In a cramped workshop near the front line in north-eastern Ukraine, military mechanic “Chimera” is helping prepare his unit’s robot forces for battle. Lined up in a row, the four-wheeled unmanned vehicles known as “Hyenas” will crawl toward Russian lines with their payload of explosives and attack an enemy dugout or halt an advance.Similar models have captured Russian prisoners, said Chimera (44), who asked to be identified by his call sign. “Imagine what 20 kilograms of explosives is like: it’s very powerful,” he said. “Very powerful.” Workshops like this one, run by Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, have sprouted up across the 1,200-km front as Kyiv’s outmanned army seeks to gain the technological edge against Russia’s unrelenting infantry assaults in the fifth year of war.Unmanned ground vehicles are a critical new component of Ukraine’s strategy to fight smarter by preserving the lives of its troops on a drone-saturated battlefield, where virtually any movement can prove deadly. Most Ukrainian brigades feature unmanned systems units which are expanding to include UGVs as part of their forces.
New ‘revolution’
In the workshop, a garage space is crammed with experimental drones, some with tracks and others wheeled. One is mounted with a hose for dousing fires; another is equipped with a rack to hold portable rocket launchers. Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi, who commands the Third Army Corps, described the gradual replacement of infantrymen with UGVs as the next “revolution” in warfare.Considered one of Ukraine’s premier forces, the corps wants to replace around one-third of its frontline troops by the end of the year. “The West slept through the (drone) revolution in many ways,” he said, adding the infantry now performs just 10% of the tasks it did before the constant aerial threat appeared. “If the West really wants to not just keep up with the times, but to get ahead, it needs to think about the next revolution,” said Biletskyi.Inside a grey command centre in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the ground drone operators of NC13, formed last year, are manifesting Biletskyi’s vision in real time, controllers in hand. Deputy commander “Bar” said his unit runs operations virtually every day. In one, they loaded three bombs onto a trailer that was pulled onto a bridge used for enemy logistics, then blown up. In another, a machine-gun-mounted UGV suppressed an enemy assault while kamikaze drones rained on them from above.Room for creationThough not a miracle weapon, ground drones are one more step toward the automation of warfare, said Biletskyi. They could shape new frontline tactics, with commanders more open to daring operations that would have otherwise led to heavy losses. “War is a creative activity; it’s an art,” he said. “Otherwise, a commander is not called a commander – but a butcher.” Reuters
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