Drones decided several battles of the Russian war in Ukraine, while unmanned surface vehicles contributed to the decimation of the Russian Black Sea fleet. Unmanned ground vehicles have so far remained out of the limelight, although on both sides of the conflict they are used to transport mines, supplies to soldiers or help the wounded. Maybe it will stay that way. The first deployment of unmanned vehicles by Russia ended ingloriously. As the video shows, two Russian robots did not survive the attack by Ukrainian drones. For example, Forbes magazine reports on this.
The battle between robots and drones ended shortly after it began somewhere among the ruins of the Bachmut battlefield. Two Russian tracked unmanned vehicles equipped with grenade launchers attacked the positions of the Ukrainian 53rd Mechanized Brigade. It didn’t turn out well for them. Footage shared by channels on the Telegram network shows how it was left damaged among the ruins after a drone strike.
According to Forbes, analysts’ predictions that it would be difficult to integrate robotic devices among other vehicles in ground attacks have been confirmed. In late 2020, the California think tank RAND simulated a clash between the US Army and Russian Army mechanized infantry companies after the US military incorporated armed ground robots into its forces. The simulation involved 11 tracked and wheeled unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), four Abrams tanks and 11 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
The “Robotic Combat Vehicles” didn’t work very well in a formation in either offensive or defensive scenarios. Like Bakhmut’s Russian vehicles, the training machines were controlled by operators who were not present on the battlefield. This turned out to be the biggest reason for their vulnerability. Because the robots often lost signal, which was caused by uneven terrain or interference from enemies. The machines thus remained cut off from their operators.
The Americans say that this brought a significant slowdown in actions and complicated command. “The robots were often idle, despite the efforts of their operators to keep them under control. The machines charged into battle in erratic fits and were knocked down by enemy fire,” wrote analysts at the RAND think tank.
Ukrainian forces’ electronic warfare units use jammers to flood key radio channels with “noise” that renders the channels unusable for operators. Ukrainian drones are able to establish an advantage locally due to the means of unblocking channels with which they are equipped.
Tags: VIDEO battle robots drones Ukrainians attacking air won Bakhmut
