Ukraine’s novel tactics: Land drones enter the battlefield

Ukraine is harnessing the power of land drones to try to shift the tides in its war against Russia.

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) are an innovative twist to modern warfare, but they come with their share of obstacles. Unlike aerial and marine drones, UGVs must confront challenges such as maneuvering through urban structures and traversing rough landscapes.

“UGV will become the next game-changer of this war,” Nataliia Kushnerska, the chief operating officer of Brave1, a Ukrainian government agency that examines proposals for new weapons, told The Wall Street Journal.

Among more than 1,300 projects pitched to Brave1 since Russia invaded in February 2022, more than 140 have been centered on UGVs. The agency has approved 56 grants for 41 projects, with more than 50 UGVs put through combat-like tests, The Journal wrote.

One such test included an August operation involving a land drone devised by a Ukrainian enterprise. The UGV, essentially a Browning machine gun mounted on a quad-bike-like entity, carried out a successful assault and then returned intact to be operated again by the 5th Assault Kyiv Brigade. The incursion caused physical casualties and disarray within enemy ranks because of the indiscernible origin of the attack.

The U.S. and its allies, despite their longstanding experimentation with land drones, have yet to incorporate them significantly in live combat scenarios.

That hasn’t dampened Ukraine’s ambition, which is to form a formidable “army of robots,” according to its technology and innovation minister.

Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently announced the creation of the Unmanned Systems Forces — a specialized unit for drone technology across all terrains.