Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy praised robots as the future of war in a Defense Industry Worker Day address on Monday. \u201cFor the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms\u2014ground systems and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side,\u201d Zelenskyy said.Zelenskyy didn\u2019t specify which ground operation he was referring to, but Ukraine\u2019s 13th National Guard Brigade Khartiya conducted an operation north of Kharkiv in December last year that fits the bill. The Wall Street Journal reported on the operation which it said involved 50 aerial drones and an unspecified number of land drones.The Journal watched footage of the assault provided by Ukraine. \u201cThe robot wars began,\u201d\u00a0 it said. \u201cRussian FPV drones appeared, launching themselves at the land vehicles, according to the footage. One came close to destroying a land drone, which fired back at the Russian line with a mounted machine gun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine won the fight and took the position, but the Journal didn\u2019t report that any Russians surrendered. A spokesperson for the 13th National Guard Brigade Khartiya told the Journal that they found Russian corpses when they sent humans into the position to secure it.According to Zelenskyy\u2019s Defense Industry Worker Day speech, ground based robots have conducted 22,000 missions on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine in the past three months. \u201cIn other words, lives were saved more than 22,000 times when a robot went into the most dangerous areas instead of a warrior. This is about high technology protecting the highest value\u2014human life,\u201d Zelenskyy said.It\u2019s unclear which of the 22,000 missions included the surrender. It may seem like a stretch to imagine a soldier surrendering to an unmanned ground vehicle with an assault rifle and a camera strapped to it, but similar things have happened over the past four years of war. The conflict has become defined by the use of drones on both sides and there\u2019s lots of footage of Russian soldiers surrendering to flying drones.One of the most famous incidents occurred in 2022 but it became so common that Ukraine established a program called \u201cI Want to Live\u201d that used drones to facilitate surrenders. Ukraine\u2019s armed forces released video instructions about how to surrender to a drone. Russian soldiers could text ahead of time, make an appointment to flee the frontline, wait for a Ukrainian drone, and follow it out of combat with their hands in the air. It\u2019s possible the world will see similar footage in the future, but the drones will be on the ground instead.The War in Ukraine has ground on for years now and become a war of attrition and inches. The loss of life on both sides is devastating and the proliferation of flying drones has created vast no-man\u2019s lands between Russian and Ukrainian positions. Despite Zelenskyy\u2019s praise of Ukraine\u2019s robotics industry, it\u2019s unclear if embracing UGV as a replacement for infantry will change that reality.But the world is watching and taking notes. The Pentagon is working on its own ground drones, some of them controlled by AI systems. The U.S. Army is testing one system, called the ULTRA, in Vaziani, Georgia near the country\u2019s border with Russia. Ukraine also helped the US soldiers counter Shahed drones during the recent war with Iran.On stage, Zelenskyy\u2019s Defense Industry Worker Day speech stressed the importance of Ukraine to Europe and the rest of the world. \u201cWe are not building new cooperation with partners on weapons the way it was done in the 1990s or early 2000s, when Ukrainian weapons and strength were sold off like a Black Friday sale,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are not making fairs of our weapons, nor are we emptying our stockpiles. We are offering security partnerships.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"