A Ukrainian national guard brigade just orchestrated an all-robot combined-arms operation, mixing crawling and flying drones for an assault on Russian

Ukraine’s First All-Robot Assault Force Just Won Its First Battle

submited by

Style Pass

2024-12-22 13:00:02

A Ukrainian national guard brigade just orchestrated an all-robot combined-arms operation, mixing crawling and flying drones for an assault on Russian positions in Kharkiv Oblast in northern Russia.

“We are talking about dozens of units of robotic and unmanned equipment simultaneously on a small section of the front,” a spokesperson for the 13th National Guard Brigade explained.

It was an impressive technological feat—and a worrying sign of weakness on the part of overstretched Ukrainian forces. Unmanned ground vehicles in particular suffer profound limitations, and still can’t fully replace human infantry.

That the 13th National Guard Brigade even needed to replace all of the human beings in a ground assault speaks to how few people the brigade has compared to the Russian units it’s fighting. The 13th National Guard Brigade defends a five-mile stretch of the front line around the town of Hlyboke, just south of the Ukraine-Russia border. It’s holding back a force of no fewer than four Russian regiments.

That’s no more than 2,000 Ukrainians versus 6,000 or so Russians. The manpower ratio is roughly the same all along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 34-month wider war on Ukraine. Russian troops still greatly outnumber Ukrainian troops, despite the Russians suffering around twice as many casualties as the Ukrainians since February 2022.