In August 2024, Ukrainian special forces from five military intelligence units crossed the Black Sea to raid Russian-held Kinburn Spit. The commandos of these units—Chimera, Aratta, Stuhna, Paragon, Terror, and the Siberian Battalion—landed, fought, destroyed equipment, and withdrew. Two years later, in July 2026, Ukraine returned, but left the soldiers behind. Instead, an uncrewed surface vessel carried a ground robot across the water and released it onto the shore. Equipped with a Wolly 7.62 remotely operated combat module featuring a machine gun and an AI-assisted targeting system, the robot rolled onto shore and engaged targets. A robot delivering a robot—this is likely the first known combat mission of its kind in the world, according to the fighters of the 123rd Brigade who carried it out.
While such operations make headlines, most robotic missions never do. Within the 3rd Assault Brigade, which fields a dedicated ground-robot battalion, approximately 19 out of every 20 ground-robot tasks involve logistics or evacuation; combat accounts for only 2 percent. Khartiia, which executed Ukraine’s first fully robotized operation using ground drones in late 2024, reports the same pattern: logistics remains the platforms’ most critical function.
Third Army officers note that ground robots reduce administrative burdens. They empower junior officers to determine how to execute a commander’s intent. Furthermore, they provide a battle captain with a shared, real-time picture to coordinate units directly, eliminating the need to wait for approval up and down the chain of command.
By August 20, 2026, Ukrainian ground robots had undertaken more than 100,000 frontline missions—roughly one sortie every three and a half minutes, day and night. This represents the robotization of the final miles of the military supply chain. It is not merely militarized drone warfare, as the fleet primarily absorbs labor rather than solely increasing lethality. That labor equation is crucial, but it is not the aspect of Ukraine’s experience that transfers most readily.
The Last Mile
Large trucks can deliver supplies to rear distribution points, but ammunition, water, food, batteries, generators, and construction materials must still reach dispersed positions. The loads are transferred to progressively smaller vehicles—first pickups, then all-terrain vehicles or motorcycles, and finally soldiers on foot. Each transfer reduces carrying capacity and creates discernible patterns that Russian reconnaissance can detect.
Drone warfare forces units to scatter and fortify their positions, while their demand for batteries, electronic-warfare equipment, and construction materials increases, making supplies harder to deliver. Heavy aerial drones now deliver almost all food, ammunition, and water to some zero-line positions. Casualty evacuation presents the same problem in reverse; a wounded soldier must travel back through the kill zone before reaching an ambulance or stabilization point. Documented cases show soldiers being required to walk as far as 25 kilometers (15 miles) to reach or leave their positions. A revealing robotic evacuation was recorded near Pokrovsk in March 2026. Ukrainian commanders assessed a route as too heavily mined and exposed for a conventional vehicle. A Bizon ground robot traveled approximately 12 km (7.5 miles) each way over 12 hours to retrieve the casualty. It was struck by a first-person view drone and briefly lost communications, but the wounded soldier survived.
Ground robots entered this system at its narrowest point: between the last location conventional vehicles can reach with tolerable risk and the positions that still require physical connection to the rear. They are not invulnerable; mines, first-person view drones, small-arms fire, broken communications, and difficult terrain destroy them frequently. However, losing one does not cost another casualty, nor does it necessitate another trip through the same contested ground.
The Economics of Exposure
One Ukrainian soldier remained trapped near Russian positions for 33 days. Six ground robots sent to retrieve him were destroyed; the seventh completed a 64-kilometer mission and brought him back alive. By traditional attrition metrics, the operation appears disastrous, but compared with repeatedly sending rescue teams through the same drone-covered terrain, the exchange was justifiable.
In the 21st Unmanned Systems Regiment, ground robots now handle up to 90 percent of its deliveries. In the 3rd Assault Brigade, monthly robotic deliveries increased from 30 tons in January 2025 to 300 tons a year later. The brigade also reports that all battlefield evacuations of wounded and fallen soldiers are now conducted by robots.
Ground drones allow supplies to move in smaller loads over multiple routes. For casualties, the robot’s job is to cross the exposed ground so a stretcher team does not have to. Sustained operations require vehicles that units can replace quickly, repair near the front, and operate using standardized controls and components. Effectiveness is measured through completed missions, tons delivered, casualties extracted, repair time, and, primarily, hours of human exposure avoided. The fleet still requires personnel—just fewer of them in the kill zone itself. Every destroyed robot costs equipment and operator time, but if it has already completed a casualty evacuation, the loss may still be worthwhile.
A 2024 Ukrainian General Staff model estimated that the systematic use of ground robots could reduce personnel losses in supported units by up to 30 percent. However, that result belongs to Ukraine’s particular war: a manpower-constrained army, a positional front, and repeated supply routes under constant drone surveillance. A casualty-averse military may seek the same trade; an expeditionary force faces a harder test, because its spares, repair teams, communications, and recovery capacity must travel with the fleet. What transfers is the system behind the result—common standards, shared data, trained operators, forward maintenance, and procurement tied to verified use.
From Platforms to a Fleet
Ukraine established the Unmanned Systems Forces in June 2024, unifying aerial, maritime, and ground systems under a single command. In November, the government financed its first robot purchases and opened the first school for ground robotic system operators. By mid-2026, seven private schools had received defense ministry certification. Between January and May 2026, the number of military units employing ground robots nearly doubled, from 117 to 230.
NATO’s Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre in Bydgoszcz has begun absorbing these lessons, and a June 2025 U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command assessment of the Khartiia Brigade’s robot-only assault recommended pairing ground robots with aerial drones and equipping engineer units with robotic breaching tools. Individual battlefield successes are arriving well ahead of standardized tactics for employing ground robots at scale.
Common standards allowed more than 200 Ukrainian manufacturers to supply what increasingly functions as a single fleet.
Russia has not kept pace. At least 32 Russian ground robotic system models have been documented, the Depesha and Kurier platforms among the most visible, and confirmed combat use for at least 20. This constitutes a real program, but nothing like Ukraine’s mission volume.
Ukraine has also begun constructing the digital layer that holds this fleet together. Delta, a battlefield-management platform, now plans and tracks ground robot missions alongside aerial and maritime ones. A separate system, named ePoints, verifies completed sorties and tracks unit performance. The combat points earned can be exchanged for military equipment through Brave1 Market. Delta represents the know-how required to manage a mixed fleet of autonomous and manually operated, aerial and ground, human and machine systems—all inside one interface, on NATO-compatible data standards. Western states with larger, more entrenched defense industries face a harder version of this problem: retrofitting interoperability onto incumbent primes is a different task than building it from zero, as Ukraine did.
The lesson for other militaries is not to “buy more robots.” It ought to be that robots without an integrating layer are isolated tools; robots inside an integrated ecosystem like Delta’s are a force multiplier. Western militaries must build a system that outlives any one vehicle. Open interfaces, access to operational data, and smaller procurement batches let a new robot plug in rather than force a redesign of the rest.
Where Ground Robots Reach Their Limits
While aerial drones fly over shell craters, clay, undergrowth, and ruins, ground robots must cross them. Ukrainian platforms that perform well on test ranges frequently encounter their hardest terrain for the first time in combat, making local modifications essential. A vehicle suited to an urban zone may fail in dense woodland.
The battlefield has also expanded faster than the means of communication. Many early ground robots were designed around a control range of two to five kilometers. Supply and evacuation routes now reach 15 to 20 kilometers through the kill zone, sometimes even further. With typical speeds of up to 15 kilometers (9 miles) per hour, a single mission may require hours of uninterrupted control. Units alternate among radio, Starlink, fiber-optic cables, and aerial relays according to distance, terrain, and electronic warfare conditions. A broken video link can leave a vehicle stranded in a crater or on an exposed road.
Since mid-2026, Russia has fielded dedicated jamming systems, including the “Volna Kupol Garant” array, to flood the satellite frequencies that Ukrainian Starlink terminals rely on. This interference targets drones operating far behind the front lines, but it also affects any ground robot that depends on the same connection. Starlink’s uplink capacity is frequently insufficient for the continuous video stream from combat uncrewed ground vehicles, even without enemy interference. Control of the link is becoming as consequential as control of the ground the robot crosses. Russia’s emerging Rassvet constellation could narrow Ukraine’s communications advantage. Once fully operational, it could allow for online control of aerial drones throughout Ukraine, meaning Ukraine should start creating electronic-warfare systems to counter it.
These conditions define the practical agenda for autonomy. The majority of so-called autonomous systems adhere to predetermined pathways or evade trivial hurdles, while operators retain the power to make important decisions. Current priorities center on navigation without GPS, identifying hazards and potential threats, and the ability to continue or return after losing communications. Each function lightens the workload of operators and allows a crew to manage more missions.
Survivability creates another tradeoff. Mines immobilize platforms, while first-person view drones exploit their visible and thermal signatures. In a late-2025 interview, Maksym Vasylchenko, co-founder and CEO of Tencore, said that one brigade working with the company had reported losing two to five ground robots per day. Additional armor increases weight, heat, and cost; lighter platforms sacrifice protection. Ukraine has largely accepted higher attrition in exchange for mobility and rapid replacement.
Ground robots perform best on repeatable missions with known routes and bounded decisions: resupply, evacuation, and minelaying. Dynamic assault requires more resilient communications and greater autonomy. Ukraine’s breakthrough has come from matching imperfect machines to missions they can execute at scale.
What’s Next?
The Ukrainian campaign has demonstrated that the pivotal battle is no longer just about brute force or land, but about who can keep an integrated system operating at the edge of the battlefield while moving people out of the most dangerous areas. Several implications follow for Western planners.
First, the U.S. Army has activated Mission Autonomy, an integrator that will connect existing systems into taskable packages of capability. Its three priorities are combat engineering, fires, and logistics, with autonomous resupply and casualty evacuation falling under logistics. Its leadership calls the model “acquisition in reverse,” starting with the battlefield problem and developing requirements alongside industry’s proposed solutions, rather than specifying every detail first. However, Future Combat Systems and Robotic Combat Vehicle stalled on cost or survivability, and at its own Detroit rollout, one attendee with years of Army robotics experience asked whether this is merely another reset. A system built to buy 40 of something over ten years cannot buy 4,000 of something that will be obsolete by spring.
Second, NATO’s smaller eastern-flank states have little territory or manpower to spare. Robotic resupply should promptly move into doctrine. For small armies, keeping people out of the kill zone is a condition of survival.
Third, planners need to consider how far an unmanned fleet can remain controllable and recoverable under electronic attack. Two constraints of the robotic depth stand out: connectivity and operator attention. The CEO of Ark Robotics estimates that no more than 1 percent of technological systems used in combat are truly autonomous. Today, each additional drone generally requires another operator. Large fleets will therefore need software that allows one person to supervise several aerial and ground systems at once. The Kyiv School of Economics Institute identifies the near-term priorities: automatic switching among communications channels, navigation without GPS, and automation of routine tasks such as routing, loading, and unloading.
What matters is not the robot itself, but the chain that starts in orbit, moves through spectrum, software, navigation, and forward repair, and ends at the trench. The depth at which that chain still works will determine the true value of the fleet.
Lesia Bidochko is a policy fellow at the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, established by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and a nonresident fellow at European University Viadrina. Her research focuses on Ukraine’s drone economy, military robotics, and the transferability of battlefield innovation.
Image: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense via Wikimedia Commons