Russia to Fast-track Testing of Tank-killing Robot in Ukraine

After months of waiting, the Ukrainian military will receive more than 100 western-made weapons. main battle tanks from its international allies, including  31 U.S. M1 Abrams tanks, 14 British Challenger 2 tanks, and about 80 German-built Leopard 2 tanks.

Although the arrival in Ukraine of western armor may be cause for celebration, Russia has stated that it is planning to deploy possible countermeasures. This includes an unmanned ground vehicule (UGV) which could be modified to become a robot tank killer. 

Talk to RIA Novosti last week, Dmitriy Rogozin — the fOrmer Russian space chief who currently serves as the head of a group of military advisors calling itself the “Royal Wolves” or “Tsar’s Wolves” —  announced that those western-built tanks can expect to  meet a modified version of the Russian military’s Marker UGV armed with anti-tank missile on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine

“Everyone agrees that our strike Marker should be prepared for their destruction along with the crews in the remaining time before the arrival of the Abrams and Leopards in Ukraine,” Rogozin said.

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The Marker is a UGV, either wheeled or tracked, developed by Android Technologies and the Advanced Research Foundation, essentially Russia’s equivalent of the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 

At the moment, there are only five Markers. Rogozin claims that four of them have been sent to the Donbass region in Ukraine. 

“What’s interesting is that Marker was always presented as a proof of concept, a flagship project for ‘general AI artificial intelligence] applications,” Samuel Bendett is a member the Russia Studies Program as well as an adjunct senior fellow at The Center for New American Security. “So deploying it raises more questions than answers.”

The Marker, like many Russian-made UGVs was previously tested in a reconnaissance role and intelligence gathering function. It can travel remotely and launch small unmanned air vehicles as reconnaissance platforms.

Bendett said that while these tests were done in forests, they are not as chaotic as the environment the vehicle would encounter in a real combat situation in Donbas.

“It may have gone through classified testing that we are not privy to,” said Bendett. “But Donbas is not a controlled environment. It’s saturated with weapons and countermeasures.”

Russia has a long tradition of testing new technology on the battlefield. Indeed, the Russian military previously fielded the Uran-9 UGV in Syria beginning in 2018, but the weapon-laden vehicle was fraught with so many problems — a range of just 300 to 500 meters, frequent breakdowns, and loss of control from the human operator — that even Russian defense officials acknowledged it was “not capable of performing the tasks assigned to it.” (Still, the Uran-9  was adopted Russian military and Russian state media reported Last year, it was deployed to Ukraine. 

“Some of what may be happening here is that there have been a lot of Russian projects similar to Marker in development for some time,” said Bendett. “Russia needs to field this new technology to show that it can do so.”

Bendett, who has only four Marker vehicles in his fleet, said that the public promotion of these UGVs being potential tank killers is probably a PR stunt and that they are unlikely ever to see use outside of a very controlled environment. 

In theory, the Marker can do a lot. As a test-bed vehicle, Bendett likened it to Legos — fitting on whatever can conceivably be mounted. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will work in the field. 

The announcement that they are capable of destroying a tank raises questions about UGVs being used on the battlefield. 

“The whole point of fielding a UGV is to take humans out of a dangerous environment. But in all the discussions that have taken place throughout Russian military academia, no one ever talked about what happens when the vehicle is destroyed,” said Bendett. “And if soldiers have to recover the UGV, that negates the whole purpose.”

Russia may find this a problem. In Syria, for example, the Uran-9’s terrible range didn’t do much for the whole keeping “humans out of a dangerous environment” Robot warfare is an important element. And with only four systems in existence, the Marker isn’t exactly “expendable,” as Bendett said. The western-built tanks were not delivered to Ukraine. However, the Abrams tank has a better chance of survivability in battle than a UGV. The war in Ukraine will be a test ground for UGVs in combat, despite this. 

“The real question is to what extent Russia and Ukraine will continue to experiment with these systems,” said Bendett. 

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