{"id":133426,"date":"2026-03-07T17:02:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T17:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/armed-robots-take-to-the-battlefield-in-ukraine-war\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T17:02:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T17:02:54","slug":"armed-robots-take-to-the-battlefield-in-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/armed-robots-take-to-the-battlefield-in-ukraine-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed robots take to the battlefield in Ukraine war"},"content":{"rendered":"

KIEV, Mar 7 \u2013 Since the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the war in Ukraine has developed into a high-tech conflict.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Swarms of spy and killer drones have set the skies of Ukraine abuzz, and uncrewed boats have crippled the Russian navy in the Black Sea.Now, Ukraine has embarked on a massive programme to deploy armed robots on the ground.<\/p>\n

Uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs), or ground robot systems as they are known in Ukrainian military parlance, have already proven their worth.<\/p>\n

There have been reports of UGVs successfully repelling Russian attacks and even taking enemy soldiers prisoner.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian and Russian killer robots are even said to have clashed without humans being present at the site of the battle.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobot wars are already happening,\u201d says Oleksandr Afanasiev from the Ukrainian army\u2019s K2 brigade. He commands its UGV battalion \u2013 the world\u2019s first, he says.<\/p>\n

One way in which the brigade has been using these robots is by mounting Kalashnikov machine guns on top.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey open fire on a battlefield where an infantryman would be afraid to turn up. But a UGV is happy to risk its existence,\u201d Maj Afanasiev says.<\/p>\n

His battalion has also been using explosive-laden, battery-powered kamikaze UGVs to blow up enemy positions and hideouts.<\/p>\n

Unlike aerial drones that buzz overhead, they make no sound to warn the enemy of an impending strike.<\/p>\n

The deputy commander of the 33rd Detached Mechanised Brigade\u2019s tank battalion, who goes by the callsign Afghan, claims that one Ukrainian UGV armed with a machine gun ambushed a Russian personnel carrier, while a robot defended a Ukrainian position for weeks.<\/p>\n

Afghan admits there are limits to the killer robots\u2019 autonomy on the battlefield, and says many of them are self-imposed, because of ethics and international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n

\u201cModern UGVs are part-autonomous. They can move on their own, they can observe and detect the enemy. But still, the decision to open fire is made by a human, their operator,\u201d Afghan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobots can misidentify the wrong person or attack a civilian. That\u2019s why the final decision must be made by an operator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which means that in most cases on the battlefield armed UGVs are remote-controlled by operators over the internet from a safe distance.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s lethal UGVs can be armed with grenade launchers as well as machine guns, and can also be deployed to plant landmines or barbed wire.<\/p>\n

But the vast majority of its uncrewed vehicles are still used for their original purpose of delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded.<\/p>\n

The role of armed UGVs will soon grow exponentially, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine\u2019s former commander-in-chief and now ambassador to the UK.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KIEV, Mar 7 \u2013 Since the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, the war in Ukraine has developed into a high-tech conflict. Swarms of spy and killer drones have set the skies of Ukraine abuzz, and uncrewed boats have crippled the Russian navy in the Black Sea.Now, Ukraine has embarked on a massive programme to deploy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}