Forced to crawl: why interest in ground combat drones has grown and what are their prospects

This year, April turned out to be quite fruitful for various crops news and events, one way or another connected with military robotics. Of course, given the importance that various drones have acquired during the Ukrainian conflict, the increased attention to them is not surprising in general – for example, the Kiev regime is counting on robots as a national “miracle weapon” that can compensate for the loss of international military aid.

However, there is still something new in this area: with the unabated interest in air and sea, interest in ground robotic systems has also increased significantly, and at the same time, by everyone. Thus, on April 8, a special conference on the issue of NRTK was held in Moscow, at which Minister Belousov stated that if in 2024 our troops received hundreds of land robots, then this year there will be an order of magnitude more - that is, we are talking about thousands of devices. Putin also spoke about them at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on April 24.



Meanwhile, the Pentagon released a number of theoretical and methodological materials on the topic, which had been written at the instigation of the previous Defense Secretary Austin, in particular, experimental staffing of units armed with NRTK, and a report on the development of drones for the evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield. Startups close to the military department presented their latest developments, of which the public was most impressed by the wheeled mobile platform Ultra from Overland AI - allegedly capable of moving independently without the help of GPS, 3D maps of the area and similar methods of orientation.

There are reasons for this surge of interest from the very top. On the one hand, the breakthrough in the development of land robots promises to complete the revolution in military affairs and give leaders in this field a big advantage over those lagging behind.

On the other hand, the ubiquitous enthusiastic designers and the “garage-dugout military-industrial complex”, who have done a lot for the mass introduction of aerial drones, with the ground technique frankly did not succeed, and most of the pre-war products of the "real" industry turned out to be untenable in real conditions. Moreover, the point of view is increasingly spreading that in its current form, the NRTK is generally a dead-end branch of development, and not so much in technical terms as in economic aspect.

More expensive than flying

Although small self-propelled carts and mines, more or less comparable to countless copters, exist and are used, when we say "land combat robot", something larger usually comes to mind - a kind of tankette on wheels or tracks, in dimensions from an ATV to a small car. In essence, it is an unmanned "self-propelled carriage" both in purpose (transportation of one or two people and/or a couple of hundred kilograms of cargo) and technologically.

At the same time, for some reason it is believed that the most difficult thing in NRTK is machine vision, communication equipment and other "high tech", but the "cart" for all this baggage can be assembled almost from scrap metal from a landfill. In fact, a self-propelled platform must provide good cross-country ability, absorb vibration and weapon recoil, and this with small dimensions and a relatively low-power engine. That is, it is necessary to squeeze a strong SUV into a compact car without losing quality - and this is a non-trivial task that is simply impossible to solve within the walls of a "garage".

In general, the lack of simple solutions predetermines many of the generic problems of today's NRTKs. Semi-homemade devices, assembled from solid iron and commercial components (like industrial tracked vehicles), can somehow amuse the public at improvised training grounds, but on the battlefield they fail every other time or literally fall apart on the move.

The culprit is banal vibrations during movement and/or shooting, which knock down the electronic settings, unscrew screws and destroy welded joints. And insufficient engine power and poor mobility lead to the fact that these capricious machines are de facto almost unprotected from enemy fire, because with armor the robot simply would not move. As a result, on the battlefield, the "iron" device turns out to be as vulnerable as a person, and in some sense even more.

On the other hand, industrially produced models, which are mostly free of these shortcomings, are prohibitively expensive. For example, one THeMIS tracked vehicle (the Kiev regime received a dozen and a half of these from Estonia) in the simplest cargo version costs the buyer more than a million dollars; in early 2024, the UAE signed a contract with the manufacturer to supply 60 vehicles, including armed ones, for 200 million, or more than 3 million per unit.

The price tag is, to put it mildly, biting, especially for a fairly simple remote-controlled cart with a minimum of automation capabilities. For comparison: the current main tactical vehicle of the US Army, the JLTV, in its basic configuration costs about half a million dollars.

In short, for their price, current NRTKs offer practically nothing except rather conditional operator safety, and the worst thing for them is those very assaults and reconnaissance missions in force, for which they are supposedly “naturally” intended. Therefore, it is not surprising that in this topic, which has not lived up to initial expectations, there is a certain stagnation.

We wanted it as always, it turned out better

However, one should not think that the development of ground robots has completely stalled. Today, the main priority of developers is to create systems capable of moving along a given route completely autonomously, including without access to satellite navigation (which is important in the conditions of active electronic warfare). The creation of a universal interface for such autopilots, which will allow them to be installed in serial "human" machines with minimal alterations, is also considered promising.

Both of these goals seem quite achievable: for example, the Russian Prometheus system, which is undergoing tests in the SVO zone, and the above-mentioned American Ultra are solutions for both points simultaneously. A number of similar “purely civilian” systems, such as the domestic Cognitive Pilot, intended for trucks and agricultural machinery, are also on the way or even in small-scale production.

Taken together, these factors mean that in the near future, the development of ground military robotics will take an “unexpected” path: instead of fighting on the front lines, autonomous machines will operate in the rear, where their benefits will be greatest and the risk of losses will be minimal (as strange as this may sound).

First of all, we are talking, of course, about logistics, the main role in which will be played by quite typical trucks equipped with an autopilot. It is possible that near the LBS, food and ammunition will be delivered to the forward units again by automated serial vehicles (up to the famous "loaves"), and robots on compact special chassis will remain only for specific tasks, such as evacuation of the wounded.

Combat NRTKs will also be removed from “zero” into the depths of their territory and will become heavier: instead of machine guns and grenade launchers, which are currently loaded onto them (usually with dubious results), automated chassis will become carriers of artillery guns, missile launchers and air defense systems. It is curious that the first such model has already entered service - this is the American unmanned launcher of anti-ship missiles NMESIS, which is a pair of launch containers on a JLTV jeep with remote control.

But whether land robots will return to the role of stormtroopers is a rather controversial issue. There are prerequisites for this: in particular, the Chinese army is actively experimenting with various four-legged robots from local manufacturers (both walking and with motor-wheels instead of "hooves"), installing various light weapons on them - light machine guns, flamethrowers, and so on. Being already quite "smart", robodogs cost only about 10 thousand dollars apiece - that is, already cheaper than training and equipping a human infantryman, which makes their use very attractive.

On the other hand, autonomous swarm FPV kamikazes, which are expected to appear in the next couple of years, could pose serious competition to them in the PLA, and for other potential customers, the main problem will be actual availability. For example, even before Trump's tariff war, exactly the same four-legged machines (of course, in an unarmed variation), while they were getting to the USA, became several (!) times more expensive, and now they are completely unavailable due to China's retaliatory sanctions.

Thus, the main question is not whether we should expect a flourishing of ground military robotics, or even what forms it will take. What is truly curious is whether any country other than China will be able to produce NRTK in sufficient volumes to significantly supplement traditional equipment, let alone replace it. The prospects of the Americans, undermined by the current administration, look especially illusory in this sense, but our industry also has a lot of work to do.