Ukraine’s Elite Drone Unit Is A Lethal, Fast Growing Tech Start Up

Ukraine’s legendary ‘Birds of Magyar’ is one of the most successful drone units of all time. Under its charismatic commander Robert Brovdi, callsign Magyar ( ‘Madyar’ in Ukrainian, meaning Hungarian), the unit has grown in three years from a platoon into a regiment, destroying vast numbers of Russian forces each month. This rate of growth is extraordinary in a military unit and looks more like a tech start up –and maybe that is a better description of what Birds of Magyar really is.

The unit has become famous on the internet, and compilation videos of drone strikes go viral, aided by Brovdi’s trademark commentaries with catchphrases ‘Jagga jagga!’ and ‘Bada-boom!’ highlighting effective attacks.

But Magyar’s success is not about presentation. The numbers show this one unit is contributing a significant fraction of Ukraine’s combat power. Magyar has achieved this by using the skills of a tech entrepreneur in a military context.

Small Beginnings And Rapid Growth

Brovdi’s appearance, with a shaggy, greying beard makes him look like the guy in a biker bar you least want to annoy. His language is harsh, describing the Russians as ‘hunting worms,’ pulling no punches in his online pieces describing the current situation and what needs to be done. But beneath the Dark Ages warrior exterior is an keen grasp of a new type of warfare.

Brovdi has been way ahead of the technology curve all the way. Previously a successful businessman, Brovdi joined the volunteer territorial defence as a foot soldier in 2022 at the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. He became platoon commander and, frustrated by trench warfare and in violation of the rules at the time, bought and flew a commercial drone to get a better view of the battlefield.

Before long he had acquired more drones and established Birds of Magyar as a drone reconnaissance platoon.

The unit soon started making their own drone bombs and by March 2023, Birds of Magyar had grown from a reconnaissance platoon into a strike drone company. Initially within territorial defense and then as part of the regular army in the 59th Motorized Infantry Brigade.

In January 2024 the unit expanded again and became an independent Marine Corps drone battalion, taking the name of 14th Strike UAV Battalion.

In December 2024 the battalion was expanded again into a full regiment, with a further tripling of the number of personnel.

And all along, at the same time as being engaged in high-intensity conflict, Birds of Magyar has adopted and adapted new technology. They were among the first to make their own drone munitions, to use FPV drones, heavy bomber multicopters, to experiment with FPV carriers , to fly interceptor drones, to use flying relay drones, to carry out minelaying by drone and to use FPVs with fiber-optic controls, With all of these things, they have managed to find the best way of using the technology, optimized it – often by building or modifying their own hardware – and scale it up to make a real impact on the battlefield.

As well as flying reconnaissance and attack missions, Birds of Magyar also has its own interceptor unit, a unit for experimental unmanned systems and a unit for the development and another for implementation of new systems. The unit operates its own production facilities for drones and drone munitions, and carries out its own pilot training.

Gamification: How Success Fuels Success

The Ukrainian government operates a system which turns success into fuel for further success. As Brovdi himself explained in a 2024 post, the attack drone business has been gamified. The process resembles a video game where scoring points allows a player to upgrade their warrior, mecha or spacecraft to take on successively bigger opponents. Or a starup plowing profits back into the business.

Kills on specific targets which can be verified earn a drone operator points. For example, destroying a top-end Russian T-90M tank earns a reward equivalent to about $10,000. This comes in the form of points which can be spent on new drones. This process rewards the high performers and ensures that drones go to the units which make best use of them.

Brovdi compared his unit to a business in an interview with Forbes in November 2022. Then a platoon commander, Brovdi said: “It’s a complete business cycle, where you just improve the product every time.”

The product in this case is destroyed Russian equipment,

In previous wars such a system might have led to inflated claims, like the controversial U.S. ‘body counts’ in Vietnam or the Russian system in which commanders regularly lie their superiors about their progress, the Ukrainian have a strict audit process. But every drone strike is automatically recorded by its own camera and can be cross-indexed with Ukraine’s Delta battlefield information system which merges data from drones, satellites and other sources. Follow-up drones carry out damage assessment and kill claims are strictly audited.

“I am not claiming this is 100% precise, but it is a structured assessment that, in my opinion, reliably reflects trends,” writes Yurii Butusov in a piece on Censor.Net looking at the drone kill statistics for January. “The vast majority—99%—of this data is accurate.”

An efficient system for crediting kills means that Ukraine can channel resources to the units that are doing most with them. Butusov’s main complaint is that currently this channel is only available to a minority of drone units and needs to be widened out. But Birds of Magyar have shown how well it can work.

Crunching Numbers

Birds of Magyar release a monthly video compilation of their strikes. These days there are so many it can only include highlights; even five minutes of solid end-to-end explosions can only include a fraction of their total activities. The videos are split into sections showing strikes on armored vehicles, targeting artillery, air-to-air intercepts, night bomber missions, destruction of buildings, and many, many strikes on individual Russian soldiers.

There are a lot of interesting statistics in the monthly scorecard which shows hundreds of vehicles destroyed . But the biggest one is the headline figure of almost 22,000 combat sorties, of which 11,691 were strike missions. These hit 5,334 targets, destroying 1,848 of them.

This suggests that roughly 50% of attack missions damaged a target, and 16% scored a kill. Although things are complicated where multiple drones hit a target in succession, this suggests a high hit rate compared, say, to artillery shells or ATGMs

Looking at the last couple of months, Birds of Magyar account for around 7% of the total number of armored vehicles destroyed by the Ukrainian military as a whole. And as Butusov notes, there are other similarly successful drone units.

In essence, this is a unit which destroys its own weight in Russian forces on a monthly basis and just keep growing. And the next step could be the most significant yet.

Drone Line: A 9-Mile Death Zone Along The Entire Front

The next stage of expansion will see Birds of Magyar integrated into a strategic drone network. In February, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced the “Drone Line” project would integrate drone and ground forces into a single strike system to detect and target everything at ranges of 6-9 miles , destroying Russian assault before they can get close to Ukrainian positions. This would involve further expansion of existing drone units.

Rusten specifically mentioned the 20th Separate K-2 Regiment, the 429th Achilles Regiment, the 427th RAROH Regiment, the Phoenix Regiment as well as “the 414th Magyar’s Birds Brigade.” President Zelensky had a face-to-face meeting with the unit commanders including Brovdi in March.

The drone line will see drone integrated with a variety of sensors plus artillery, rockets and other assets, and the idea is that it will extend across the entire front with Russia. This might seem ambitious. But looking at Birds of Magyar’s rate of growth so far, it looks more like a logical next step.