Ukraine sends machines into the battlefield in place of human soldiers
The scene is as old as war itself. The two soldiers surrendered with their hands up and shouted at them from the other side, carefully following orders.
Except for this situation, there was no human captor in sight. Instead, the two Russians were surrendering to Ukrainian ground robots and drones controlled by a pilot from a safe position miles from the front line.
This is the future of war, and it’s happening right now.
“The position was taken without a single shot being fired,” Mykola “Makar” Zinkevych, commander of the Ukrainian unit carrying out the mission, told CNN.
Zinkevych, who served in the “NC13” unit of Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade and was interested in land-based robotic attack systems, said that last summer’s operation was the first time in history that an enemy position was raided and prisoners were captured by robots and unmanned aerial vehicles on the ground without the participation of infantry. It’s a claim that’s difficult to verify, but it underlines Kiev’s pride in its technology.
Since then, missions that replace human soldiers with robots have become the unit’s daily bread and butter.
The skies above the front lines in Ukraine have been filled with drones for years, posing a serious threat to infantry. As a result, Ukrainians have begun experimenting with ground drones (remotely controlled vehicles running on wheels or rails) and ground robotic systems. Initially they were mostly used evacuate the injured and to resupply troops, but increasingly to conduct combat assault missions.
Ground drones are much more difficult to detect and intercept than large military vehicles. Compared to their airborne counterparts, they can operate in all weather conditions and carry much larger payloads.
They are also more durable and have a longer battery life. Late last year, the Third Army Corps, of which the Third Separate Assault Brigade is a part, said a single ground robot equipped with a machine gun managed to halt the Russian advance for 45 days, needing only light maintenance and a battery charge every two days.
“We must understand that we will never have more personnel and we will never have a numerical advantage over the enemy,” Zinkevych said, emphasizing Russia’s much greater military power. he said. “So we need to gain that advantage through technology.”
He said the current goal is to replace one-third of the infantry with drones and robots this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Tuesday that drones and robots had carried out more than 22,000 missions in the last three months alone. “More than 22,000 lives were saved when a robot entered the most dangerous areas instead of a warrior,” Zelensky said in a speech highlighting the achievements of Ukraine’s military technology industry.
Robert Tollast, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense and security think tank, said the new advances in Ukraine “will spark a fierce debate about whether these robots are the future of warfare.”
He said ground drones would likely have difficulty keeping the area under control and likened them to using tanks without infantry support. But they now “regularly save the lives of soldiers in evacuating the wounded, on dangerous supply missions, in mine clearance and, increasingly, in combat,” he said.
“This is critically important in a war where aerial drone surveillance makes movements near the front line almost lethal… Even if one imagines a future in which NATO does not fight wars like Ukraine, these systems are almost certain to find many uses in other forces,” he added.
drone supremacy
More than four years of war have forced Ukraine to become a global leader in battlefield drones and robotic systems. But the push for supremacy in this area was further strengthened with the appointment of Mykhailo Fedorov as Ukraine’s defense minister in January.
Fedorov was previously Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, where he oversaw the successful drone warfare project. After taking over the defense portfolio, Fedorov introduced what the ministry called a war plan, a blueprint for how Ukraine planned to “force Russia into peace.”
The strategy focuses heavily on technology and data; Hundreds of companies are involved in dozens of government-led drone development and manufacturing initiatives.
Fedorov said on Sunday that he wants ground-based robotic systems to eventually take over front-line logistics in its entirety.
The battle plan focuses on both defense and attack. The goal is to use data and technology to detect each air threat in real time and intercept at least 95% of missiles and drones, as well as create a “kill zone” 15 to 20 kilometers deep along the front line, where drones and robots operate non-stop. The defense ministry said last week that about 1,000 crews were already operating as part of this new, combined program.
Zinkevych, the Ukrainian land-based robotics commander, said the ability to scale up is crucial. “Russia is behind in the race, but it is also making progress,” he said. “The decisive factor on the battlefield is not who invented the technology and (figured out) how to apply it, but who managed to scale it up in the long run.”
Analysts say recent technological advances give Ukraine a clear drone advantage on the battlefield. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based conflict monitor, recently assessed that this drone superiority “likely contributed to halting Russian advances and recent Ukrainian counterattacks.”
“Although neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage, Ukraine’s medium-range offensive campaign allowed Kiev to regain the upper hand.” analysts wrote in a note“The challenge for Ukraine will be to stay one step ahead of Russia’s response,” he said.
Exchange of expertise for missiles
While UAV-based battlefield advantage is not decisive for the war, Kiev’s clear leadership in UAV warfare is now attracting more attention outside Europe.
An example of this is the Middle East, where many countries that have invested large amounts of money into improving their conventional military capabilities since the Iran conflict began unexpectedly found themselves using $4 million missiles to shoot down a drone that cost $50,000 to build.
Ukraine’s own limited resources have forced it to develop cheaper and much more effective methods of combating drones. Previously reluctant allies are now listening.
Zelensky has personally traveled to the Middle East, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates before moving on to Turkey and Syria, and has offered to share some of Ukraine’s hard-earned expertise in the field. barter for support. Kiev has much to offer the Gulf states, which have resources that Ukraine urgently needs, such as missiles for air defense. Zelensky also signed a number of new agreements with many European countries.
The next big thing for Ukraine and any military in the world is, of course, artificial intelligence. Ukraine is making great strides in the development and training of artificial intelligence models for unmanned systems using real battlefield data.
However, many people are cautious about using artificial intelligence in ground drones. While Zinkevych sees some processes being automated, he said he’s not sure fully autonomous technologies have a place on the battlefield.
“The final decision should always be made by a human being,” he said. “Would you entrust the weapon to artificial intelligence? How can we be sure that it can distinguish friend from foe? How can we be sure that there will be no malfunction, that nothing will go wrong?”
Still, Zinkevych, a former infantryman and commander of assault groups who is now in charge of robots, said he has been consistently impressed by the technological advances he has watched over the past four years.
“If I heard myself talking like this in 2022, I would say a crazy man was talking… this was all just science fiction,” he said.
But now it’s all inside. “Human life is priceless, whereas robots cannot bleed. Based on this, I believe that robotic ground systems should be developed much faster, on a much larger scale, and implemented as a global system to be used on the battlefield.”
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