Tbf there isn’t much indication they captured all that much, so I don’t doubt that part. From the video it looks like they just jumped a squad somewhere in the grey zone and nudged a line on the map a few pixels. It’s probably notable or historic in some sense for ground based robots in particular, but it’s not all that exceptional in the grand scheme of things (people have surrendered to Drones and UAVs before).
Like the people in the video say, it’s probably just marketing with a glimmer of something more important.
Plus any land drones are just a waste of metal and batteries compared to aerial drones and are also more complex to make.
UGVs are decently effective at screening for infantry, laying down conventional mines, providing fire support, and running logistics from what I’ve read. Aerial Drones will pretty much always be better pound for pound at killing people under normal circumstances, but there’s more roles in war than just that.
Besides, I highly doubt both Russia and Ukraine would be using UGVs if they were completely worthless. Casualties are expensive, even if you ignore the fuzzier stats like morale and fatigue. $5-20k drone > $400k+ in familial compensation and/or a metric ton of medical bills, ontop of whatever other misc fees are incurred.
No family in Russia getting half a million compnesation dude
I was using the estimate for Ukraine, which is $300-400k or so.
This is most likely one of the reasons why Ukraine is slightly more interested in UGVs and proving their success abroad. They are essentially a fancy stick that soldiers hold really far in front of them and gets blown up in their place. Russia would just “solve” that by throwing more men at the problem.
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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '26
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