The First Robotized War

The GPT moment for autonomous vehicles?

On April 13^th, Ukraine’s Arms Makers’ Day, President Zelenskyy announced that, for the first time in the history of the war, Ukrainian forces captured a Russian-held position using only unmanned platforms — ground robots and drones — without a single soldier crossing the line of departure.

Zelenskyy’s announcement is a masterclass in PR

Not Terminators

The systems involved were not science fiction. They are four-wheeled platforms that look closer to small tanks rather than Hollywood-terminators. They cost between $10,000 and $50,000 apiece. They are operated remotely by humans via Starlink terminals, from positions well behind the kill zone.

This changes reach: Such systems are expendables, and they can venture in places too dangerous for human soldiers. In Ukraine today, such capability is what determines whether an operation is possible at all.

Ground robots are referred to as ‘UGVs’: unmanned ground vehicles.

Zelenskyy named several systems in his address:

• The first three (Tencore’s TerMIT,Burevii’s Ardal, and, UArmor’s Protector) are the heaviest of the group and can engage fire on enemy armored vehicles

• Rovertec’s Zmiy is a demining platform armored against mine blasts

• The Ratel S is a kamikaze vehicle designed to crack open reinforced bunkers

• The Rys Pro mounts a remotely operated machine-gun turret with AI-assisted thermal tracking

Together they constitute a combined arms stack, not a single weapon — a reminder that “ground robots,” like “drones” before them, is shorthand for an entire toolkit of distinct platforms, each handling a specific phase of an operation.

The Year of the UGV

When I visited Kyiv last June, Tencore’s team told me this would be the year of the UGVs. At the time it read as founder confidence. It turned out to be an understatement.

In 2024, roughly 2,000 UGVs were delivered to Ukrainian frontline units. In 2025, that number reached 15,000 — surpassing every procurement target. Already 25,000 units have been procured in the first half of 2026 alone.

More than 280 Ukrainian companies are now developing variants. Over 200 distinct models were in production by mid-2025, with 40 new ones appearing that year alone, each iteration incorporating front-line feedback in weeks rather than the years that define Western procurement cycles.

The geographical layout driving this is straightforward. Aerial drone saturation has pushed the effective kill zone out to 20-25 kilometers from the front. Any infantry movement in that corridor is hopeless. FPV drones that cost less than a decent laptop will intercept armored vehicles on the way to evacuate a position. Ukraine faces a manpower crisis compounded by a physics problem: the most important ground on the battlefield is also the most lethally inaccessible to human beings. UGVs dissolve that constraint. Lose one, absorb the cost, send another.

From Logistics to Combat

UGVs entered the war as logistics platforms — crawling along cratered supply routes where pickup trucks had become death traps. By late 2025, the BBC reported that up to 90% of all supplies to frontline positions around Pokrovsk were moving by robot, not truck. One UGV retrieved a wounded Ukrainian soldier 64 kilometers inside Russian-held territory, surviving repeated drone strikes and a mine blast on the return journey.

Then the missions got closer to combat — though not by central design. As most shifts in Ukrainian warfare, the change from logistics robot to weapons platform happened bottom-up, driven by brigade-level improvisation. Units already running UGVs into kill zones to deliver ammunition noticed that if a robot could survive the route, it could carry a weapon too. The 3rd Assault Brigade built a dedicated strike UGV company, explicitly to prove the concept and force the state to follow. The Ukrainian Ground Forces Command only began formally developing a doctrine for robotic defensive lines in November 2024 — after the battlefield had already moved.

“For the Russians, it’s cheaper to send people. We don’t have people — so we build robots.” said Yurii Poritskyi, CEO of DevDroid.

In July 2025, Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade reported that FPV drones and a kamikaze ground robot loaded with antitank mines struck a Russian bunker entrance in Kharkiv Oblast. When a second robot approached the damaged position, two surviving Russian soldiers held up a handwritten sign reading “We want to surrender.” Fedorov subsequently claimed that over 100 Russian troops laid down their arms to Ukrainian unmanned systems during the winter alone. In January 2026, a ground robot captured three Russian soldiers — the first documented prisoner capture by a ground robot in the history of warfare. By March, a ground robot equipped with a machine gun had held a frontline position for 45 consecutive days, reloaded every 48 hours, with no human presence at the position itself.

“Robots do not bleed,” said Mykola Zinkevych of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps. Robotic platforms have already reduced personnel casualties by up to 30%.

What does it mean for the future of infantry?

For some - robotization means the end of infantry. Brigadier General Andriy Biletskyi of the 3rd Army Corps has argued that units fully integrating UGVs could reduce frontline infantry requirements by 30% by end of year, and up to 80% further down the line.

But reality is usually more complex. UGVs still fail to reach their destination four times out of five in certain conditions. Navigation under electronic warfare remains a serious constraint. Urban clearing, holding terrain after seizure, exploiting breakthroughs — these still require human judgment and physical presence.

What is changing is the threshold for when and where human beings need to be present. The first line is becoming robotic. Humans are moving back.

The manpower dimension matters beyond Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting an adversary with three to four times its available manpower pool, and UGVs are directly softening that asymmetry — each robot that holds a position or runs a logistics route is a soldier who doesn’t need to be recruited, trained, or replaced. The implications for Europe are significant. Rebuilding credible standing armies across the continent has stalled politically for a decade, in part because reinstating conscription is both deeply unpopular and arguably misaligned with how modern warfare actually works — what militaries need are professionals who can operate complex networked systems, not mass infantry. A robotized frontline changes that calculation. Smaller professional forces, augmented by large fleets of expendable machines, may be able to generate the combat mass that European governments cannot generate through recruitment alone.

The rest of the world follows

As Ukraine is building the world’s first robotized ground army, the rest of the world’s militaries are catching up. Western companies also start to scale:

• ARX Robotics closed a €42 million Series A in 2025, with its Gereon UGV platform now deployed across six European armed forces including Ukraine. These are now used for logistics, but should move into combat use cases soon.

• Quantum Systems and Tencore announced a joint venture — Quantum Tencore Industries — in Berlin last month, targeting thousands of systems for Ukraine and NATO armed forces.

• In the US, Forterra closed a $238 million Series C in November, pushing its valuation past $1 billion.

Quantum Systems & Tencore

Massive contracts towards robotization of the battlefield are now really kicking off. Just this week, Estonia suspended its €500 million infantry fighting vehicle program and redirected the funds toward drones and unmanned systems, citing Ukraine directly.

Meanwhile, France and Germany are pressing ahead with the MGCS — their next-generation crewed main battle tank program — while Germany and Italy are developing a separate successor platform, and Poland is executing one of the largest tank procurement programs in NATO history. These are multi-billion dollar bets on crewed heavy armor at the precise moment the battlefield is moving in the opposite direction. They may not age well.