The Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle rolled up to a small bunker hidden in a thicket in Kharkiv oblast then stopped. Another remote-controlled vehicle had just detonated its 66lbs of explosives at the Russian bunker’s entrance, which was still smoldering. And before that a kamikaze drone had dived inside and exploded. The operator was about to detonate his explosives when two Russian soldiers pushed a sign through the bunker’s shattered roof saying they were surrendering. They were directed to Ukrainian lines by a drone and taken into custody as POWs.

So ended the world’s first fully robotic assault on an enemy position. The remotely operated vehicle in this attack is called a Targan (“cockroach” in Ukrainian) and looks like a miniature flatbed without the cab. It’s about the size of a lawnmower and consists of just four off-road wheels, a chassis and a battery. Anything you can think of can be attached to these small electric rovers: a machine gun, medical equipment or, in the Kharkiv assault, anti-tank mines.

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The pioneering operation took place last year and was recently revealed by Volodymyr Zelensky. In the past three months, Ukraine has conducted 22,000 missions using robotic vehicles, he said, saving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers on 22,000 occasions.

The battlefield has long been a laboratory for testing and improving new weapons. Now it is also a giant showroom to sell those weapons. Ukraine........

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