The increased emphasis on battlefield robots has coincided with the rise of flying drones, which have made the modern battlefield exceptionally deadly for human soldiers. Persistent drone surveillance and drone strikes have created a “kill zone” up to 12 miles (20 kilometers) from front-line positions by February 2026, forcing individual soldiers to rely on the darkness of night, anti-thermal cloaks or foggy conditions to advance without risk of drone attack. As the full-scale war enters its fifth year, such drones are now causing the majority of casualties on both sides’ battlefields. The latest military drones being tested by Ukraine in combat are integrating autonomous, onboard software and AI-powered capabilities to track and attack targets, even if they lose communication with human operators due to enemy jamming.
Robots reporting for duty
By comparison, the use of ground robots in the Russo-Ukrainian war has been relatively modest, with Ukraine reporting hundreds of thousands of drone flights per month compared to thousands of ground robot missions per month. Yet the latest data shows that the Ukrainian military has stepped up its efforts to deploy more robots for supply operations and medical evacuations, which could reduce human exposure to drone threats. Ukraine has also increasingly deployed such robots in combat roles, armed with machine guns and grenade launchers or sometimes equipped to explode like rotating bombs.
An example of such robots is Droid TW 12.7 developed by the Ukrainian company DevDroid. The company’s marketing materials describe the tracked robot as being armed with a remotely controlled turret-mounted M2 Browning machine gun and capable of traveling up to 15 miles (25 kilometers) at a maximum speed equal to the walking speed of an adult. The human operator can communicate with the robot via radio, and the robot can also engage Starlink’s satellite service.
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