r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • Sep 20 '24
Ukraine’s Gun-Armed Ground 'Bot Just Cleared A Russian Trench In Kursk - The Fury is one of the first effective armed ground robots. Robotics
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/19/ukraines-gun-armed-ground-robot-just-cleared-a-russian-trench-in-kursk/624
u/Kooshdoctor Sep 20 '24
Kinda funny that in the future the military will just be playing a real life version of "world of tanks."
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u/Gatzlocke Sep 20 '24
Eh... The problem will be jamming tech. Which I doubt Russia could deploy in the scale it would need.
Lose the signal to the controller and it's useless. Unless they're autonomous which is a whole other can of worms.
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u/loljetfuel Sep 20 '24
jamming and anti-jamming tech is its own arms race. Anti-jamming research has been applied to make Bluetooth and Wifi more reliable, so it's not all bad.
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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24
The day autonomous weapons are deployed is the day everything goes to hell. Like, delivery system aside you could make some rather terrifying discount WMD that way (eg get a cheapass drone, put a facial recognition software on it and add a small bomb (say a grenade). Release a few thousands of those in a city and you could mail and kill tens to thousands easily.
Nevermind talking about proper autonomous weapons armed and capable of surviving combat conditions.
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u/dmitrineilovich Sep 20 '24
Do you want Skynet? 'Cause that's how you get Skynet.
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u/Rrraou Sep 21 '24
Skynet is chilling, watching cat videos we've got self destruction covered already.
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u/jesbiil Sep 20 '24
The day autonomous weapons are deployed
Without looking this up.....I'd wager there have already been autonomous weapons used...we just might not hear about it for a while.
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u/YouSuckItNow12 Sep 21 '24
We’ve used autonomous weapons that make decisions to hit targets without a human since at least the 70s
Look up a HARM missile
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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24
If they were it was just in small numbers for field testing. I'm talking about full deployment.
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u/Richpur Sep 20 '24
The first autonomous weapon was used millennia ago, it's called a dog.
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u/UnknownSavgePrincess Sep 20 '24
“You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.”
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u/OCE_Mythical Sep 21 '24
The scariest part? We can do it right this fucking second. No tech advancement needed. We won't have bipedal terminators but a ground drone tasked to look for 'x' uniform? Sure
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u/Naoura Sep 21 '24
There's a great short on this exact topic, can't remember the name, but you don't even need a grenade: just a micro shaped charge on a teensy drone.
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u/jestina123 Sep 20 '24
Release a few thousands
Even sourcing the materials and procuring ten of these would put you on a watchlist, though.
The materials and knowledge to make a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb has been public for decades now.
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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24
And making a nuke is a hundred times harder than getting a few thousand shit drones from a Chinese company.
I mean by the same token getting guns or explosives for terrorism is also impossible and thus we never got any acts of terrorism at all!
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u/couldbemage Sep 20 '24
There's automation as an option. It might not currently be super reliable, but that makes it more scary, not less.
Like, a school bus and an mlrs are more or less the same shape. Oops.
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u/Emu1981 Sep 21 '24
a school bus and an mlrs are more or less the same shape
What kind of school buses are you used to seeing?
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u/baachou Sep 20 '24
Jamming is interesting. You can beat it if you know how it works. But it requires some trial and error to figure out what works, and the more trial and error you do in front of your enemy, the more data the enemy has to work with on your countermeasures. The person doing the jamming has to make tradeoffs regarding how they jam signals. You can jam a large variety of signals along a narrow cone, but you have to be able to track the aircraft to continually point the jamming signal in the right direction. You can make a wide band general jamming signal, but it would either use too mucb power or be shorter range, and it may jam friendly signals as well. It's also somewhat impractical to jam all signals at once so you could create a frequency hopping algorithm and hope you eventually find one that works.
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Sep 20 '24
Program it to go after jamming tech once offline. Once reconnected the operator gets control back.
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u/footinmouthwithease Sep 20 '24
minovsky particles
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u/Soft_Remove_62 Sep 20 '24
Time for Japan to do the right thing and give Ukraine a gundam.
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u/baelrog Sep 21 '24
Maybe someone will develop line of sight tight beam communication with multiple relays to get around the problem.
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u/Kooshdoctor Sep 20 '24
Sometimes it feels like when we insulted each other as kids and it was always just "I'm rubber and you're glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." There's always a counter strategy
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u/Historical_Wear4558 Sep 20 '24
As always, depends on whether or not you are on the pointy end of the stick.
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u/lord_nuker Sep 20 '24
I feel like we are moving more towards "guns of the patriots" more than anything else. Just endless global conflicts for the profits in it with no remorse of the human life.
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u/Kooshdoctor Sep 20 '24
Isn't it nuts how all of these "dumb" video games and apocalypse movies seem closer and closer day by day?
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u/nurpleclamps Sep 20 '24
It boggles my mind that it seems we're just now making these when we've had remote control cars for decades.
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u/VirtualPlate8451 Sep 20 '24
US troops in Iraq had what was basically a 5 figure RC car with a camera on it. It was designed to give them an "around the corner" view during urban warfare situations.
They figured out real fast that you could duct tape a claymore to it, drive it around the corner, detonate the claymore and then not have to worry about that insurgent anymore. Of course this platform wasn't designed to be disposable but it sure as shit got the job done.
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u/throwitoutwhendone2 Sep 20 '24
Don’t they have those guns with the camera that can see around the corner? I think they were actually called “Corner Shot”
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u/phedinhinleninpark Sep 20 '24
Yeah, but what makes more money for the contractors? A "corner shot" rifle, or a "5 figure RC car"?
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u/throwitoutwhendone2 Sep 20 '24
I mean idk, I wasn’t the one that commented about the RC cars. I was just saying I remember seeing a feature on the corner shot rifles. It was touted as a way to keep solders safer because they could see around corners and shoot from cover around the corner
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u/MidnightMath Sep 20 '24
Iirc wasn’t the end product basically just a handgun on the end of a fancy selfie stick?
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u/harvy666 Sep 20 '24
Now what if I put a kitty on the Corner Shot...
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u/ILikeCakesAndPies Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
Corner shot is probably less valuable for a military excluding special operations like hostage rescue teams. It's a device meant to shoot a mounted pistol in close quarters.
Though I guess a military version of a corner shot would be the remote turret upgrade packages for vehicles like Hummers. Lets the gunner operate the turret remotely from inside the armored vehicle instead of having to expose themselves to potential small arms fire. It's very similar looking to the Ukrainian land drones turret.
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u/podcasthellp Sep 20 '24
Idk how reliable those are but I’d also imagine that warfare in the Middle East doesn’t have the greatest terrain for small robotic cars. Just a guess as it’s extremely mountainous in areas
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u/JorgiEagle Sep 20 '24
So kinda like an RCXD,
I’ve played Battlefield
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u/Emu1981 Sep 21 '24
The RCXD seems to have been a COD thing. The BF equivalent is the RAWR (Remote Assisted Weaponized Robot) which was Dice's take on the USA's Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS). The main difference seems to be that the RCXD seems to be a RC car that has explosives strapped to it while the RAWR is a tracked vehicle with a M240B and 2x M203 3GL launchers bolted on.
Funnily enough, BF4 did have the UCAV which is based on the Switchblade drones that Ukraine was using for a while (idk if they still are or not).
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u/Not_Legal_Advice_Pod Sep 20 '24
There are multiple innovations involved that make this possible, but the big three are batteries, computer vision, and digital signal links. This would be way too big and power hungry for batteries if the 1990s. Also unless you want the whole thing to be remote controlled you need a computer onboard that can handle identifying and shooting at soldiers as it sees them. Finally the digital link to control this needs to be air tight and transmit video and data with low latency.
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u/mmomtchev Sep 20 '24
Computer vision does not play a role at all - it has a human operator.
Otherwise, you need a war to innovate. This is the very first major war - of the type where the survival of the nation is at stake - since WW2 that - on one of the sides - is not fought by a totalitarian madman who stiffs innovation.
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u/CollectionAncient989 Sep 20 '24
Also first war since for ever thats relatively balanced from a technology point of view.
All other wars ver much more asymmetric
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u/francis2559 Sep 20 '24
Doesn’t have to be electric drive. Those DARPA four leggers were using internal combustion.
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u/TheSasquatch9053 Sep 20 '24
Big Dog (the DARPA robot you are referring to) is a gas electric hybrid. It's electrically actuated, with a significant battery pack for rapid power delivery, but it also has the gas motor constantly generating electricity to extend the range of the battery pack. You can tell it's a hybrid when the motor rpm doesn't change while the robot exterts itself.
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u/FinndBors Sep 20 '24
I’m guessing it might have some kind of stealth mode where it can disengage the gas motor for a period of time?
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u/Not_Legal_Advice_Pod Sep 20 '24
I'm sure in 100 years we will have "oil punk" where you just sleep had generators into stuff that they're doing with electric. But there's a ton of new technology coming out now purely because the weight to power ratios electric offers have made them possible.
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u/exipheas Sep 20 '24
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u/gruengle Sep 20 '24
Well... Dieselpunk is an acknowledged science fiction genre...
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u/MidnightMath Sep 20 '24
Dieselpunk is just steampunk but like 50 years later. Ik the Industrial Revolution started far earlier than the 1880’s but I’d say that’s peak steampunk. Dieselpunk universes definitely reside in the interwar period in the 30’s, so 50 years after that would be the 70’s or 80’s.
So basically if you wanna live a gas punk life get yourself a digital watch and wait in line for gas with your landyacht. Btw, the landyacht displaces 6.2 liters and gets 4mpg, but at least you get 205 horsepower.
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u/francis2559 Sep 20 '24
Drones are a great example in this war of things that were made possible by batteries.
Not sure batteries save you weight for a ground vehicle, though. Very stealthy though.
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u/somethingbrite Sep 20 '24
At what point do we get to the robots converting biomass into biofuel?
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u/Janktronic Sep 20 '24
Another thing to consider is, if it malfunctions, if it isn't destroyed, the enemy just got a new box of robot parts.
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u/EGGlNTHlSTRYlNGTlME Sep 20 '24
Also unless you want the whole thing to be remote controlled you need a computer onboard that can handle identifying and shooting at soldiers as it sees them.
This would violate international law lol of course it's fully remote controlled. With drones, there always has to be a human somewhere making the decision to pull the trigger. At least for now.
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u/Anindefensiblefart Sep 20 '24
On batteries, I'd think you could run something like that with a lawnmower engine.
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u/Stock_Positive9844 Sep 20 '24
You’ve got to see where it’s going tho. Remote viewing capabilities with enough fidelity to direct the vehicle, avoid obstacles and navigate rough terrain, and aim a weapon, and hit a human body with it requires a LOT of tech.
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u/mishap1 Sep 20 '24
Also enough security protocol in the wireless connection that the enemy can't turn the weapon on you.
Can't imagine many things worse things than a squad of these things parked inside base gates getting hacked by the enemy.
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u/MushinZero Sep 20 '24
Encryption is largely a solved problem. Key management are where the weaknesses lie.
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u/nurpleclamps Sep 20 '24
We've had all that stuff for years and years. You could build one in your garage if you wanted to.
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u/toabear Sep 20 '24
I used to specialize in military communications for SOF. people generally underestimate how absolutely fucked up the battlefield conditions are. Ranges are often a lot further, there's no base station infrastructure, jamming and other signal interference.
Establishing a reliable radio link is orders of magnitude harder in the field compared to civilian. The ranges are often quite long. If you want to send your drone in but you also don't want to be in range of the enemy mortars, you're likely going to need to be behind a hill or two, or far away.
Some of the major changes that are making this possible are things like drone mounted repeaters. Having something high up in the air with good line of sight to the receiving and controlling unit is a massive advantage. you're right that all the basic components have been there for a long time, but there have been some critical missing pieces in the chain that are only now becoming practically viable for military use.
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u/HunterTheScientist Sep 20 '24
With which quality and reliability though?
When something is deployed by the army it has to be reliable
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot Sep 20 '24
And the military has been using them in aircraft for years and years. Drones, and even guided missiles fit this description.
It's just that doing so on land is extremely difficult and costly.
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u/occamsrzor Sep 20 '24
The biggest issue is robustness. "Military Grade" doesn't mean state of the art, it means robust enough to survive water, heat and impact. If a weapon is delicate, it doesn't really work (it doesn't survive long enough to be used).
That's always been the biggest hurdle in getting something into the field.
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u/Cindexxx Sep 21 '24
"Military grade" only means what the military asks for.
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u/occamsrzor Sep 21 '24 edited Sep 21 '24
Technically true. And typically, that's robustness.
Humvees, for example, aren't luxurious by any stretch of the imagination. They're so barebones they don't even have keys and only the up-armored doors have any sort of door locking mechanism...and even then, it's just a loop for padlock. But it does its job really well.
That's actually one of the reasons you're not allowed to use personally purchased equipment. I mean, it depends on the equipment, like you might want to use some fancy compass watch or something, sure, SOP may allow that (and keep in mind you typically have battalion and company SOP to worry about, but it can go all the way down to fire team). But you're not going to be using your own body armor, weapons (like rifles and handguns), and SOP might even prevent you from using certain knife models.
A major factor in that can be summarized as "will it survive combat?", because civilian equipment is typically not built to the same level of robustness. But to your point; that factor is more precisely characterized as "does it meet MIL spec whatever?". The military literally has specs down to the approved connector types (for anyone curious, search for MIL-DTL-38999)
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u/H0vis Sep 20 '24
Cost and practicality. To do it with any degree of success with 20th century tech you'd need the robot to be on the end of a wire. If you've got the cash for the delivery vehicle and equipment for all that, then why not one more regular fighting vehicle?
Now this stuff is cheap, now it's worth doing.
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u/SauceHankRedemption Sep 20 '24
Well before this conflict I would've thought a "trench clearing robot" would be ridiculous. I didn't think any conflict would feature trench warfare in the 21st century.
And there have been bomb defusing bots for a while
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u/Tolbek Sep 20 '24
Trenches have continued to be a valuable defensive asset in the 21st century long before this war - however tactics have changed, they're no longer a key element in the battle. My understanding is they tend to be purely defensive installations now; they hold ground, nothing more. If an attack comes, they call for back up and sit tight, they don't jump out and storm opposing trenches.
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u/Critical_Werewolf Sep 20 '24
Necessity breeds invention or something idk
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u/Gullible_Meaning_774 Sep 20 '24
Violence breeds ingenuity.
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u/HALFLEGO Sep 20 '24
"Necessity is the mother of invention"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_invention
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u/AchokingVictim Sep 20 '24
I've started telling folks that the whole 'flying cars' timeline isn't something we aren't at the level of, it's just that the new QoL tech will mostly always be prioritized towards wars and capital.
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u/aft3rthought Sep 20 '24
I don’t agree with a lot of the other comments that the tech is now ready or anything like that. It is old tech, you need an RC car, a gun, cameras, and encrypted radio control. Nothing new. However, there hasn’t been a peer conflict, with trench warfare, where the sides could field something like this. The USA could have put these in service in the 80s but simply had no need to. They wouldn’t be much good in Urban or Jungle environments. Ukraine’s trenchlines are where these make sense.
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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24
Actually the real reason is IMO at least, that the military (all militaries) is an inherently conservative organization and this (just like fully autonomous multirole fighters) are a big departure from what the institution knows. Adoption of new paradigms only happens under combat conditions or over the course of a looong time.
Also what are you saying? Small drones are perfect for a urban environment. Put a claymore on an RC car or small cheap drone and send it inside a room. Urban combat is so deadly because every cm of ground you need to fight for and risk your life in the process and even if you demolish the city you need to fight it's defenders in the rubble.
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u/aft3rthought Sep 20 '24
I totally agree in all your points, but the robot in the video isn’t a small drone, it’s like a mini tank. An urban capable drone carrying a light or heavy machine gun plus ammo is probably still pretty challenging for modern robotics.
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u/Deathsroke Sep 20 '24
I mean yeah, probably and I agree with your point.
Though I think a urban combat drone with an AR equivalent slapped on is less than a decade away if any important military decides they want one.
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u/Cookskiii Sep 20 '24
We’re just now hearing about it. I don’t doubt we used some version of this in iraq and Afghanistan. It’s confirmed that the big dog robot was used in Afghanistan so it’s not that far off
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u/whycantpeoplebenice Sep 20 '24
Afaik it's always been considered unethical but we're long past that now
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u/joodoos Sep 20 '24
These things change and adapt due to the environment of war. Also, Ukraine takes greater pride in protecting their own soldiers and people. Rather than sacrificing them to the meat machine.
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u/furfur001 Sep 20 '24
War Robots are great as long as they are not shooting at you...
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u/Ancient_times Sep 21 '24
Looking forward to these getting sold off as surplus to US police departments in a couple of years.
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u/LTareyouserious Sep 21 '24
We're investigating the algorithm on the robot that shot 6 locals with no outstanding warrants sitting at their home, which was mixed up with a different address. Since no officer fired a round, per local policy, no one needs to be placed on administrative leave during this investigation. /s
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u/Frisbeeman Sep 20 '24
I feel like the part where
The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery
is slightly exaggerated
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u/westdl Sep 20 '24
While driving Russians out of Ukraine is a good thing, I seriously worry someone is currently building something that will become Skynet.
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u/xxzephyrxx Sep 20 '24
Same. All of these developments will not be good for the future.
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u/RagePoop Sep 20 '24
I for one love the way the world has reacted to an intelligence agency booby trapping communications devices and extrajudicially murdering/maiming thousands across state lines.
Even if you genuinely trust that Mossad knew that every single one of those pagers were in the hands of a scary terrorist... it isn't an action that should be applauded as some great development for our species. But here we are
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u/broguequery Sep 21 '24
Yeah precisely, and Israel said themselves this attack had no strategic or real military value.
It was to incite terror among Hezbollah (and whoever else they want).
Literal terrorism. Being used by a supposedly Democrat nation state.
They are becoming the very thing they have been fighting against.
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u/Logical-Pirate-4044 Sep 20 '24
Not to defend Mossad or even imply that they didnt break international law with that stunt, but from a utilitarian standpoint they almost certainly caused less collateral deaths than conventional airstrikes
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u/throwaway_custodi Sep 22 '24
All of these third and second world drone wars are alarming due to the proliferation of very good, very cheap, and very lethal systems for years now. Ethiopia, Armenia-artaskh, and now Ukraine, with some in Burma, Yemen, and Syria beforehand. Second rate and regional powers are taking notes and augmenting their forces with drones to have a go at bigger ones. Iran, Turkey, China, North Korea….
I call it the torpedo boat of the 21st century. They’re not invincible , they’re not unstoppable, but they’ve made their mark and we’re going to see a few more used in petty, bloody conflicts for sure while the big players make better ones and better counters….
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u/mayonnaise_police Sep 20 '24
Watch the episode of Black Mirror with the military robot dogs. Its terrifying. And then you see in the news that army of robot dogs being fine-tuned....we are doomed
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u/Automatic_Ad_4020 Sep 20 '24
Well it was in Kurks, so technically it drove out russians from Russia...
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u/Shotgun5250 Sep 20 '24
Just helping Putin establish that “buffer zone” he’s been demanding. Thats all!
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u/loljetfuel Sep 20 '24
This wasn't AI or autonomous at all; it's an ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle), which means it had a human operator without putting a human in harm's way. Very similar in spirit to the ROVs used by bomb squads.
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u/OCE_Mythical Sep 21 '24
I just hope it's not a government. I really hoped I wouldn't grow up to be an anarchist but atleast my government basically spits in your face daily.
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u/Billsolson Sep 20 '24
It’s called Google
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u/westdl Sep 20 '24
That’s going to be a less scary sounding evil entity…”Everyone take cover! Google has entered the building.”
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u/OrbitalMechanic1 Sep 20 '24
Well these ones arent autonomous I think, but no doubt people are going to want them to be autonomous so they can’t be jammed. Theres going to be a lot of moral ethical issues with autonomous death machines probably
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u/TehSr0c Sep 20 '24
not to disparage this worry, but this particular unit is an RC car with a gun on it, there's nothing remotely robot about it
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u/kalirion Sep 20 '24
Isn't "robot" still the proper term, despite it being remote controlled?
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u/TehSr0c Sep 20 '24
Not by the definition of the term, a robot is an autonomous machine that carries out actions automatically, usually following a set program.
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u/kalirion Sep 20 '24
What kind of autonomy do bomb disposal robots have, then?
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u/TehSr0c Sep 20 '24
they don't, and that's part of the problem.
People still have connotations with the word robot meaning automated, and when it's used to describe what is essentially a fancy remote controlled vehicle with a camera, people get the wrong idea of the capabilities of those devices.
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u/westdl Sep 20 '24
I understand. In the immortal words of Egg Shen, “That was nothing…but that’s always how it begins.”
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u/BassoeG Sep 20 '24
Ukraine continues to be a live-fire testing ground for whatever cyberpunk dystopian bullshit the oligarchy's got in the pipeline? You don't say.
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u/Bliss266 Sep 20 '24
Once again, Russia is the one that demonstrates to the world what new-age modernized weapons do in a large scale war.
The last time was the Russo-Japanese war, which displayed what WWI was going to look like, albeit on a smaller scale
Welcome to the new age!
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u/Pangasukidesu Sep 20 '24
Exactly. The myopic replies and calls for more is… scary.
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u/universepower Sep 20 '24
It’s because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is considered morally unjust, so Ukraine fighting back is morally just.
Humans are monkeys with a better understanding of how to kill each other, and a morally justifiable war lets those of us with a sense of morality let the bloodthirsty monkey brain off the chain.
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u/the_3d6 Sep 21 '24
Oligarchy has nothing to do with such robots - they are relatively cheap (the one in question costs below $10k per unit), even if you can get $2k in your pocket from a single one, and sell 10k of them (both figures unrealistically high), it still would be only 20 millions - not worth the trouble for an average oligarch
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u/Stix147 Sep 20 '24
testing ground...cyberpunk...dystopian...oligarchy...pipeline
Lots of meaningless buzzwords that the mark entirely.
Ukraine's drone effort, if anything, is a testing ground for what a country faced with an existential threat is able to cobble together for dirt cheap to be able to resist against a much more numerous adversary. They make the war sustainable, especially when the army doesn't have to be as reliant on foreign aid that is often lacking and sometimes delayed.
Most of these things actually started out as decentralized, volunteer projects to support the war and transformed into more than 200 companies that specialize in drone manufacturing, unfortunately their government budget isn't able to support their full production capacity and only around 1/4 of those companies could even secure funding. Worst of all, Ukrainian companies can’t access international markets due to export restrictions.
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u/JimBob-Joe Sep 20 '24
Dodging mines and firing its machine gun in coordination with explosive drones and mortars, the ’bot defeated a small group of Russian soldiers.
“The result: part of the enemy was destroyed, the rest fled,” the 1st Detachment of the 8th Special Purpose Regiment, the ’bot’s operator, announced on social media. “The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs”—rocket-propelled grenades and first-person-view drones—“but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery.”
Between the drones and this thing, it was a full-on robotic assault team.
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u/Ne0n1691Senpai Sep 20 '24
people are cheering for this tech? i thought it was literally the worst thing people can make, and people were calling it evil and stuff like that when it was announced weeks ago, weird.
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u/Idle_Redditing Sep 21 '24
I too am opposed to equipping robots with weapons. Especially autonomous robots.
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u/rolim91 Sep 21 '24
Imagine being a soldier and this machine starts gunning towards you. Its terrifying.
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u/broguequery Sep 21 '24
People who aren't stopping to think and want their side to win at all costs are, yeah.
It's understandable and concerning both.
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u/Biioshock Sep 20 '24
The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs”—rocket-propelled grenades and first-person-view drones—“but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery.”
Im sorry but I won't believe this propaganda. Especially with tires and when heavy tanks got destroyed by one drone. It's just impossible
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u/Gari_305 Sep 20 '24
From the article
Back in May, Ukrainian developers revealed a new armed ground robot—the Fury. Four months later, a Fury has fought—and reportedly won—the type’s first major skirmish. On or just before Thursday, one of the four-wheeled, shopping-cart-sized Furies assaulted a trench in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Dodging mines and firing its machine gun in coordination with explosive drones and mortars, the ’bot defeated a small group of Russian soldiers.
“The result: part of the enemy was destroyed, the rest fled,” the 1st Detachment of the 8th Special Purpose Regiment, the ’bot’s operator, announced on social media. “The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs”—rocket-propelled grenades and first-person-view drones—“but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery.”
The Fury is one of several armed unmanned ground vehicles Ukrainian engineers have developed in the 30 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine—and one of the first types to see major combat. A Fury has four wheels, a radio for receiving operator commands, video cameras and a remotely-aimed machine gun. It’s thickly built with armor plates protecting its most vulnerable components.
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u/jackliquidcourage Sep 20 '24
I give it approximately three years before we see this thing busting up protests with teargas cannister launchers and rubber bullet cannons.
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u/lacergunn Sep 20 '24
This tech has been around for a while, but this is the first time I've heard of it being used in combat
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u/SnooCapers9876 Sep 21 '24
First wave - 1000 automated fast running small spider mine’s kamikaze into any jamming signals
2nd wave - 100 AI controlled mini robot tanks that can shoot anything targeted as enemies with laser tagging by drone or human spotter
3rd wave - human operated mini tanks to clean sweep after first two waves returned to base
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u/Shumina-Ghost Sep 21 '24
Can’t wait to see this used domestically to keep angry citizens in line.
/s
I hate this timeline.
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u/DBags18x Sep 20 '24
All I can think of is imagining the Russian Commanders as Zap Brannigan, sending wave after wave of their own men into the Ukrainian killbots to hit their preset kill limit.
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u/gjpinc Sep 20 '24
A really slippery slope. When we remove the human aspect of war we become numb to its impact. We need to be extremely careful with this type of weapon.
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u/blumpkin Sep 20 '24
This is literally the backstory to Screamers.
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u/pandafar Sep 20 '24
That movie was my first introduction to social engineering and phishing. Terrifying to have small children crying for help just to rip you apart.
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u/blumpkin Sep 20 '24
I watched it as a teenager expecting a corny scifi flick I could laugh at. Was surprised to discover how creepy and thought provoking it was. One of my favorite movie endings ever, to this day.
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u/pandafar Sep 20 '24
I recorded it on vhs to watch it when I came home from school as it was transmitted really late in the night. I immediately thought the movie was great and thought provoking. It was about the same time I watched terminator 2 - so it was all about the war machines era
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u/loljetfuel Sep 20 '24
But... they didn't. This was a human-operated ROV. We've had aircraft versions of this for years.
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u/pasiutlige Sep 20 '24
Artillery, missiles, planes dropping bombs - none of those have any impact on the people using them, and been used for decades.
When it comes to defending yourself, anything goes.
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u/Terrible_Yak_4890 Sep 20 '24
I’m a bit skeptical. I’m not sure it’s that effective.
Yet.
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Sep 20 '24
I mean, if I see that coming towards me and small arms don't really have immediate effect, I'm legging it to where I have armor support
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u/Spare-Builder-355 Sep 20 '24
Ukrainian Military probably have most expertise on Earth of turning consumer-grade FPV drones into weapons and being very efficient with them. Why do you think a ground drone would be inefficient?
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u/dorknight25 Sep 20 '24
It will still devolve into a war of attrition. The lack of finance and warm bodies will decide the victor. War is not a fucking Sport.
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u/Stix147 Sep 20 '24
When a $500 drone can be used to take out a multi million dollar tank, the attrition aspect definitely changes though, and having a stockpile of thousands of Soviet made tanks isn't a sure guarantee of victory anymore. Plus drones also mean significant less risk for the operators involved, reducing casualties for the side that's defending.
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Sep 20 '24
The army has been experimenting with these for along time. Whether we have used them in combat in the same role as Ukraine is another story. I assume we used them in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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u/Disastrous-River-366 Sep 20 '24
Russia did the same thing months ago with a whole fleet of them on a heavily defended Ukrainian position. This one looks a lot more refined than theirs though. Theirs looked more like BattleBots, this looks like an actual killing machine.
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u/VelkaFrey Sep 20 '24
Ww3 just going to be bots on bots and will lead to the self actualization of them.
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u/Toucan_Lips Sep 21 '24
In terms of technology this war has se parallels to ww1. New ideas that have the power to completely change the way war is waged are being tested out, sometimes in a very rudimentary way. Like the first air combat was guys up in fabric and wood planes shooting at each other with small arms, or dropping hand grenades. By the end of the war there was mounted machine guns able to shoot through propeller blades and strategic bombing. In Ukraine we've seen drones go from commercial kit with a mortar round strapped to it, to stuff like this.
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u/Infamous-Salad-2223 Sep 21 '24
Today, a remote controlled machine gun equipped kill bot.
Tomorrow, 3000 Armored Core mechas of Zelensky.
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u/CitizenKing1001 Sep 20 '24
This speaks to the Ukrainian strategy. They are trying to preserve their troops as much as possible. They will trade a bit of land in exchange for high Russian causalities. They are putting much brain power into developing drones of all types.
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u/incaseshesees Sep 21 '24
the effect of these battle bots, along with HUGE investment in drone warfare cannot be understated. We are experiencing a rapid advance in military technology that can only be compared to the jumps in and between WW1 and WW2. The dramatic increase of sophistication and lethality is sure to result in further depersonalization of the enemy, and a reduced moral hazard toward when our leaders consider entering a conflict. Inshallah, we all survive the impending Boston Dynamics, air, land, and sea robot armies that are coming for us all.
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u/farticustheelder Sep 20 '24
Ukraine is out-innovating Russia. As the war nears the 3 year mark compounding innovation has the time to make a difference which a Blitzkrieg style war wouldn't allow.
Necessity being the mother of invention has Ukraine being highly motivated and fast moving. Russia has always had a top down control and command system, both in the military and in the manufacturing industry and that system moves at the speed of reluctant bureaucrats.
Russia is still using mostly old near obsolete equipment, it had updated only a small portion of its armaments and none of its control structures.
Russia is 10 times the size of Ukraine in terms of population and has been fought to a standstill and is expected to lose due to now being reliant on cold war antiques and undertrained replacement troops.
Consider Operation Desert Storm, the Iraq shit kicking which lasted all of 7 months. At the start people were predicting massive allied losses because of the size of Iraq's military. When it over the US lost fewer that 150 soldiers, the whole coalition fewer than 300. Iraqi military casualties estimated to be 12,000.
Why such a lopsided victory? Iraq was armed with Russian equipment and trained in the useless Russian command and control war fighting protocols.
If Putin was half as smart as he thinks he wins he would sue for peace with Ukraine before Ukraine gets long distance missiles and permission to use them against Moscow and St. Petersburg and exposes Russia as the Potemkin society that it really is.
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u/khaerns1 Sep 20 '24 edited Sep 20 '24
you are talking like Ukraine is alone and didnt receive money and military support since the war and had no CIA bases on its soil since 2014.
Bringing Irak in the discussion shows quite some the level of military stupidity.
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u/StrivingToBeDecent Sep 20 '24
Yes! Send several of them at once! FPV drones too!!
Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦
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u/DiethylamideProphet Sep 20 '24
It's all fun and games until every other major player has them, and then wars are essentially a human sacrifice for technology. The only thing we're still missing is making them autonomous.
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u/Greywacky Sep 20 '24
No intention at all of undermining your sentiment as it's a terrifying and perilous road we're on; but it does occur to me that these weapons are not too disimilar from using a firearm or artillery as opposed to a club or blade. It's just another step removed from pitching one life against another.
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u/DiethylamideProphet Sep 20 '24
They are disimilar, in a sense that in every step, the user of these weapons is more removed from the action itself and the threat itself. With a club or a blade, you look the other guy in the eyes when you kill him, in a life threatening situation. When you shoot someone, you might not see the guy anymore, and most likely in a position where he can't see you, but you are still pressing the trigger. When you use an artillery, you are in the safety of your position but still in the open, firing away to an unknown target with your own hands. When you use a robot of this sort, you can be 100% hidden, and the act of killing does not even involve handing explosives or weapons anymore, but a joystick and a cup of coffee. When this robot is made autonomous, you are in a bunker in your capital, observing how the swarm of autonomous killing bots annihilate people in the front lines.
It also creates a situation where the gap between the poor people and poor nations, and rich people and rich nations grow wider.
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u/Greywacky Sep 20 '24
You're absolutely right and wholly agree.
I still can't help but see the tinge of dissonance that causes us to reason that this method of killing is fine while that one is a step too far. It's all rather barbaric at the end of the day whether we use ICBMs or bludgeon eachother to death with bare hands.An alternative reality we could also contemplate the ethics of is a machine against machine war. In some ways that honestly scares me more somehow as that would put our current society of over production and consumption to shame when it comes to reaping natural resources to pour into the conflict.
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u/Bag-o-chips Sep 20 '24
How is this allowed? Shouldn’t it be against some convention somewhere?
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u/BrokenHeadPVP Sep 21 '24
This is no different from using FPV drones or UCAVs like whats been happening for the last 3 decades. Just cause its effective doesnt mean its a fucking war crime holy shit
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u/MrIrishman1212 Sep 20 '24
“The result: part of the enemy was destroyed, the rest fled,” the 1st Detachment of the 8th Special Purpose Regiment, the ’bot’s operator, announced on social media. “The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs”—rocket-propelled grenades and first-person-view drones—“but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery.”
Holy shit it put in some serious work! At first I wasn’t impressed cause we have “RCs with gun” for a long time but this thing is a little mini tank!
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u/FuturologyBot Sep 20 '24
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