Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has cleared 650 new drone models for its armed forces since January, it said on 22 September. That is more than two a day. The ministry calls the process codification: a model that passes it can be supplied to the Defence Forces.
The ministry breaks down 552 of the 650 by type. There are 238 multirotor strike drones and 231 drones flown through a fibre-optic cable, which radio jamming cannot cut. Another 42 are interceptors, built to bring down other drones.
The longer-range models are 32 “middle strike” drones and 9 “deep strike” drones. The release does not say what the other 98 are.
Faster than last year
The drones sit inside a wider count. On 3 September the ministry said it had codified 1,526 models of weapons and equipment in the first eight months of 2026. The same months of 2025 produced 983. Nearly 91% of this year’s models were made in Ukraine, against 86% last year.
Drones were 565 of those 1,526 at the end of August. By 22 September the count was 650. On the ministry’s own figures, about 85 drone models were cleared in three weeks.
Fibre-optic drones show the change most clearly. In the first two months of 2025, the ministry reported just over 10 such systems codified. This year’s count is 231.
Deputy Defence Minister Valerii Churkin set out the logic in March 2025. Drones costing $500, he said, were destroying targets worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. He called it “the arithmetic of war”.
What codified does not mean
Codification is permission, not production. Neither release says how many of any model have been ordered or delivered, or who makes them. The 91% figure covers all 1,526 models; the ministry does not give it for drones alone.
The drones were not the only unmanned systems on the list. The same eight months brought 86 ground robots and 64 electronic warfare and signals intelligence systems.
