Ukraine Is Transforming Old M-113 APCs Into Combat Robots

All it takes is servos, radios and cameras

A Khartia Corps unmanned M-113. Pavlo Itkin photo for the Khartia Brigade

This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

The Ukrainian National Guard has found a new way to speed armored robots to the front line. Instead of building all its ‘bots from scratch, the 2nd National Guard Corps “Khartiia” has converted at least one old American-designed M-113 armored personnel carrier into a big, capacious unmanned vehicle.

If it works, and there’s no reason to think it won’t, the robotic M-113 could become common in Ukrainian service. After all, allies have shipped Ukraine at least 1,729 M-113s and vehicles built on the same chassis over the course of the war, making it one of the most numerous Western armored types in Ukrainian service.

The Khartiia Corps took one of its 12-ton M-113s, added external cameras, control servos and a radio-based command system and fitted it with anti-drone armor and a front-mounted mine flail. “Re-equipped by the engineers of Khartiia, it performs missions involving remote de-mining and logistics, allowing the operator to control the armored personnel carrier from a remote control unit,” the corps stated.

Ukrainian forces use thousands of small unmanned ground vehicles. Some carry guns into battle. Others haul supplies or speed injured troops from the gray zone to field hospitals. Most of these UGVs are purpose-made models with wheeled or tracked chassis and remote control systems based on line-of-sight, mesh or satellite radio or fiber-optic cable.

The purpose-made UGVs tend to be small, lightweight, and limited in range. They might weigh a couple hundred kilograms, range a few tens of kilometers and cost $10,000. The small size, light weight, and limited range might not be a major constraint on a UGV whose main mission is, say, speeding a single wounded infantryman away from his front-line fighting position along a road or path.

But clearing mines or other obstacles is a whole other matter. Mine-clearing plows, rollers, or flails might weigh tons. The vehicle carrying the mine-clearing gear must be able to withstand the blasts from any mines it triggers. Clearing mined roads and fields leading to and across the disputed gray zone is tedious work requiring greater endurance and cross-country mobility than a small, under-torqued UGV can manage under battery power.

It’s not for no reason that most existing Ukrainian mine-clearing vehicles are big, heavily armored, and powerful. They include American-made Assault Breachers, German-made Wisents and an array of ex-Soviet engineering vehicles. The problem, of course, is that these vehicles are manned. And their crews are exposed to extreme danger while inching along mined roads and fields within range of Russian drones and artillery.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.