The over 180,000 remotely piloted vehicles used by the Ukrainian forces since the beginning of the year paralyze the front, while the industry increases their production and NATO recognizes them among standardized armaments
The Russian-Ukrainian front is increasingly static and the war is fought by targeting enemy infrastructure, using flying drones. No army carries out major manoeuvres, precisely because the danger of being observed and hit by remotely piloted vehicles is very high; this is particularly true for supply logistics, which are intercepted and destroyed, killing the soldiers driving the wheeled vehicles. Thus Ukraine declared that it will purchase 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs or rover drones) already in the first half of this year, more than double the total that was planned for 2025.
What will the new drones be used for?
The Ministry of Defense’s new plan intends to use them to transfer all logistics to the front line, by having robots do the work instead of soldiers. This was made known by Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last week, after a meeting with domestic manufacturers of ground drones, an event during which it was also announced that the Ministry has already started signing contracts for 2027, in order to consolidate long-term supply relationships with manufacturers.
Fedorov, in a post published on Facebook on April 18, wrote: «The Ugvs carry out important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line; in March alone, the armed forces have already carried out over 9,000 missions in which they used them. Our goal is for 100% of frontline logistics to be managed by robotic systems. Production will be led by «Brave1»the government-backed Ukrainian defense technology cluster, which coordinates financing, testing and field feedback for domestic and international manufacturers.
Investments for the Russian-Ukrainian war
According to Ukrainian media reports, the Ministry of Defense has so far spent around 330 million dollars to send more than 181,000 drones, unmanned ground vehicles and electronic warfare systems to the front lines starting last January, through a digital procurement system that allows frontline units to order equipment directly from domestic manufacturers. And already last February, Andrii Hrytseniuk, CEO of Brave1, declared to the Military Times newspaper: “We have around 300 companies producing land-based drones in the Brave1 ecosystem, compared to zero in 2022.”
A few days after Fedorov’s announcement, Kiev had codified the «Bizon-L»a logistics robot with a payload of three hundred kilograms and a range of action of fifty kilometers, according to NATO cataloging standards, and has authorized its operational use for national and allied armed forces.
The Russians surrendered to the drones between propaganda and reality
President Volodimyr Zelensky, in his speech on April 14 before representatives of the national companies that produce drones, made it known that Ukrainian forces have conducted over 22,000 missions with unmanned vehicles in the last three monthssparing an equivalent number of soldiers the most dangerous tasks of the war. In particular, the president stated that last summer the operators of a robotic attack unit of the Third Assault Brigade, the “NC13”, used exclusively aerial drones and unmanned ground vehicles to conquer a fortified Russian position in theoblast of Kharkiv.
The episode, according to some US media, saw Russian troops display a cardboard sign with the words “we want to surrender” to the drone cameras, then they followed the rovers with their hands raised until they were taken into custody by Kiev’s military. Obviously there are no official videos of this story, so we will never be able to know the truth. «For the first time in the history of this war, our soldiers conquered an enemy position using exclusively unmanned platforms; it is high technology to protect the highest value: human life», said Zelensky.
Link to video on X: Defense of Ukraine on
