It is something that has happened in all modern wars and conflicts, and in Ukraine it was not going to be different. We refer to the use of surprising tactics for combat. We had previously spoken of the use of a naval optical illusion and a drone that “seeks” to capture him to display his true threat. The latest: a rewards system with points.
The prize: go to a war “Amazon”.
A war with points. I told this insider and political week. In an unprecedented fusion between military and video game logic, Ukraine has launched a rewards system that gives points to its soldiers for killing Russian troops or destroying their vehicles, provided that these acts are verified by recording video drones.
These points, called “Epoints”, can then be exchanged in Brave1 Market, a new digital platform that operates as a “military Amazon”, where combat units can acquire from attack drones and land robots to electronic warfare devices or components such as batteries, cameras and engines.
Add casualties to buy artillery. The initiative, promoted by Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, seeks to speed up and decentralize access to the equipment, allowing the soldiers themselves to choose and buy the technology that best suits their needs in the front, either with own funds or through the rewards accumulated by their effectiveness in combat.
The system establishes a numerical value for each enemy target: six points for each Russian soldier eliminated, forty for each destroyed tank, with equivalences that allow, for example, to acquire drones such as the “Baba Yaga” for 43 points or the sophisticated “Backfire”, which costs about 60,000 dollars for three units. Delivery is made directly with state financing, without intermediaries. The Magyar’s Birds unit, famous for its FPV drones attacks, has already exceeded 16,000 points, leading the March ranking, followed by specialized brigades in unmanned systems and special operations.
A military Amazon. Far from being a simple shopping site, the Brave1 Market represents a disruptive model of logistics and acquisition in times of conflict. Its catalog has more than 1,000 items ranging from advanced armament to technical solutions of communication, surveillance, navigation and electronic protection. Soldiers can navigate the portal, compare models, read specifications and contact manufacturers to close orders.
Part of the content is of restricted access, but the bulk of the inventory is publicly available to facilitate fast and autonomous decision -making from the front. One of the main objectives is to reduce the gap between technological development and its real implementation on the battlefield. In fact, Insider said that many units did not know that certain devices were available; They can now request them directly without having to wait for bureaucratic channels or slow -on channels.
Drones as currency. The points system has the drones that, as we have explained, are absolute protagonists of the new Ukrainian battlefield. The most used are the FPV (First-Person View) and the short-range bombing models, operated by highly mobile units that film each impact to document it before the military intelligence network.
These videos not only allow to verify the elimination of enemy objectives, but have become the “hard currency” with which more technology is accessed. Each purchase approved is financed by the Ukrainian government and delivered directly to the requesting unit, which reinforces a decentralized supply model based on operational merit.
Meritocracy and ethical dilemma. No doubt, we talk about a system that converts war effectiveness into immediate benefits, which generates an ethical conflict about the gamification of the conflict. Killing becomes a rewarded act not only with recognition, but with material power to improve the offensive abilities of the unit. Although brutal, the model has proven to be effective in accelerating the response on the battlefield, promoting tactical initiative and allowing troops to access the technology they really need.
In parallel, it also represents a form of digitalized war economy, where each confirmed impact translates into purchasing power, each successful mission in access to strategic resources. A logic that is not free: it responds to the urgency of modernizing the Ukrainian military apparatus in the middle of an asymmetric war, and the need to compete technologically with an enemy that has greater industrial and human reserves. Of course, he questions the ethical limits of the military culture model that can generate in the long term.
A new military paradigm. The only existence of a “store” thus changes the concept of war in the 21st century. We talk about a digital architecture, distributed and oriented to immediate efficiency with which Ukraine not only tries to match Russia in offensive capacity, but to overcome it in technological agility, tactical innovation and adaptation speed.
If you want also, the battlefield no longer seems only a physical space, but also a kind of interactive platform where each action can be measured, rewarded and transform into an operational advantage. A new war economy where value is measured, not in abstract terms, but in eliminated objectives, points won and delivered drones. Together with the obvious ethical dilemmas he poses, he also reveals to what extent the modern war is as technological as lethal.
Imagen | NATO North, Ministry of Defense
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