Ukraine Just Carried Out The First All-Robot Air Assault

Aerial robots carrying ground robots into action

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.

Just days after landing robots on an enemy shore in the first all-robot amphibious assault, Ukrainian forces flew one into battle. This week, a Russian video circulated depicting a Ukrainian heavy bomber drone airlifting an explosives-laden unmanned ground vehicle into action.

What happened next is unclear. Did the exploding UGV successfully strike its target?

Regardless of the outcome, however, the unmanned air assault is notable. If Ukrainian forces can use an unmanned aerial vehicle to airlift one unmanned ground vehicle, they can do it a second time. And a third. And fourth. So on until these kinds of all-robot operations become routine.

And that’s indeed the aim in Kyiv. To make robotic combat operations an everyday occurrence in order to help alleviate a deep and persistent manpower shortage. This spring, recently sacked Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov claimed Ukraine would acquire 25,000 UGVs in just the first six months of 2026.

That’s twice as many UGVs as Kyiv bought in all of 2025. The rapid mass acquisition would allow more Ukrainian brigades to shift to robotic resupply missions, removing potentially thousands of precious human logisticians from dangerous roads.

But UGVs perform combat missions, too. Armed with guns, they help counterattack Russian infiltrators and also patrol roads inside the disputed gray zone. In November, one gun-armed UGV belonging to the Ukrainian 5th Assault Brigade, fighting north of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, inadvertently advanced UGV tactics in an accidental encounter with an up-armored Russian MT-LB infantry transport.

The UGV, equipped with thermal night vision and armed with a remotely operated M2 .50-caliber machine gun, was reportedly on a combat trial—crawling around the battlefield at nighttime for testing purposes—when an MT-LB rolled toward it on the same road.

Connected via radio, the UGV operators opened fire, peppering the tracked MT-LB with rounds until the Russian vehicle passed by—and escaped in the opposite direction.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.