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.

We don’t know exactly what the Russians were trying to do with their grenade-launching robotic mini-tanks. We don’t know exactly how the Ukrainians thwarted them. We do know that, years ago, analysts anticipated just how difficult it might be for armies to begin folding robotic ground vehicles into mechanized attacks.

In late 2020, analysts with the California think-tank RAND gamed out a clash between U.S. Army and Russian army mechanized infantry companies in some near-future setting after the U.S. Army has integrated armed ground robots into its force structure. In the game, 11 wheeled and tracked UGVs complemented the Americans’ four M-1 tanks and 11 M-2-style infantry fighting vehicles.

What RAND’s analysts refered to as “robotic combat vehicles” didn’t perform very well in the think-tank’s various offensive and defensive scenarios—and for one major reason. RAND’s RCVs were controlled via radio by a remote operator, just like Russia’s actual UGVs surely are.

And that means they were vulnerable to getting cut off from their operators—either by the terrain or by enemy jamming. “In the baseline game, the need to maintain unobstructed and un-jammed line-of-sight communications to the RCVs imposed significant constraints on [U.S.] forces, slowing the pace and complicating the management of [the U.S.] advance,” the analysts explained.

“In particular, [Russian forces’] effective use of backpack jammers (placed before the battle) substantially limited [U.S. forces’] ability to use the RCVs.” Frequently idled as their operators struggled to stay in control, the robots rolled into battle in erratic fits and starts—and got knocked out by enemy fire.

Again, we don’t know whether one of the Russian army’s first-ever robotic ground assaults in Ukraine ran afoul of Ukrainian jamming. But we shouldn’t be surprised if it did.

Ukrainian forces’ expert application of electronic warfare—flooding key radio channels with noise, rendering them unusable for drone-operators—is one reason why, in some sectors, the Ukrainians have been able to achieve local air-superiority with their own un-jammed aerial drones.

If the Russians widen their deployment of armed ground robots, expect the Ukrainians, in response, to widen their radio-jamming. And expect to see more sights like we observed around Bakhmut: wrecked and abandoned UGVs lying alongside wrecked and abandoned manned vehicles.