Opinion | Inside Ukraine’s Drone Mission Control Room

Southeastern Ukraine

Deep in a bunker, a device resembling an alarm clock sits on the desk of Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi. It shows the number of Russians his troops have killed that day: 302 when our conversation begins in the afternoon. “When you are leaving the number will be higher,” he says. The Unmanned Systems Forces, which he has commanded since June 2025, amounts to 2.5% of Ukraine’s armed forces, but it’s responsible for approximately a third of all Russian casualties in the past year.

The Russians have more men, a stronger economy and a defense-production advantage. Yet “a small modern Ukrainian army is winning over the old Soviet system that was in Ukraine,” Maj. Brovdi, 51, says. “By injecting civilians into the army structure,” Ukraine has made its military nimbler. Maj. Brovdi, a successful global grain trader before the war, has taken a “business-oriented approach” as he beats plowshares into swords. He argues the war is “about math, proper planning, using forces well” and spending “the smallest amount of budget possible.”

Western militaries aren’t as sclerotic as the Soviet army was, but bureaucratic entrenchment hinders speed, efficiency, flexibility and innovation. How’s that working out? Iran is fighting asymmetrically, and a mighty show of U.S. force hasn’t been enough to restore free passage in the Strait of Hormuz. Europe can’t seem to stop suspicious drones from loitering near sensitive military sites and critical infrastructure. Last month Germany failed to detect an explosives-laden drone at the airport in Leipzig but got lucky when the detonator failed. Ukrainian drone operators have repeatedly trounced North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, including Americans, in military exercises.

Something fundamental has changed about the threat, and that requires institutional changes to Western militaries. “In Ukraine a symphony is being perfected, and to our partners we’re teaching the notes,” Maj. Brovdi says. “We could give them the symphony, but they couldn’t appreciate it because they’re looking for the best drone.” Today’s best drone will be obsolete by the time it rolls off torpid Western production lines.

Instead, he advises, “the task at hand is to build an ecosystem” in which cheap and good-enough drones, among other tools, can be put to effective use. He showed me what this ecosystem looks like by allowing me to visit the command center for Magyar’s Birds, a unit that under his leadership grew from a small territorial defense group to the 414th Separate Unmanned Systems Brigade.

Because of their outsize lethality, Maj. Brovdi and his men have a Russian target on their backs. The Unmanned Systems Forces says the Kremlin has put out the word through post-Soviet criminal networks of a $20 million reward for information about Maj. Brovdi’s whereabouts. Russian courts have convicted him in absentia on terrorism charges related to Ukrainian military operations and sentenced him to decades in prison. So the logistics of my visit are complex.

I was required to turn off location services on my phone and place it in airplane mode. Then it went into a Faraday bag, which obstructs Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth and GPS signals. Maj. Brovdi’s team drove me to the meeting points in a vehicle with the windows blacked out to obscure any glimpse of the route to secret locations somewhere in southeastern Ukraine. Members of his Unmanned Systems Forces take similar cloak-and-dagger precautions when moving around the country.

The Russians have killed 79 men and women from Magyar’s Birds since the start of the war, and their names are etched on the wall at the entrance of the command center. Maj. Brovdi tallies his revenge by calculator: By the day of our interview, the Unmanned Systems Forces had killed or wounded 656 Russians for every one of their own fallen, and he says “I don’t think this exchange rate is good enough.” Pass through that somber corridor, and you enter a complex that resembles a cross between a NASA mission-control room and a cosmopolitan art gallery, the walls adorned with works from Maj. Brovdi’s private collection, including paintings by Ukrainian artists Anatoly Kryvolap and Maria Prymachenko.

Here, you get the God’s-eye view of the front, which is no longer a single line but a 30- to 35-mile band known as the kill zone, where small clusters of Russian and Ukrainian troops are interspersed, fighting each other with drones, taking and defending positions. Reconnaissance and strike models alike provide real-time video footage. Citing Ukrainian military intelligence, the Times of London reported this month that the average life expectancy of a Russian soldier arriving on the Ukrainian battlefield is 20 to 30 minutes. I’m about to see why.

Ukraine’s battlefield-management system, known as Delta, “fully integrates every single drone, every sensor, and every shooting platform into just one single network,” then-U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May. Across Ukraine this unified combat workspace is used from the strategic level down to the tactical level, sometimes even the company level. In contrast, Mr. Driscoll warned lawmakers, “our software systems are compartmentalized, isolated and ineffective against modern threats.”

Among myriad functions, Delta allows drone pilots to record pins on a Google-like map of anything noteworthy they see on their route, including enemy soldiers or vehicles. That triggers an alert to those nearby, who can respond like Uber drivers when a request for a ride pings through the system. Maj. Brovdi sets guidelines but estimates he delegates 90% of combat decisions, which frees his troops to act on information quickly without seeking permission.

“When we detect the enemy, it’s actually the end of the enemy,” my command-center guide says. We hover briefly by one cluster of screens. On one monitor, a high-flying drone transmits the view of a field. Movement: a solitary Russian soldier. Another screen shows the perspective of a low-flying drone closing in on him. The Russian runs around a tree, then into deep grass, but he can’t hide. From the aerial view, I see a puff of smoke. No more movement.

The first unit to respond and successfully eliminate a target earns e-points that can be redeemed for weapons on a government-run market—but without video footage to prove the strike, the operation doesn’t count as successful. Regardless of the outcome, after each mission the Unmanned System Forces generates a digital report looking at 10 key parameters, including the location, conditions, date, time and result of the operation; the target; the drone, explosive or other tools used in the strike; and the pilot and any other soldiers involved.

Ukrainians also use Delta and complementary applications to improve situational awareness and protect their own troops. At the command center, operational officers monitor what’s happening in real time, remain in constant communication with those at the front, and alert them to any enemy movements or changes in nearby conditions. There’s also granular historical data about the battlefield. Need to evacuate a wounded Ukrainian soldier or infiltrate an enemy position? You may discover that even though it is a relentlessly clear-skied summer week, there’s a small area near a pond that is reliably shrouded in dense fog between 5 and 8 a.m., providing some cover from enemy reconnaissance.

Militaries worldwide have long struggled with perverse incentives to falsify what’s actually happening on the battlefield. Exaggerate the enemy threat, and you may get more resources; obscure your failures, and you evade accountability. But video, audio, sensor and radar data and more are recorded in Delta in a decentralized way—and from top to bottom in the military chain, users can see the underlying proof. That ensures an honest battlefield picture.

“Data is a strategic resource of the war,” Maj. Brovdi says. He began meticulously collecting it in 2022 as a territorial-defense unit commander. Today Magyar’s Birds alone records 10 to 12 terabytes a day—the equivalent of nearly 20 years of recorded sound, or more than three million songs. Nationwide, Delta records petabytes (quadrillions of bytes) each day. In corporate speak, all this information is actionable, and Unmanned Systems Forces uses tools, including an internally developed, closed artificial-intelligence system, to crunch through it quickly.

I saw business-style metrics for which makes and models of drones can best take out specific Russian targets at the most favorable cost ratio. The Unmanned Systems Forces and other parts of the Ukrainian military are putting battlefield information to use for research and development, linking weapons makers with the front line. Fast, accurate feedback accelerates innovation by quantifying what does and doesn’t work. “Whoever is capable to reach the next Rubicon first has the upper hand,” Maj. Brovdi says.

As our interview concludes, the digital ticker on Mr. Brovdi’s desk reports 343 dead Russians—41 killed since we started speaking.

Other parts of the Ukrainian armed forces are using a similar approach to strike logistics and isolate Russian soldiers at the front, reduce Ukrainian casualties, thwart Russian advances and intercept drones, among other key functions. Smart use of Delta and related platforms, the ability to analyze and act quickly on data, personal initiative and decentralized decision-making, the ability to invent or improve weapons fast, quick and accurate feedback from the front—these are some of the characteristics of the ecosystem enabling successes disproportionate to Ukraine’s size.

Maj. Brovdi says matching enemy capacity is “the bare minimum” required to stay competitive with an adversary. “If you really want to diminish even the possibility of the attack, you need to greatly overcome their capabilities.” The bad news is that “what is known to Russia is known in full to their partners,” including China, Iran and North Korea. Terrorists and school-shooter types are also paying attention, and commercial drones can be bought off the shelf and home-rigged to kill. But the purchase of a commercial drone “will not even ring bells in the head of a police officer” or “cause the same kind of reaction as a firearm,” Mr. Brovdi observes.

Our interview happens the same week as the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which were an early example of asymmetrical warfare. “America already knows how one incident can turn everything upside down,” Maj. Brovdi says. “I don’t wish for something like this to happen involving drones, but it’s unavoidable. We need to prepare for that.”

The Unmanned Systems Forces can serve as a template as the U.S. and Europe catch up. “To retrain old military personnel is much harder than to recruit this new 2.5% of the army from civilians,” Maj. Brovdi says. He suggests bringing in people who have creativity and initiative and lack the baggage of conventional military thinking. These special forces can serve as “a quick reaction force to any challenges that are coming their way during the times while the general army is still being trained.”

Ms. Melchior is a London-based member of the Journal’s editorial board.