A Ukrainian Gun 'Bot Sneaked Up On A Russian Soldier At Night
It was one of the first nighttime gunfights between a robot and a human soldier
Human infantry are still critical in the age of drone warfare
But ground robots may have the edge in some conditions, especially at night
Thermal cameras help armed ground robots see when most human infantry are blind
In a one-on-one clash, a human infantryman has some clear advantages over a gun-armed ground robot. The infantryman has all his senses, is more nimble on rough terrain, doesn’t require redundant command and control systems to function and—perhaps most importantly—is capable of creative problem-solving.
But all those advantages can disappear at night if the ground robot has a thermal sensor ... and the infantryman doesn’t. Unassisted by technology, human beings are all but blind on an overcast night.
It’s apparent, when a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle closed with a Russian infantryman under the cover of darkness somewhere along the 1,200-km front line of Russia’s 48-month wider war on Ukraine some time recently, that the UGV could see in the dark—and the Russian couldn’t. See the video above.
The robot got the jump on the man. With a few bursts from its .50-caliber M2 heavy machine gun, the UGV apparently killed the Russian. It was just the most recent in a series of actions by Ukraine’s armed UGVs. The Russians deploy armed ground robots, too, of course—but the Ukrainians may still have the edge in this fast-evolving class of remote ground weaponry.
