France Made a Recon Drone for Ukraine… But is it Too Expensive?

In a war where FPVs die by the dozen daily and drone tech is practically disposable, Parrot’s price tag lands like a grand piano in a foxhole.

Parrot

Picture this: it’s 2011, and you’re peeling open a box to reveal your first Parrot drone: plastic rotors, patchy signal, and all the promise in the world.

My very first consumer drone, purchased from a Toys R Us in Texas, was a Parrot brand.

Back in 2011, quadcopters were fairly new. Despite its low-resolution 360p camera, I still marveled at seeing the world from above.

Fast-forward to 2025, and that same French company has graduated from backyard buzzers to battlefield gear. Their latest offering is the ANAFI UKR, a tactical drone tailored for Ukraine’s war-torn skies. Sleek, secure, and surgically precise.

But here’s the speed bump: it costs €15,000. To be clear, this isn’t a gift to Ukraine; Kyiv is expected to buy these.

In a war where FPVs die by the dozen daily and drone tech is practically disposable, Parrot’s price tag lands like a grand piano in a foxhole.

At this year’s Paris Air Show, Parrot unveiled the ANAFI UKR alongside their Chuck 3.0 autopilot; think of it as the brain behind the blades. The drone checks every high-end box: frequency-hopping comms to dodge jamming, encrypted transmissions across Wi‑Fi, LoRa, and MARS radios, plus a 5G option (which would matter if Ukraine had any 5G coverage). A 35X optical zoom pairs with a FLIR Boson thermal camera to spot troop formations over 2 km out.

And it can still navigate blind in GPS-denied zones thanks to onboard optical guidance.

It deploys in under two minutes, survives rain and dust (IP53), and operates between -36°C and +50°C. This is a far cry from the hobbyist’s toy I bought in 2011; it’s a purpose-built tool for dirty war zones.

The Mavic in the Room: Price vs. Practicality

But when you stack Parrot’s masterpiece against DJI’s battle-worn Mavic 3 or Autel’s EVO, things get dicey.

Mavic 3 drones, currently the unofficial mascot of Ukraine’s drone army, come in at a third of the cost. They fly nearly as far, are field-upgradable by soldiers, and there’s an entire grey market ecosystem propping them up. Autel EVO drones, while slightly more expensive than Mavics, also include thermal sensors and longer battery life. They're the go-to for night operations, and unlike Parrot, you don’t need a government contract to get one.

The battlefield math is cruel: You can buy three Mavics for the cost of one ANAFI UKR. And when everything in the sky is getting shot, spoofed, jammed, or exploded within a week, that kind of economics is hard to argue with.

Ukrainian Operators Weigh In: “Great Drone, Wrong War”