The United States auto-driving vehicle company Forterra stated that over the past nine months, over 100 unmanned ground vehicles had been deployed in areas of conflict in Ukraine. According to the company, this could be the largest self-owned ground vehicle in the field by the United States Defense Science and Technology Enterprise.

These vehicles are used mainly for high-risk logistics tasks, including the transportation of supplies, ammunition and the transfer of wounded. As air drones enter the battlefield extensively and the risk of exposure on the front line increases, the Army is also accelerating its search for ground-owned systems to replace manual transport.

Over a thousand missions performed

Forterra, the Lancer vehicle was based on the Polaris all-terrain vehicle retrofit, equipped with self-research sensors and computing systems and driven by gasoline. According to the company, since entering Ukraine in October last year, these vehicles have accumulated more than 2,500 miles to carry out more than 1100 missions.

  • Cumulative transport weight is about 777,000 pounds.
  • 52 casualty evacuations completed
  • The maximum vehicle load can be 750 kg

In contrast, a Ukrainian soldier was quoted in the report as saying that Ukrainian home-made unmanned ground vehicles were mostly battery-driven, usually carrying no more than 250 kg. By this caliber, the Forterra vehicle is more suitable for resupply transport in terms of renewal and delivery capacity.

The Resupply is more important to the army.

Reports indicate that such vehicles did not initially receive immediate front-line recognition. Some members of the Ukrainian army had previously expressed reservations about the new equipment brought by Western contractors, arguing that some products were closer to the needs of the United States military and did not necessarily fit the Ukrainian battlefield.

Forterra has subsequently adapted its vehicles, including the installation of Starlink satellite antennas. Following the completion of the modifications, the utility of vehicles in front-line logistics has increased significantly. Those interviewed stated that such unmanned ground vehicles were important for maintaining defence supplies.

However, battlefield losses remain. The report mentions that some of the vehicles were lost to a complex terrain, such as deep mud, which could subsequently be hit by Russian forces. This also means that, in addition to their performance, terrestrial unmanned systems face a real test of cost and expendable.

There are still clear limits to self-government.

Forterra states that the vehicles are still being used by the army in theatre mainly by remote control, rather than relying entirely on automatic driving. This is due, on the one hand, to the high value of the equipment and, on the other hand, to the fact that it is still difficult at this stage to fully adapt the autonomous system to the battlefield environment.

According to the company, experience has been accumulated over the past few months in areas such as electronic warfare, remote software upgrades, complex terrain mobility and reliability of equipment. Forterra is also working on how to combine traditional autopilot algorithms with the generated AI, so that the system can understand and respond to the surrounding environment more broadly.

It was also mentioned that many start-ups in the United States were moving in similar directions, including training infrastructure models, the development of military-owned platforms and the testing of unmanned ground vehicles. As the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield continues to validate relevant technologies, ground-based ownership systems are becoming a new focus of United States defence science and technology inputs.