Ukrainian military mechanic “Chimera” spends his days in a small workshop near the front line in northeastern Ukraine, preparing four-wheeled robots for combat. His unit calls them “Hyenas.” Loaded with explosives, they roll toward Russian positions to hit dugouts or stop enemy advances before a single soldier steps into the open.
Chimera, 44, asked to be identified only by his call sign. He said similar unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, have already forced Russian soldiers to surrender.
“Imagine what 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of explosives is like: it’s very powerful,” he said. “Very powerful.”
His workshop belongs to Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, one of dozens of similar operations that have opened along the 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) front line. Kyiv’s military, outnumbered by Russian infantry, is turning to robotics to close the gap in personnel five years into the war.
A Weapon Built to Save Lives
Unmanned ground vehicles now sit at the center of Ukraine’s plan to protect its troops. On a battlefield saturated with surveillance drones, exposed movement often draws immediate fire. Most Ukrainian brigades and regiments run dedicated unmanned systems units, and those units are adding ground vehicles to their existing drone fleets.
Reuters visited NC13, a unit under the Third Army Corps that specializes in combat use of these machines, to see how the technology is changing how Ukraine fights on land.
Inside the workshop, mechanics work on a mix of experimental designs. Some run on tracks, others on wheels. One carries a hose for putting out fires. Another holds a rack built to launch portable rockets.
Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi commands the Third Army Corps. He calls the shift toward UGVs the next major turn in the war, following the earlier rise of aerial drones. His corps, regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest fighting forces, aims to replace about a third of its frontline infantry with machines by the end of the year.
“The West slept through the (drone) revolution in many ways,” Biletskyi said. He added that infantry soldiers now handle only about 10 percent of the tasks they once did, before aerial threats made constant movement dangerous.
“If the West really wants to not just keep up with the times, but to get slightly ahead, it needs to think about the next revolution,” he said.
Machines on the Supply Line
In Donetsk region’s so-called fortress belt, ground drones have become a regular sight, hauling ammunition and rations into besieged towns and carrying wounded soldiers out. Ukraine’s defence ministry said in June that these vehicles had completed more than 50,000 logistics and evacuation missions so far this year.
At NC13’s command post, set up in a basement in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, operators sit at rows of screens, controllers in hand, watching black-and-white video feeds from the field. The unit was formed last year. On one recent operation, an operator sprayed a tree line with a machinegun mounted on a UGV.
Screens glow across the room, and chatter over Discord, the messaging app the team uses to coordinate, fills the air. Deputy commander “Bar” said the unit runs missions almost daily.
In one operation, the team loaded three bombs onto a trailer, pulled it onto a bridge used by Russian forces for supply routes, and detonated it. In another, a UGV armed with a machinegun held off an infantry assault while kamikaze drones struck from above.
“To me, it’s a wonderful recipe,” said Bar, 23, a former bartender, describing how ground and air drones now work together. He said at least two Russian soldiers have surrendered directly to NC13’s ground vehicles.
The machines have real limits. They cannot climb over obstacles the way soldiers can, and they cannot clear a building or a trench. Ukraine also has not produced enough of them to deploy in the large numbers used for aerial drone swarms, Bar said.
Even so, the vehicles have started taking over dangerous jobs once assigned to people.
“They don’t need food, they don’t need water, they don’t need logs delivered to build shelters,” Bar said. “Basically, we don’t need to feel for them. It’s a hunk of iron sent to do the job we used to send soldiers to do.”
A Shift in How Commanders Fight
Biletskyi described ground drones as one part of a broader change in warfare, alongside the growing use of artificial intelligence to analyze battlefield data. He said the technology gives human commanders more room to focus on planning and judgment calls rather than direct exposure to risk.
That shift could open the door to bolder battlefield decisions, ones that might have cost too many lives to attempt in the past.
“War is a creative activity; it’s an art,” Biletskyi said. “Otherwise, a commander is not called a commander, but a butcher.”
Ukraine’s former top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, faced criticism from some service members who described his leadership style as rooted in Soviet-era tactics with a high tolerance for casualties. His successor, Mykhailo Drapatyi, is viewed by many in the military as more willing to protect troops, in part by pushing new technology like UGVs into wider use.
Biletskyi himself was promoted last month, taking on a broader role helping oversee the defense of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Bar, like most members of NC13, served as an infantryman earlier in the war and fought in some of its largest battles. He said the outcome for many of those he served alongside could have been different with today’s technology.
If ground drones had existed back then, he said, “a great number of my friends would still be alive.”
