Ukraine aims to have unmanned ground vehicles carry out all front-line logistics operations. It plans to contract 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in the first half of the year, the country’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.
“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line,” he said, following a meeting with Ukrainian UGV manufacturers. “In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them. Our goal is for 100 percent of frontline logistics to be performed by robotic systems.”
“In the first half of 2026, given the increased demand, we will contract 25,000 UGVs, which will be gradually delivered to the front. This is twice as many as in all of 2025,” he noted.
UGVs have become one of the most consequential technologies in modern warfare. Once limited to bomb disposal and remote reconnaissance, UGVs now support frontline combat, logistics, electronic warfare, and casualty evacuation across multiple conflict zones. Their rapid evolution is transforming how militaries fight, supply, and survive on increasingly lethal and electronically contested battlefields.
Like drones, Ukraine has rapidly expanded its use of UGVs, with dozens of companies producing systems for logistics, reconnaissance, and strike missions. UGVs now appear across multiple brigades and are used daily in trench and urban operations to reduce the risk to soldiers.
Ukrainian media have reported that the number of units using UGVs has increased from 67 in late 2025 to 167 by the spring of 2026.
According to Fedorov, Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has already signed 19 contracts worth 11 billion hryvnia ($250 million) with manufacturers. And in order to scale robotics across the frontline, several measures have been introduced, including a dedicated center for ground robotic systems that would be established with the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) that would serve as a central hub for manufacturers.
“UGVs are one of the most dynamic areas of defense tech. At the beginning of the full-scale war, this sector essentially did not exist. Today, it is a fully formed market created together with Brave1: more than 280 companies and over 550 solutions. Brave1 has issued 175 grants to companies,” Fedorov said.
Last week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that ground robots had captured a Russian position.
“The future is already on the front line – and Ukraine is building it,” he said. “These are our ground robotic systems. For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms – ground systems and drones. The occupiers surrendered, and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our side.”
According to Zelensky, various domestically manufactured robotic systems completed over 22,000 missions in the last three months.
“In other words, lives were saved more than 22,000 times – a robot went into the most dangerous areas instead of a soldier. This is about high technologies in defense of the highest value – human life,” he said.
Source:
www.jpost.com
