Ranked: Countries Importing the Most Military Drones

Who Imports the Most Military Drones?

Drones have become one of the defining weapons of modern warfare, and international trade in them now revolves around a single conflict.

This graphic ranks countries by the number of military drones they received from foreign suppliers from 2022 to 2025, using data from the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database. The figures include drones sent as aid and those built in the recipient country under a foreign license.

SIPRI tracks major weapons only: drone aircraft with a loaded weight of at least 150 kg, plus one-way attack drones and loitering munitions, which it classifies as missiles. Small first-person-view (FPV) and commercial drones fall largely outside its scope.

Ukraine and Russia Dominate Military Drone Imports

The ranking drops off sharply after the top two countries. No other country received even 300 military drones during the period.

Ukraine’s supply was heavily concentrated among U.S. systems, which accounted for 83% of its recorded total. Russia’s recorded imports, meanwhile, were attributed to Iran.

The table below shows the number of military drones each country received in 2022–2025 and its share of the global total.

Rank	Country	Military Drone Imports (2022–2025)
		Drones Received	Share of Global Total
1	Ukraine	8,664	51.5%
2	Russia	6,720	39.9%
3	Taiwan	291	1.7%
4	South Korea	190	1.1%
5	Azerbaijan	154	0.9%
6	India	119	0.7%
7	Georgia	100	0.6%
8	Albania	56	0.3%
9	Hungary	50	0.3%
9	Lithuania	50	0.3%
11	Pakistan	33	0.2%
12	DR Congo	29	0.2%
13	Poland	26	0.2%
14	UAE	22	0.1%
15	Belarus	20	0.1%
16	Kuwait	18	0.1%
16	Romania	18	0.1%
16	UK	18	0.1%
19	Sudan	17	0.1%
20	Mali	15	0.1%
21	Burkina Faso	10	0.1%
21	Morocco	10	0.1%
21	Serbia	10	0.1%
24	Bangladesh	9	0.1%
25	Kyrgyzstan	8	<0.1%
26	Niger	7	<0.1%
26	Nigeria	7	<0.1%
26	Thailand	7	<0.1%
29	Algeria	6	<0.1%
29	Croatia	6	<0.1%
29	Kenya	6	<0.1%
29	Switzerland	6	<0.1%
29	Tajikistan	6	<0.1%
34	Kosovo	5	<0.1%
34	Saudi Arabia	5	<0.1%
—	Other	104	0.6%
—	Global Total	16,822	100.0%

Most of Russia’s drone imports were Shahed-136s, which Russia first imported from Iran and now produces in its own versions as the Geran-2. SIPRI says there is little indication that continued Iranian input is still needed.

Small Military Drone Trade Is Far Bigger

Outside Russia and Ukraine, Taiwan is the largest importer of military drones, with 291 U.S.-made loitering munitions delivered in 2025.

Its drone push has been influenced by Ukraine, and government plans call for up to 200,000 drones over the coming decade, more than 10 times the entire global total recorded from 2022 to 2025.

This gap exists because SIPRI’s database, the same one behind our ranking of the biggest arms importers, tracks major weapons: large drones plus long-range one-way attack drones, with the latter making up 97% of the transfers shown here. The small, inexpensive first-person-view (FPV) drones that now do much of the fighting at the front mostly fall outside its scope.

Those drones move in far larger numbers. The UK alone delivered more than 85,000 smaller military drones to Ukraine in six months of 2025, about five times SIPRI’s recorded global total for the entire four-year period.

Drones built domestically are also excluded, since SIPRI only counts weapons that cross borders or are produced under a foreign license. Ukraine’s defense industry can now produce more than 8 million FPV drones a year, while Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia builds about 2,800 Geran-2 drones per month, far above the 2,000 a year SIPRI records under the Iranian license.

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• Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-countries-importing-most-military-drones/