Key findings — original analysis
72% sortie rate increase in 10 months
FPV strike flights increased from 49,874 in June 2025 to 85,915 in March 2026 — a 72% increase from a standing start. This is not incremental growth but the signature of an institution that had, within a single operational year, moved FPV employment from experimental deployment to primary weapons system.
Effectiveness improves with scale
Strike efficiency (damaged targets per 1,000 sorties) rose from 394 in June 2025 to 433 by March 2026. This refutes the conventional assumption that mass deployment degrades precision. Effectiveness improved as scale increased, suggesting the organisational infrastructure built around FPV employment matured faster than operational tempo outran it.
Drone-on-drone: 93% destruction rate
Enemy copter drones show 6,252 damaged and 5,817 destroyed — a 93% destruction rate, the highest in the dataset. Counter-drone has emerged as a primary FPV mission type within the study period, representing a doctrinal evolution with no historical precedent.
Lethality paradox
Personnel kill rate declined from ~59% to ~49.6% as sorties scaled. This reflects mission diversification — from high-value targeted strikes toward area suppression — rather than declining capability. Strategic impact was generated through volume and coverage rather than per-strike lethality.
Live data — UAV kill board
—Damaged targets
—Incl. destroyed
—Strike flights
—Personnel hit
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Methodology
Data sourced from the USF Pidrakhuyka kill board (sbs-group.army/en/subdivision/usf_grouping). Figures represent USF-verified confirmed hits only. Updated manually each quarter. Analysis by Andro Mathewson, PhD Candidate in War Studies, King's College London.