Russia’s First-Ever Robotic Ground Assault Ended Badly ... For The Robots
The air might be the perfect medium for a drone. The sea, a close second. After all, avoiding obstacles is one of hardest tasks for the distant operator of some remote-controlled robot. There aren’t a lot of obstacles on the water. Even fewer in the air.
Obstacles abound on the ground, however. Which is why, 25 months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, both sides deploy lots of aerial drones and the Ukrainians deploy lots of sea drones—but neither side deploys many ground drones.
Not for actual combat, at least. Both the Ukrainians and Russians do use small ground robots for resupply, casualty-evacuation and mine-laying.
That combat exception ended somewhere around the ruins of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, when the Russian army sent at least two—and possibly many more—small, tracked, grenade-launcher-armed unmanned ground vehicles on what appears to have been a direct assault on the Ukrainian 53rd Mechanized Brigade.
It didn’t end well for the robots. A capture from a Ukrainian aerial drone, circulated by Telegram channel @stanislav_osman, depicts two of the diminutive UGVs—one with the number “6” on its flank—lying apparently damaged amid the ruins of destroyed manned vehicles.
