Ukraine gamifies the war: 40 points to destroy a tank, 12 to kill a soldier

The Ukrainian drone zeroed in on the two Russian soldiers riding a motorcycle just after 9 am on July 19, closer and closer, until it swooped down to hit its mark and the camera went dark. 

It was a high-value target for the drone operator’s regiment: worth as many as 24 points, to be exact. In a real-world game run by the Ukrainian government, regiments are being rewarded with points for successful attacks. 

Wound a Russian soldier? Eight points. Kill one? That is good for 12. A Russian drone pilot is worth more: 15 points for wounding one, and 25 points for a kill. Capturing a Russian soldier alive with the help of a drone is the jackpot: 120 points.

“It’s a brutal game — human lives turned into points,” said Stun, 33, a drone commander for the Ukrainian unmanned systems regiment known as Achilles. In keeping with military protocol, he goes by only his call sign. 

The Ukrainian government set up the competition in August 2024, although that was more of a soft launch, a beta version. Teams compete for points to acquire Ukrainian-made gear, including basic surveillance drones and larger drones carrying powerful explosives, through an internal Amazon-style weapons store called Brave1 Market. The store first went online in April of this year and was expanded in August. 

The more points a unit gets, the better stuff it can buy, ensuring that resources are directed to the teams that best use them. It is a digital-age, instant-gratification twist on time-honoured rewards for soldiers like medals and promotions, with the winnings plowed back into the war effort. 

Drone teams submit videos of their successful strikes to a central office in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, where experts review them to decide who gets points based on time stamps and verified destruction, said Mykhailo Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, who helped devise the program. 

Officials argue that the competition keeps troops energised after three and a half years of war, with drone operators facing constant stress from witnessing violence on live video feeds. 

“This helps us stop the enemy,” said Fedorov, the digital minister. “If this gives additional motivation to our military,” he added, “we are happy to support it.” Weaponised drones have long raised concerns that they dehumanise war by allowing soldiers to kill with the click of a button, at a remove from the battlefield.  

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have vied for a technological edge, fielding self-destructing drones, long-range drones, jet drones, fiber-optic drones, drones that intercept other drones and, soon, swarms of drones guided by artificial intelligence. The Russians have their own version of a battlefield competition, paying bonuses like $2,400 for destroying a helicopter or $12,000 for capturing a Leopard tank. 

Ukraine’s online weapons marketplace is an extension of the do-it-yourself ethos that has defined the country’s drone procurement since the start of the war, including collecting donations to buy consumer drones and hacking them to make them deadly. More than 400 drone teams compete. Some infantry units that did not have full-fledged drone units have created them to be able to use the point system and earn equipment, soldiers said. 

The contest awards points for hitting both Russian soldiers and their equipment. Demolishing a Russian multiple-launch rocket system can earn up to 70 points. Destroying a tank is worth 40 points; damaging one yields 20. As tanks have become easy targets for drones, limiting their usefulness on the battlefield, those points have become much harder to earn. 

“These days, spotting enemy vehicles is extremely rare,” said a drone pilot working with Stun who goes by the call sign Red and claims 45 confirmed kills. “And if one does show up, like coming out of a forest, there’s basically a line of drones waiting to strike it.” 

The Ukrainian government has adjusted the point values to respond to Russia’s changing tactics. When the competition was introduced, the death of a Russian soldier earned only two points. In October 2024, that increased to six, which was doubled in May. 

So far, units across the Ukrainian military have ordered more than 80,000 drones and electronic-warfare systems using points through Brave1 Market, equipment worth more than $96 million, said Fedorov. 

An online leaderboard lists the top 10 drone teams every month, although point totals are not made public. 

There are still kinks — the system is new, after all. Some unit commanders have said that the new drones did not arrive quickly enough, and some soldiers have complained that they destroyed valuable Russian equipment that was not worth any points.