Gamifying Ukraine’s army of drones: strategic or moral(e) destruction?

Comparisons between drone warfare and videogames are well established, particularly in tropes adopted by scholarship on U.S. drone operations during the Global War on Terror. Ukraine’s Army of Drones Bonus (ADB) programme, popularly described as a ‘gamification of war’, appears to reinforce these concerns by rewarding drone units with ‘e-points’ for successful strikes, redeemable for equipment. This article challenges such readings by situating ADB within the realities of attritional high-intensity warfare and Ukraine’s urgent procurement needs. Drawing on debates around drone warfare, moral injury, and international law, it argues that ADB is best understood as a procurement and logistics innovation rather than a transformation of killing into play. While the programme raises genuine moral, psychological, and legal questions, these must be analysed beyond Global War on Terror tropes. The article contributes to contemporary drone scholarship by reframing gamification as an institutional response to digitalised warfare rather than its cause.