Unmanned Systems Forces as the Sixth Branch of the Military: Organizational Revolution or Bureaucratic Trap

87 thousand people in the Armed Forces of Unmanned Systems (AFUS) — this figure was announced by the Russian military leadership in early February 2026 without much fanfare, although it concerns the creation of a practically new branch of the military, the sixth after the Ground Forces, Aerospace Forces, Navy, Strategic Missile Forces, and Airborne Forces. The plan for 2026 includes the formation of one brigade, four regiments, 96 battalions, two divisions, and 82 companies. Such a pace of deployment raises questions not so much about technical feasibility — Russia indeed produces tens of thousands of UAVs monthly — but about how much this organizational innovation reflects a real evolution in military art, and how much it is an attempt to simulate modernization by creating yet another bureaucratic superstructure.

The history of the Soviet and Russian military machine is full of examples where organizational reforms outpaced real capabilities or, conversely, lagged behind the needs of the moment. In the 1980s, the creation of the Main Directorate of Special Programs (GDSP) under the General Staff was dictated by the need to coordinate dozens of heterogeneous air defense and electronic warfare projects, but the resulting bureaucratization led to many systems not reaching the troops by the time of the USSR's collapse. Conversely, in 2008, Serdyukov conducted a harsh reform that dismantled the divisional-regimental structure in favor of brigades — and although the transition was painful, it corresponded to the realities of local conflicts in the 2000s. The AFUS as a separate branch of the military raises a legitimate question: is this a response to the lessons of the Ukrainian conflict or yet another experiment that will have to be rolled back in five years?

At first glance, the logic of centralizing unmanned units seems justified. According to Ukrainian sources, by the end of 2025, the strike range of Russian FPV drones in the Kramatorsk direction had increased several times compared to the beginning of the year — this is the result not so much of a technological breakthrough as of the accumulation of experience by operators and improvements in tactics. However, this is where the contradiction arises: the experience of combat operations over the past two years shows that the most effective units are small, autonomous drone groups integrated into infantry or tank battalions at the company or platoon level. They operate closely with artillery, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare — and their strength lies in flexibility, in the ability to respond instantly to changes in the tactical situation.

The creation of centralized AFUS with a divisional structure risks severing this connection. When a drone battalion is subordinate not to a commander on the front line, but to a commander of the AFUS somewhere in the rear, the very problem that the Soviet army dealt with for decades in artillery arises: the issue of operational subordination. The artillery of the Reserve of the High Command (RGC) has always been a powerful tool, but its use required time for coordination, and in dynamic combat, time means lives. Drones are an even more dynamic tool than artillery. If the AFUS become analogous to the RGC artillery in the unmanned sphere, then the gain in centralized management may turn into a loss in tactical flexibility.

There is also another aspect: personnel. 87 thousand people are not just drone operators. They include maintenance engineers, electronic warfare specialists, logisticians, signalers, and video stream analysts. Where will Russia find so many qualified personnel when, according to independent sources, the military-industrial complex is already experiencing a severe shortage of engineers? The law on expanding the draft, signed by Putin at the end of 2025, allows for year-round recruitment and the use of reservists for infrastructure protection, but it does not solve the quality problem. An FPV drone operator capable of hitting a moving target at a distance of 10 kilometers is not a conscript after three months of training. This is a contractor with experience, preferably with a technical education, who has undergone months of specialized training. Recruiting 87 thousand such specialists by the end of 2026 is a task comparable to doubling the size of the Airborne Forces, but with much higher qualification requirements.

At the same time, the Russian defense industry is indeed demonstrating the ability to ramp up drone production. According to official data from the Ministry of Defense, in January 2026, more than 10 thousand units of weapons and about 2 million ammunition were delivered to the armed forces, and the plan for the entire year is 310 thousand units of equipment and 21 million ammunition. Even if half of these "units of equipment" are drones (and judging by the consumption rates at the front, this is indeed the case), the production base for the AFUS exists. But equipment is only half of the equation. The other half is people and organization.

Historical experience suggests that the creation of a new branch of the military is justified when technology becomes so specific that it requires its own doctrine, training, and logistics. The Strategic Missile Forces were separated from artillery not because missiles are "more important" than guns, but because they required fundamentally different infrastructure — from storing nuclear warheads to space reconnaissance for target designation. The Airborne Forces became a separate branch of the military because an airborne operation is not just "infantry with parachutes," but a complex task that includes aviation, reconnaissance, and special communications. Have unmanned systems in 2026 reached such a level of specificity? Partially — yes. Managing a swarm of hundreds of drones, suppressing enemy electronic warfare systems, integrating data from reconnaissance UAVs into the overall picture of the battle — all of this requires specialized skills. But is this enough to create a separate branch of the military with a divisional structure? Or would it be wiser to follow the path that Ukraine has de facto chosen: saturating every unit, from platoon to brigade, with drones without creating a parallel hierarchy?

The likely answer lies not in military logic, but in the logic of the Russian military-bureaucratic system. The creation of the AFUS as a separate branch of the military means separate funding, separate ranks and career ladders, separate research institutes and design bureaus under the aegis of this branch. This is a way to institutionalize the priority of unmanned technologies, ensuring that they do not end up on the periphery of attention, as happened with electronic warfare in the 1990s. From this perspective, the AFUS is not so much a military necessity as it is insurance against bureaucratic inertia. If drones remain "just one type of weapon" within motorized rifle or tank troops, they risk being pushed to the background as soon as the acute phase of the conflict ends and a "return to normalcy" begins.

But this logic only works if the AFUS can prove their effectiveness in the next year or two. If by 2027 it turns out that centralized drone management reduces their combat value, if personnel shortages lead to AFUS battalions being staffed at 50-60%, if interaction with other branches of the military turns into a bureaucratic nightmare — then the AFUS will repeat the fate of many Soviet experiments: formally existing on paper, they will dissolve into general military structures, leaving behind just another main directorate in the General Staff.

The creation of the Armed Forces of Unmanned Systems is a bet by the Russian military leadership that the future of warfare belongs to the mass use of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. This bet may prove successful if the AFUS become not a bureaucratic superstructure, but a real center of competence capable of quickly implementing innovations and transferring them to the troops. But the history of Russian military reforms teaches caution: too often, organizational innovations have turned out to be mere renaming of old structures, while real changes occurred not in the headquarters, but at the front — in defiance of, rather than thanks to, top-down reforms.