At Picogrid, we believe in embedding our product teams with our military partners and building alongside them. This takes us into unique parts of the world and gives us insights, some of which we will share in blog posts. All information is OSINT.
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A few weeks ago, I met with a contact from Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF), a new branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine established in June 2024. USF is the world’s first dedicated military branch for unmanned systems, created to institutionalize warfighting lessons learned in the most drone-intensive conflict in history. Its mandate: integrate unmanned platforms into doctrine and scale battlefield-proven systems.
USF was born from necessity. Over the past three years, thousands of foreign and domestically produced unmanned systems have been deployed in Ukraine, but identifying which ones deliver operational value remains a challenge. The battlefield has become a proving ground, with warfighters at the forefront of experimentation—analyzing, adapting, and integrating new capabilities under live fire.
One of the earliest lessons came from the M982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery shell. Initially achieving a 70% hit rate, its effectiveness plummeted to just 6% within weeks as Russian forces deployed GPS jamming countermeasures. This exposed a critical reality of modern warfare: technological superiority is fleeting. Adaptability is key to survival.
Ukrainian warfighters responded by integrating drone reconnaissance with fire control systems, bypassing GPS dependence and enabling real-time target acquisition. Within weeks, effectiveness rebounded. The lesson was clear—success in contested environments requires not just advanced technology but also the ability to rapidly iterate, integrate, and adapt. Already, US forces are implementing these lessons learned to train soldiers to call for artillery fire using smaller, more modern quad-copter drones.
This shift is driving a fundamental change in force structure. USF represents a move beyond simply fielding unmanned systems—it is the formalization of a doctrine where unmanned systems take the lead in combat operations. In December of last year, the 13th National Guard Brigade "Khartiia" launched the first ever all-unmanned attack on Russian forces, which included dozens of different drones ranging from unmanned ground vehicles equipped with machine guns to small first-person view loitering munitions. Ukraine’s experience is accelerating a global shift, with other militaries now studying how to transition from mixed formations to dedicated unmanned forces.
At Picogrid, we are building the infrastructure to support this evolution. Our platform fuses sensors, autonomous systems, and legacy equipment into a unified operational picture, enabling warfighters to employ unmanned assets at scale. The future of warfare belongs to those who can rapidly integrate and adapt. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces are proving this on the battlefield today, and their model is shaping the next generation of military force design worldwide.
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