A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones.
This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...
Interesting - why?
Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked.
> they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.
We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.
We are seeing the transition right in front of our eyes.
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
[0] - https://www.themiddleeastuncovered.com/p/inside-the-talibans...
[1] - https://thekhorasandiary.com/en/2026/03/13/taliban-strengthe...
I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc.
The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys.
A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...
Not sure what else I can say so I'll leave it at that, and will not engage with further comments.
If the people fought before they'll keep fighting, even after their robots are gone.
I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.
Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?
They gathered some apples from a nearby tree, and apparently had set up a hard cider production facility.
I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language?
I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone - is related to bush fires but seems like it could apply to a battlefield?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land
Something more akin to actually being in "measure" or strike distance vs just contested territory in between?
Edit: Sibling comment I think clears it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone
Good article on what it is: https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gr...
It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say.
Said playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxja...
Time Ghost makes awesome chrono documentaries for the major wars. And a ton of mini series on special topics.
Heck maybe not even a sub needed, some smaller country could have an automated tiny raft too small to be seen on radar tow in the drones
They could charge via phantom power from powerlines and will find a way around GPS jamming
There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory?
Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling".
Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.
That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.
This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has.
Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See: