Some look like remote-controlled toy cars, but They run to get under an armored vehicle or a truck and blow up the mine that they carry on their backs; others are just a simple stretcher moved by caterpillars underneath with which to evacuate the wounded, saving the exposure of health workers to enemy fire; and others carry an optical sight, a magazine full of projectiles and a large caliber machine gun to shoot at men, vehicles and, above all, other robots.
The front of the Ukrainian war is passing of the proliferation of flying drones -those that change the rules of movement of troops and armor and have led to the transparency of the battlefield- to be deployed in defensive positions, forests, mud, roads and rubble a growing number of autonomous ground vehicles or remote control.
After the waves of drones attacking combat tanks like mosquitoes (2022 and 2023), and those of large Russian kamikaze robotic aircraft massively bombing cities since 2024, the time has come for the UGV -in English Unnamed Ground Vehicleor unmanned ground vehicle, another business niche emerging from the Ukrainian war.
Offensive of robots
There are new possibilities of a ceasefire on the horizon of this war, but it seems that no cessation of hostilities is going to stop what is already industrial inertia in the most tortured point in Europe. Forced to improvise in its defense, Ukraine has become the largest point of innovation in robotic warfare and cheap drones in the West. If the armed clashes are interrupted by a peace plan, production will not cease: the Ukrainian border established in front of Russia will remain bristling with alert and firing robotsobservers from the Spanish Army predict.
From air to earth: second phase of the war robotization. In the Brave1 innovation initiative of the Ukrainian defense industrythey alternate the term UGV with other more imaginative ones: they also call them “droids” – borrowing the term from Star Wars – and “combat modules”. Five firms in the country, just start-ups at the beginning of the war, have developed systems that are changing the front.
Son Temerland, Tencore, Rovertech, DevDroid y Frontline Robotics. In all cases they have young engineers in the founding team, and, now, collaborators in various countries, teleworking outside of Ukraine.
Among the proposals they have delivered to the Ukrainian army is a alert and response system for the deployment of drones around land communication routes. The army can disperse them from a truck, the robots each go out looking for their position, they stand on the roadside or at certain observation points, they activate and raise their optical sights and remain watching.
The plan foresees that, when the adversary’s vehicles appear on the road, the drones will warn. The system goes from alert to attack: Robots that fire anti-tank rockets are then deployedand also those who attack trucks and armored vehicles, and those who bomb them from the air. In the scheme that Temerland manages, no human element participates in the action in person. The integration of this system at points on the front is kept secret.
“Allies of Steel”
To enlist as many robots as possible, the Ukrainian defense has a new international campaign to raise donations of money and devices. “Allies of Steel” is the name of the current edition. “Robotic platforms help carry out missions in areas that are difficult to access, to that soldiers do not become live targets of enemy drones“, explains the campaign’s arguments printed on leaflets and advertisements online.
The president himself endorses the campaign Volodimir Zelenskyand is promoted by the Ministry of Strategic Industries. That department of the Ukrainian government, and that of Digitalization, sprovide technology and innovation to their armed forces. Each unit is cheap for the work it performs, but a large supply represents an important budget: the simplest land mule drones, capable of loading tasks, but also of attack or defense, around 10,000 euros the device.
There are five models around which the pricing revolves. The one with the greatest offensive power is called TermIT. It has been developed by Tencore, one of the firms in the Ukrainian drone industry born in the heat of the war. It is an autonomous vehicle capable of carrying loads of up to 300 kilos up to 20 kilometers away and at 10 kilometers per hour. Its potential in combat actions is multiplied by advancing guided (immune to radio signal disturbance), equipped with cameras to report what is seen in the friction zone with the Russian infantry and with a machine gun, and aided in its advance by a flying drone that can act as a repeater antenna.
Load, shoot…
A year ago, two years into the war due to the start of the invasion of Ukraine, the TermITs began to integrate into the Ukrainian forces. At the same time, drones designed to medical evacuation, such as Volya-Ebut also to load and unload mines or any component of what the Ukrainian Defense Forces call “critical supplies.”
This machine, like mula robotica Targan 300whose stocks Zelensky seeks to multiply with the campaign, allows the soldiers in charge of delivering ammunition, food, water, fuel and other supplies to the front line to be removed from danger on the front.
A ground kamikaze robot on the Ukrainian front / Brave 1 Ukraine
The Targan 300 has been designed to operate with Starlink communicationsthe satellite constellation of Elon Muskand its design allows it a future use in times of peace, as a support machine in agricultural work.
…and demine
Ukrainian public spending also covers a Rovertech Zmiy demining robot. Basically, it spins chains located on its nose, shaking the ground. The links that destroy the mines are easily replaceable. The machine is used for make way for vehicles and military units on footbut the company has also reported using its “deminer” in civilian land reclamations in Kharkov.
Last year, a similar Ukrainian survey, this one with the support of the messaging firm Glovo, called for fwaves to send ground drones to the front“where even the best messengers cannot reach,” said the advertising of a “Charitable Campaign for Robots.” The collection lasted four months, closing in November 2024.
This year’s has no limit on the calendar, “since “Our armed forces need robots on the battlefield constantly,” the promoters explain. With what is being obtained, the Ukrainian general staff reinforces weak points or rewards outstanding units in shock zones such as besieged Pokrovsk. On that front, and also on that of the destroyed Avdivkarobots prepared for two antithetical tasks have been widely used, confirm the aforementioned military sources: the demining and deactivation of explosive traps, on the one hand, and, on the other, the dispersal of mines to deny passage areas to the adversary.
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