by DAVID AXE
When Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps launched its quiet counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine’s northern Donetsk Oblast back in May, robots led the way.
Vampire heavy drones airdropping explosive ground robots might be the most dramatic example of the corps’ unmanned efforts, but a more mundane mission—front-line combat engineering—may have been more important to offensive’s eventual success ejecting a pair of Russian field armies from a salient threatening the town of Lyman and the nearby city of Sloviansk.
In move experts have anticipated for a while now, the 3rd Army Corps swapped out its human sappers for robot sappers. The robots demined 11 square miles of contested ground, clearing the way for the corps’ infantry to advance. “This is exactly the direction of the corps’ development set by Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky: to reduce the number of fighters in the most dangerous areas and replace them with robots,” the 3rd Army Corps stated.
