Germany is reportedly financing one of the largest drone purchases ever made for Ukraine: 50,000 first-person-view (FPV) strike drones worth around €90 million ($103 million). But the most important part of the deal is not the drones themselves, but the artificial intelligence that will guide them.

The drones, produced by Ukrainian manufacturer SkyFall, will be equipped with AI software developed by U.S. defense technology company Auterion. Instead of relying entirely on a human operator from launch to impact, the system is designed to take over during the final stage of the mission, autonomously recognizing, tracking and striking a moving designated target during the final phase of flight.

This so-called “last-mile” targeting addresses one of the biggest weaknesses of FPV drones. Electronic warfare frequently disrupts radio links, causing drones to lose contact with their operators just before reaching the target.

With onboard AI, however, a drone can continue its attack even if communications are jammed, locking onto the target’s shape and guiding itself during the final kilometer of flight.

The push toward onboard AI reflects the evolution of electronic warfare. Russian and Ukrainian forces now blanket much of the front with powerful jamming systems capable of disrupting GPS signals and radio communications. As a result, autonomy is increasingly viewed not as a luxury but as a necessity. A drone that can complete its mission after losing contact with its operator has a far greater chance of reaching its target.

According to Auterion CEO Lorenz Meier, some of the drones have already been delivered, with the remainder scheduled to arrive later this year. Germany’s role was also confirmed by SkyFall, although both the German and Ukrainian defense ministries declined to comment, citing operational security.

The agreement represents another step in Ukraine’s rapid transformation into the world’s largest battlefield laboratory for drone warfare.

SkyFall itself has been expanding internationally. In June, the company signed a defense innovation agreement with Airbus aimed at integrating Ukrainian battlefield experience into future European defense technologies.

This is not Auterion’s first contribution. In 2025, the company supplied 33,000 AI guidance kits for Ukrainian drones under a $50 million Pentagon contract, allowing existing manually piloted drones to receive autonomous terminal guidance.

The company expects to help supply a total of 100,000 AI-equipped drones to Ukraine this year through partnerships with multiple manufacturers and funding from several Western governments.

The Shrike drone itself has also attracted international attention. A variant known as the Shrike 10-F, developed by SkyFall together with British company Skycutter, recently topped the first round of a Pentagon competition seeking hundreds of thousands of low-cost one-way attack drones for the U.S. military.

Autonomous targeting is becoming an increasingly crowded field. Ukrainian companies such as TAF Drones and The Fourth Law (TFL) are developing similar AI-based guidance systems, reflecting a broader shift in modern warfare: the race is no longer simply to build more drones, but to build drones that can complete their mission even after losing contact with their human operators.

Exactly how much control Ukrainian operators will retain over these new AI-assisted drones remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that battlefield autonomy is moving from experimental technology to large-scale deployment — and Ukraine is becoming one of the first countries to field it in significant numbers.

Battlefield autonomy is rapidly shifting from experimental capability to mass production. Rather than replacing human operators entirely, artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over the most difficult seconds of a mission — the moment when electronic warfare is strongest and precision matters most.

The Germany-funded SkyFall program suggests that AI-assisted strike drones may soon become the new standard rather than an exception.

Ukraine already manufactures millions of drones annually and carries out thousands of drone strikes every day. Its drone industry has expanded at a remarkable pace since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Before 2022, the country had only a handful of drone manufacturers.

Today, more than 500 companies produce drones or drone components, ranging from garage-sized startups to large defense firms, while over 1,000 different drone models have been developed for reconnaissance, strike, naval and interceptor missions.

Ukraine produced roughly 4–5 million drones in 2025, making it by far the world’s largest military drone producer. Current industrial capacity exceeds 8 million FPV drones annually, or roughly 20,000 drones every day, according to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.