and economic assistance from NATO countries and shares their drone experience and technology with their benefactors. Drones have revolutionized warfare and are causing 70 percent of casualties in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is a battle between industrialized countries employing modern weapons. It is the war of the future, and all armed forces must adopt it to remain competitive.

Last year, Ukraine equipped its combat brigades with ground-based combat and transport robots in addition to drones. The ground robots come in different versions. Some are used for planting and removing landmines. Other drones advance along the ground while firing remotely controlled machine guns. These systems can fire accurately at moving targets day and night. Drones also transport supplies to the front lines and carry casualties back to first aid stations and field hospitals. The growing number of Ukrainian drone systems were developed based on reports from the front line troops. They quickly put those ideas to use because of wartime urgency.

Last year, Ukraine once more made it legal for military-age men to leave the country. In 2021, 20 million Ukrainians lived outside Ukraine. Since 2022, that number has increased each year; last year, the Ukrainian population was about 39 million, and the government has been seeking ways to improve morale while sustaining the fight against Russian invaders.

One implemented proposal was establishing universal training for 18- to 22-year-old men. For those still in school, universities and other post-high school institutions now offer mandatory training for male students as a standalone subject. Training consists of 90 hours of theoretical instruction followed by 210 hours of practical training. Subjects include basic methods of military service, first aid, and operational tactics before they move to hands-on exercises in specialized training centers. This approach is meant to make trainees more confident about military service and less likely to flee the country out of fear of what might happen if they went to war.

Ukrainians have been fighting the Russians for nearly five years and are seeking to institutionalize the military lessons they have learned. The Russians are now short of resources and still operate under economic sanctions. Ukraine believes that with improved training for all their personnel, they will reduce their own casualties while increasing those of the Russians. Vladimir Putin vowed to keep fighting for as long as it took. That will be an empty promise if Putin discovers that a major change in troop quality makes Russian military efforts futile and very costly in men and resources.

Ukraine already has some units that adopted these improved methods before the war but never had time or resources to retrain everyone. Over the last year, Ukrainians have standardized troop training and adopted methods that combine what they've learned so far. They did this by adopting what worked, discarding what didn’t, and gradually retraining units that weren't using the most effective methods. All new recruits would be taught the new techniques, even if it lengthened basic training.

NATO nations add individual training for sergeants and officers, some of it delivered via videos, including interactive versions. European NATO members play a larger role in this retraining because they are close enough, often adjacent, to Ukraine to receive Ukrainian trainees and send them back quickly after training is complete.

The Americans have been using the Center for Army Lessons Learned, or CALL, since the 1980s. CALL personnel have been compiling and organizing lessons learned in Ukraine for the Ukrainian. The CALL concept and its implementation were among the factors behind the revised training program. The reduced casualties encouraged more Ukrainian men to join and persuaded some military-age men who fled the country to return.

By 2023, the Ukrainian military had grown to 700,000 troops plus over a quarter million police, border guard, and reserves available. By 2025, that grew to 900,000. About fifteen percent of these personnel were women who, except for some snipers, handled support tasks. Several hundred thousand civilian workers also handled support tasks. This was a Soviet military practice. When Ukraine became independent as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it retained some Soviet military practices. Unlike the Russians, who continue to send barely trained recruits into combat, Ukraine learned from NATO, particularly American, experience. Ukrainian soldiers received considerably more training than their Russian counterparts and were more lethal and less susceptible to combat losses.

Ukrainian military reforms took different forms. Two months after Russia invaded, the fighting in eastern Ukraine (Donbas) has been continuous since April 2014, despite a February 2015 ceasefire agreement. That ceasefire was supposed to lead to a resolution of this conflict but failed to do so and intensified in 2022 when Russia invaded. The Donbas fighting led to reforms in the Ukrainian military that played a major role in stopping the 2022 invasion meant to conquer all of Ukraine.

Russia used irregular warfare to take Crimea in 2014 and parts of Donbas a few months later. Russia used special operations forces and lots of money to grab territory but failed in Donbas after working in Crimea and a 2008 operation in Georgia. The Russian 2014 attacks quickly transformed the disarray of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as untrained and under-equipped as they really were, into a potent fighting force as a surge of Ukrainian nationalism and improvisation mobilized a force that stopped the advance in Donbas.

In addition to thousands of combat and support volunteers, the government mobilized local defense industries to supply the weapons, ammo, and equipment Ukrainian forces needed. This was helped by the fact that Ukraine still had conscription. Most males 18 years and older had some military experience. Despite the surge in patriotism during 2015, some 50 percent of men drafted that year refused to show up. At the same time, up to 16,000 Ukrainian troops in the Donbas area deserted. This lack of faith in the traditional Ukrainian military was justified by its outdated bureaucracy and culture, which emphasized large numbers of unwilling troops forced to do whatever they were told. It soon became obvious in Donbas that a flexible approach to warfare was needed, one that motivated volunteer soldiers. That was a refreshing change for the Ukrainian military. Since independence in 1991, Ukrainians were not enthusiastic about military service. After conscription, fewer than 20 percent of conscripts showed any interest in a military career. This was often for financial reasons, not just lack of enthusiasm for the Ukrainian military.

Change was needed, and Ukrainian military leaders realized that. In 2006, military training in Ukraine was focused on developing mobility and combat readiness and participating in international exercises. This was all about a Ukrainian attempt to reform its military and reequip its forces to defend against any future threat from an increasingly hostile Russia. But the plan came at the worst possible time, as the 2008 financial crisis not only made the reforms impossible to implement but also left the Ukrainian military unable to maintain current levels of training and equipment. Unit training declined because units equipped with tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs) halted most training because the military could not afford fuel. This had a similar impact on aircraft training, as the average number of flight hours per pilot fell by half. The result is that Ukrainian pilots entered the 2014 war with badly degraded skills. Very few pilots were qualified to fly at night, in bad weather, or to carry out strikes against ground targets. Using all resources available once the Donbas war began, the Ukrainian armed forces partially recovered soon after the war started. But combat-ready forces remained well below their pre-2008 strength. In early 2014, Ukraine only had 6,000 combat-ready soldiers out of its 130,000 active military personnel.

Ukraine got some foreign help. By early 2015, Ukraine, the U.S., Britain, and Canada established JMTG-U (Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine) and set up three new training sites in Ukraine. To prevent further territorial losses, Ukraine desperately needed updated weapons and equipment. Fortunately, Ukraine was where the pre-1991 Soviet Union concentrated most of its weapons and equipment reserves during the Cold War, for battles with NATO that never happened. Ukraine also contained a large share of Soviet factories that produced military equipment, and these, along with the stored weapons, became Ukrainian when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Ukraine became independent. Corruption in Ukraine did not help because some of the best weapons were sold off and government officials stole much of the money instead of using it to defend Ukraine. By 2016, due to much improved training, 77 percent of its 260,000 active military personnel (75 percent of then conscripts) were combat ready. Ukraine’s troops also received more modern tanks, APCs, and other combat equipment.

The Russian-backed Donbas rebels, calling themselves the United Armed Forces of Novorossiya, consisted of many different armed groups that were run by the Donetsk Operational Command. Russia established this headquarters in May 2016. While the rebels were primarily militia, they eventually formed two tank battalions and several other specialized units, while the rest were light infantry. Eventually, rebels formed two corps headquarters, one for DPR and one for LNR. The rebel militias initially used only equipment produced in Ukraine before 2014. By the end of 2014, that changed, and the rebels began using weapons that were not available in Ukraine. This eventually included Russian military equipment that had never been exported.

The DPR received more of these obviously Russian-made weapons, including late-model MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) and tanks. Despite this, Russia continued to deny supplying arms to the rebels, despite Ukrainian forces capturing some of it and publishing photos. A growing number of “rebels” were also captured who admitted they were Russian soldiers. Among such obviously Russian equipment encountered (and sometimes captured from the rebels) were armored vehicles modified with Russian components. These included T-72B3 and T-72BA tanks, BTR-82AM infantry fighting vehicles, BPM-97 armored personnel carriers, Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft systems, GAZ Vodnik multipurpose vehicles, late model MT-LB (M1970) Multi-Purpose Tracked Vehicles, MRO-A self-contained, disposable single shot 72.5 mm rocket launchers, Kornet anti-tank missiles, ASVK anti-materiel rifles, and VSS sniper rifles. The conflict in Donbas was notable for the large number and multiple types of armored vehicles operated by the rebels. Still, there was no evidence that the rebels had established facilities to repair or upgrade so many vehicles.

While Ukrainian forces were resolute and brave in halting the Russian-supported rebels, it was obvious that Ukraine would have to be supplied with more effective weapons and equipment to deal with the increasing quantities of artillery, armored vehicles, and electronic warfare gear the rebels were receiving from Russia. Before 2014, the Ukrainian government refused to upgrade and expand the domestic arms industry because of the expense and opposition from corrupt procurement bureaucrats. The upsurge in patriotism in Ukraine during 2014, which also surprised the Russians, enabled Ukraine to quickly and effectively enact production and procurement reforms. This was remarkably effective, and by mid-2015 the Russian-backed rebels, despite all their new weapons and seeming endless supplies of ammo, were confronted with a stalemate that has become a military buffer zone between Ukraine and Russia. This rearmament focused on using Ukraine's existing weapons infrastructure and repairing and refurbishing existing equipment. By February 2018, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were larger and better equipped than ever before. At that point, Ukraine had 200,000 active-duty military personnel. This included successfully integrating most of the volunteer territorial defense battalions into the armed forces.

Diplomatic developments also discouraged the Russians. In February 2019, amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution took effect, confirming Ukraine’s intention to join both the European Union (EU) and NATO. To prepare for joining NATO, Ukraine advanced significantly in maintaining and developing its internal arms industry (keeping money circulating in Ukraine) and donating or selling surplus equipment and spare parts to users of Soviet-manufactured equipment that Ukraine already uses. Examples include decommissioned tanks, helicopters, and both transport and combat aircraft. In addition to tanks, Ukraine developed new equipment such as the BTR-4 APC. Since the beginning of fighting in Donbas, BTR-4s were successfully deployed by the Ukrainian ground forces and proved to be highly effective on the battlefield.

By April 2019, with a total of 250,000 personnel, Ukraine’s military forces were the third largest in Europe. Those forces were primarily composed of ethnic Ukrainians, making the military more cohesive than the general population. The Ukrainian military was now mostly a volunteer force, mainly because everyone was convinced of the benefits of highly motivated recruits rather than many unenthusiastic conscripts. This large force was necessary to monitor and guard key locations in Ukraine, such as the eastern border to Donbas, access from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait to the port of Mariupol, and the Ukrainian Navy base in Odesa.