In what might be a world-first, a Ukrainian national brigade has just launched an all-robot, combined-arms drone attack on Russian forces. The assaulting force, a mixture of ground- and aerial unmanned vehicles, was used in the Kharkiv Oblast in northern Ukraine.
According to reports, the attacking force consisted of many units that worked together like a traditional combined-arms force.
“We are talking about dozens of units of robotic and unmanned equipment simultaneously on a small section of the front,” a 13th National Guard Brigade spokesperson explained.
“These large multi-rotor copters can carry a large charge, such as an anti-tank mine. And FPV-drones. Here, you can check the surveillance drone box. In this way, robots are used. Equipment simultaneously on a small section of the front,” added a representative (source in Ukrainian) of the public relations service of the Charter brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine.
While an impressive development technologically, some have suggested this might be a worrying sign for Ukrainian forces. They suggest that Ukrainian human resources could be overstretched, necessitating said robots.
Send the droids
While drones have some interesting capabilities, they are nowhere near as useful as human infantry for most tasks, especially when holding ground. It could also indicate that Ukrainian forces are becoming less eager to commit human beings in ground assaults due to heavy losses.
According to some sources, the war has claimed somewhere in the region of 1,000,000 dead, wounded, or missing on both sides. Those kinds of losses are difficult to absorb, especially for Ukraine’s smaller population than Russia.
The brigade in question is tasked with defending a five-mile (8 km) stretch of frontline around Holyoke. This town is located on the Ukrainian-Russian border and is under pressure from four Russian regiments.
This means that there could be as many as 8,000 Russian soldiers facing off against clearly outnumbered Ukrainian defenders. For reference, a Russian regiment typically consists of a maximum of 2,000 personnel apiece.
According to Forbes, the 34th Brigade is in this area, with no more than a quarter of that. A similar ratio of Ukrainian-Russian forces is also seen across a larger 800-mile (1,287 km) front line.
This is despite Russian forces reportedly suffering heavier losses than Ukraine, being roughly twice since the outbreak of war in February of 2022.
Regarding the actual combined-arms robotic assault, the operation used a mixture of remote-controlled aerial surveillance and minelaying drones, kamikaze ground and aerial drones, and gun-armed ground robots. This operation was also based on a smaller-scale test run on a Russian-entrenched position in September.
Drones not a replacement for humans
Russia, for its part, has also conducted similar operations in the past but was less successful.
The latest Ukrainian attack was reportedly a success, but taking ground and holding are two very different kinds of operation. And the latter, arguably more important, is nye-on impossible with drones.
Human soldiers can sit, watch, and wait in position and can react rapidly to counterattacks. On the other hand, drones require constant vigilance from human operators who are entirely dependent on the drone’s sensors for situational awareness.
Drones also require a power source and tend to be maintenance-hungry. They are also considerably less reliable than humans and tend to break down constantly.
They are also highly susceptible to datalink dropouts and enemy electronic warfare attacks like jamming. At this point, it appears that the attack was a success, but it is not entirely clear if the 13th National Guard Brigade followed up the assault with human troops to hold positions taken.
