Ukraine's Secret Weapon: The Points System Winning the Drone War | Andrii Hrytseniuk

Ukraine tracks every confirmed drone kill with video evidence, deduplicates the data to prevent double-counting, converts verified strikes into e-points, and delivers newly ordered weapons to frontline units in two weeks instead of twelve months. Andrii Hrytseniuk, CEO of Brave1- Ukraine's government defense innovation agency - joins Craig Smith to explain in precise operational detail how what started as a consumer loyalty program concept became the most consequential military procurement reform in modern warfare. The Army of Drones Bonus Program, running on the Delta command ecosystem with AI-assisted verification and a marketplace built like a military Amazon, has produced outcomes nobody predicted at launch: 35,000 Russian casualties per month confirmed with video evidence, the ability to change military targeting priorities instantly across an entire army by adjusting point values, and the identification of unknown high-performing frontline units whose methods are now being replicated across the force. The conversation reveals details that rarely surface in coverage of the conflict. Capturing Russian soldiers earns more bonus points than killing them, a deliberate design choice reflecting the preference not to kill when alternatives exist, and drones are actively being used to guide surrendering Russian soldiers to Ukrainian positions. The Delta ecosystem contains the world's largest military AI training dataset, already being used by defense companies to train targeting, interception, and recognition models. And perhaps most significantly: the US and France are now implementing similar marketplace and decentralized procurement approaches modeled directly on what Brave1 demonstrated works at scale. Ukraine is no longer just a recipient of military support. It is the primary laboratory for the future of warfare, and it is actively exporting what it has learned. Subscribe to Eye on A. I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I want to talk particularly about the Army of Drones bonus program.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Actually, it started with the idea of like a loyalty bonus program. If you kill one, if you destroy more targets, you can earn more points. And you can use these points to exchange these points for additional drones.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  And you've got, what, 400 drone units operating on the system? Do you see this becoming general doctrine adopted by other militaries? Is Russia doing something similar?

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Brave One, actually, the initiative related to drones and the new technologies that right now are widely used on the battlefield. This idea started in 2022. Because Ukraine had to find some asymmetrical response to Russia aggression. Because we cannot compete with Russia with the amount of volume of resources. They have much more money than Ukraine, even together with all support from allied countries partners. And when we had a lack of artillery, we started to use FPV drones.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  When we had a lack of naval fleet, we started to experiment with naval drones. And this is asymmetrical answers. And right now, after the years of the adoption of the new technologies to the battlefield, the whole world globally understands that it was the right decision and the right direction, the right strategy. And this is one of the reasons why Ukraine still keeps Russia on their position and we are not conquered.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  And in 2000, in one year after the start of full-scale invasion of Russia to Ukraine,

• 1:57Speaker 01

  when the results of Army of Drone projects became obvious, it was official parking, if I may say, of this initiative to government agency.

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• 4:04Speaker 01

  The government agency was the name of Innovation Development Fund existing in Ukraine, and it became Brave One, like a brand of Innovation Development Fund.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  I see.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  This is the idea of establishing of Brave One was to have the single platform in the country where military, different armed forces, government institutions, private companies produce drones, universities, international partners, international companies can work together to have the maximum level of synergies, of synergy. Right now, 2026, and the area of responsibilities of Brave One are permanently increasing. Every quarter, because the things that we are doing and implementing

• 5:02Speaker 01

  prove that it's right and it should be scaled to different areas. Initially, it was started just with UAVs and naval drones. Right now, it's covered all non-conventional warfare and the reforms and modernization of the technologies, processes, regulation, experimental weapon, and it covers almost every category. Missile, precise ammunition, naval drones, ground robots, electronic warfare, satellite communication, satellite optical navigation, regular communication, everything.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  I want to talk particularly about the Army of Drones bonus program. I mean, that to me is fascinating. That now tracks hundreds of thousands of confirmed hits and kills through a central leaderboard. How exactly does Brave One plug all that data into and turn it into points on the platform side? To me, that that sounds like a very complicated task.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Actually, it was started with the idea of like a loyalty bonus program. And the idea is very simple and non-standard and innovative or revolutionary, if I may say.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  If you kill one, if you destroy more targets, you can earn more points. And you can use these points to exchange these points for additional drones. With these additional drones, you destroy more targets. And this is like a motivation system. Sometimes it appears that this is gamification system, but actually it's not gamification. It's more motivation and increasing of effectiveness. And such a simple idea, we start to implement it. And there are a lot of components in overall architecture of this bonus system,

• 7:16Speaker 01

  including Delta system where the hits can be uploaded together with video materials. This is the special verification teams under Brave One that on daily basis works with this uploaded materials, perform verification and do confirmation. This is Brave One Marketplace, the system where Ukrainian drone producers can publish their products. And there are the basic pay for these drones with these bonuses.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  I see.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Also, dashboards and analyticals and more. And in the initial phases, we even didn't, was unable to predict what will be the impact on the overall situation by this simple idea.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  First of all, I want to ask, where did the idea come from? You were in banking. Did it come from loyalty programs in banking?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  No, it was on one, it was a small meeting and Mikhail Fedorov suggested, I have an idea. And we started to discuss and a number of people were involved. In very short period of time, we launched Marketplace and then parallel the system of calculating bonuses.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  The technology stack, can you explain for listeners and to myself, what Delta is?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Delta, this is Situation Awareness System, Command and Control System. It started as a system, but right now this is ecosystem. Part components can be added and enhance the functionality of Delta in very, very different areas, on different layers. Brigade level, platoon level, small teams level, overall army situation level. This is the backbone of our digital army.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Delta, within Delta, there's an AI target recognition layer called Avengers, is that right?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  One of the modules of Delta called Avengers, yeah. And in a number of modules or subsystems, we work with AI. This is the AI infrastructure platforms that allows companies and developers who produce models to train their models versus the real data. Because Ukraine has the biggest in the world set of video materials, audio materials, radio materials. The data has been processed and special data sets were created. And right now, this is a unique and very valuable set of data that is used to train artificial intelligence components that are used in different warfare.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  If you are developer of the interceptor, that is to shoot FPV drones or Shahed.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  You can generate data. And this generated data, this is very small amount to train the artificial intelligence AI model. Because the huge amount of data are needed. In the military world, the biggest amount of military data is inside Delta. And inside Avengers and Brave One data room. And the data is processed and it's informed that is usable by AI to train and increase the efficiency.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. You have all of these units on the front line who are launching drones, FPV drones. That video feed is uploaded to

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Delta.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  To Delta.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  We have map, the military units after hitting of the target, clicking on the map, specifying what was and by whom and by which product, which drone, what drone has been used, where it was happened with video and uploading the video confirmation. And after that, on the map in the system, there is a confirmation and the verification team is verifying everything and either confirm or not to confirm. Because in real situation on the battlefield, there are a lot of cases when one target, let's say tank, is attacked by different units.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  But to have the transparency and to take right management decisions, the real hits has been counted once. Because in traditional military world, every unit will write the report that we destroyed tank. And only digital system can ensure the so-called duplication and to have trusted data. And when we tell that thirty five thousand Russian soldiers has been eliminated, we have guaranteed confirmation that was not double booking. In real, in reality, the amount, the number of destroyed Russian soldiers is higher.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  I see.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But thirty five thousand of them per month has been confirmed with the video materials.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So each unit uploads a video, but in order to confirm a strike, you need an observing drone that watches the strike as well as the FPV video feed of the strike. You need both of those to confirm the strike?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  There are different rules for different targets and different ways to get this confirmation. I do not want to go into very specific details, not to share with Russia how to manage this situation better. On high level, you're absolutely right. To confirmations are needed because we do not want to have mistakes in calculating of this situation.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And the army of drones bonus system provide to the country trusted data.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  There is also data that's sent back out to drone operators, is that right? The drone operators or the units can see on a map where different Russian assets are, is that, is that right?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  I would not go in these details, but we know twenty four per seven. Every Russian soldiers that tried to do something, see Russian tanks. We see Russian activity and we use it to destroy as much targets as possible. And this is our strategy, how to stop the war. Every month, we need to increase number of Russians destroyed to force them to stop the war. And right now, we see that the number, every month, we destroyed more Russian soldiers than they are able to mobilize.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And this is one of the ways we are impacting Russia to achieve the goal that the whole world would like to achieve, to stop this fucking war.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  And UA drone ID on a map identifies each drone as a friend or foe, is that right? So that you reduce friendly fire, so you don't attack your own drones?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  When we see, in parallel with increasing of automation level, we need to implement the technologies that can in automatic mode inform the effectors.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Is it enemies or our drone? Of course, because we won't waste the efforts and they destroy our drones, unfortunately. Sometimes it happen, but of course we are working to avoid this.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Does that system also identify personnel? Can it distinguish friend or foe?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Break more comments in this area.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Okay, okay. So can you walk us through the full life cycle of an E point in the bonus program? Firm strike in Delta to E points in a unit's account? And finally, to an order for drones on the Brave One market?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. You hit the target, you upload the materials and put the target on the map. The verification team of Brave One is verifying and either confirming or rejecting. The unit can send the appeal in case it was rejected, but the unit sure that it was destroyed. Of course, we are playing with artificial intelligence to automate routine procedures and minimize human work. And after that, in Brave One marketplace, in our military Amazon, every unit see the number bonuses on their balance, on their account.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  They can select the drones that they need today, right now, that are the most needed by their unit. And they click to send this drone to the shopping cart, like in Amazon or eBay. And to click order and pay by bonus. And after that, the number of bonuses, the balance is reduced.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  The manufacturer sent the drones to the unit. And after that, within five days, the money comes to the account of producer, manufacturer of drone. And then in this way, we see that in comparison with traditional legacy procurement procedures that exist in every country and works in centralized manner.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  When units has to send report, some request to provide some drones. Brave One marketplace with this asymmetrical approach with bonuses, the average time from clicking on the shopping cart, order the drone to get and to use it in two weeks. This is absolutely tremendous, important impact. Because in half a year, the drones that has been ordered half a year ago can be outdated.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  But in case you get the weapon in two weeks, it works. You very quickly receive exactly what you need.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and the vendors, are they all vetted by the Department of Defense? Or how does someone get their weapon into the marketplace?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Initially, the manufacturers register, they pass some compliance procedures, very short compliance, and they can publish their drones. The drone manufacturers select where they would like to be published. In public catalog or in private catalog, enclosed catalog that is available only by military units. And after that, the drone manufacturers can certify their drones, pass some, some process of codification to get NATO code for this. And on this stage, it can be officially purchased by government, either in centralized way or drone bonuses can be exchanged with drones.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  In some categories, we even allow to use bonuses for non-codified, non-certified drones. And this is the responsibility of the unit in case it sees that something is very interesting and needed and defective for them available on the marketplace. They not to wait until the full certification process happen and instantly get these drones.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  I've heard a lot about the feedback loop between drone units and the manufacturers, that suggestions to improve and the manufacturers improve. So that it's a very rapid iteration process with the manufacturers. Does that happen through Brave One? Or is there a separate channel that the drone units are talking to the manufacturers through?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  This is one of the most important areas of our work. The first rule of every product management is to listen to your end users and to get feedback from them. But imagine, in case you have your drone and three hundred of different units use this drone. And if you ask one unit, they can give you one feedback. In case another unit, you can get another feedback. One of the rules of Brave One is consolidate this feedback. And to provide the holistic feedback and refined summary to the manufacturers. And also Brave One marketplace is also used for that.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  We implemented special feature and end users on the marketplace can comment, give some suggestions, ideas to put some scores. And this information is also seen and very analyzed by the manufacturers. We are shortening the feedback loop. And in case we are shortening the feedback loop and simplification to get the access about this information. Because the military units and the manufacturers, sometimes there are a gap between them. Very often, in most, the majority of cases even do not know each other and do not know to whom to. And marketplace and Brave One and our technical expertise team is working on the feedback. And also we use it to design new type of drones, new type of warfare

• 21:25Speaker 01

  and asking and providing the tasks to the industry to work on solutions that will be needed in half a year, in a year.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  The marketplace. Does that also in effect act as a leaderboard for the hardware? That units can see what the most popular drone is, they can see other units comments? Or is there a leaderboard for manufacturers as well?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  There are some dashboards and leaderboards that are available by manufacturers. But for militaries, they need much more digitalized information and not only the marketplace. And our data science, data analytical team of Brave One on monthly basis analyzing the raw data from Delta, information from the marketplace, from different other systems and make a digest of bulletins and deliver to the end users. And of course, in every category, there are some leaders, there are some challengers. The situation is changing every month and the end users via Brave One also get the information.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  What works better, what works worse, what is newcomer that show itself very good? And of course, increase the awareness level from the manufacturer's side and from the military side.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  The system awards different values for different targets.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  You know, more points for a tank than for infantry. Is there some place I could look up and see?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  No, you can't. You cannot. This information is available only for military and is classified information. But the possibility to change the number of points for every category is a very important value.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  When the management of the army or the country take a decision that such category of targets should be more important? In classic manner, it works via bureaucratic procedures and orders. And you know that the discipline of execution of the orders or awareness about such decisions is pretty low. But with the bonus system, it works instantly. All military knows that this category of target can provide for them more bonuses. And they immediately start to hunt for such category of targets.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Because every unit would like to be higher in the chart, in this leaderboard. Everyone want to be the first or be in top five, to be in top 10. And we see how the structure of hits is changing instantly, immediately after changing the priorities. I believe that every C O of every company in the world will be dreaming about having such possibility to change the priorities of their units and their employees based on this decision that start to work tomorrow morning or within one hour.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Okay, so and none of this is visible to the public. I mean, I can't log on to Brave One Marketplace or Brave One leaderboard and see what's happening.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  You can see the limited information, not the full information, only the information that is not classified. And where the manufacturers, the drone producers, put the check mark, it should be in public. Because in reality, they publish their drones on their own websites. But here the central, the biggest catalog of everything.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  I see. What were the main behavioral goals when you designed the public leaderboard? Was it about rewarding high performing units, getting more accurate battle damage assessment?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  A few reasons. Number one is to implement some kind of healthy competition and it works. And we see that the number in this leaderboard, this is very important for the army management hierarchy. And this is the subject of discussion on daily meetings, weekly meetings on different events. The second, this is the instrument, how we identify the best units. Number of cases when the units that were absolutely unknown by the management, the army management, by the country management, show extremely good results. And this is the area how to identify them.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  We are using it to start to talk to them and understand how you did it. In case average benchmark, let's say 10, but this team is doing 20. So maybe there's some reason. And this is the sharing of experience after that and the usage of this new experience. And also the outsiders as well to understand and compare the results with the amount of drones that were delivered to the team and why it's so low.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Is this changing the power balance between central planners and the frontline teams on deciding on procurement, on what they actually need?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Of course. We see that a lot of drone manufacturers that had the limited volumes of procurement on the central level, in reality, was extremely good and effective and needed by the army. And the amount of sales in some of manufacturers increased in five, 10 times in comparison with centralized way. And that this is also implication of the new model. We're starting to analyze what exactly is ordered by units on this decentralized model. And we implemented the new approach 80 per 20.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And when we are performing centralized procurement, we are selecting in every category, the top products. And we are combining the top products from previous purchases and also from the marketplace. The companies that publish, build new drone, deploy to marketplace, started to be purchased by units in next months can come to centralized contracts in this 80% of volumes. So this is the way how we in very quick manner bring the new players to the market

• 28:25Speaker 01

  and to deliver to the battlefield, not only new technology in few items, in few pieces, but in scale.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. You've got what 400 drone units operating on this system?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  A bit more.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Okay. Do you see this becoming general doctrine adopted by other militaries? Is Russia doing something similar?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Russia, no.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Because of the difference in the national culture.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Russia, this is the country of slaves. And the orders works in Russia and the force things works in Russia. Ukraine, this is country of the democracy and decentralized processes and autonomous teams. And for Ukraine and Ukrainian military units, manufacturers, everything is what is needed from the government is to understand how to help them work better, how to eliminate problems that they are facing. And our approach to help the ecosystem. In Russia, it's vice versa.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  This is strict orders because this empire and this is the mentality of empire. They are not free people and freedom, this is not for them, they are slaves. But US, France implementing very similar approaches and technologies similar to marketplace and other innovations that prove effectiveness in Ukraine. And we are sharing with the light countries our experience and willing, we would like to help. Because it's important, because Ukraine, this is not receiver of the support. Right now, we are the nature of the new technologies. And our mission is to help normal countries to become stronger

• 30:31Speaker 01

  and to stop the war and to prevent the start of the Third World War.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  And are you actively working with NATO or with the US?

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  And is that in technology transfer? Are you licensing it to other militaries? Or you're just advising them how to build a system?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  There are different models, there are different models of cooperation.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  How much have you spent on hardware? Do you have a sense nationally since 2022? As opposed to what a major power military would have spent during that timeframe? The US has spent billions of dollars attacking Iran.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  And it seems that you've been able to hold off Russia for years at a much lower cost. Do you have a sense of that cost differential?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Of course. And economics of the war, this is a very important aspect for strategy. If you need to waste 1 million dollars to hit one Shahid that cost 50,000 dollars, this is in favor of the enemy.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Of course, and this is one of the reasons why interceptors appear. Because interceptors that cost a few thousands effectively destroy Shahids that cost 50,000. And this is economics of the war in favor of Ukraine, of defending country. It's why when we identify in 2024, we saw the potential. And it became one of the most important areas of work of Brave One and Ministry of Digital Transformation to implement and to scale this technology. And right now, we have more than 150 different Ukrainian companies who produce interceptors. And the market is not mature.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  And the new, new models, new, new approaches of intercepting appearing on the market and invented by Ukrainian and right now international companies. Three international companies who produce interceptors very actively works here in Ukraine. And they do amazing things. And as a result, the capitalization level of this company and market valuation becomes very high. Because every company who would like to be the player in defense industry has to be here in Ukraine and their products has to be tested. Sometimes we shocked when the different countries buy the drones

• 33:17Speaker 01

  that has not been tested in Ukraine, but just declared that they work. And we answer with, come to us. We're happy to help and test and give the recommendation, some validation report and recommendation report. And you can, after that, take a decision. Is it really good drone that will effectively work against Shahid? Or is just illusion of having the defense or security?