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A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday that it successfully sent a ground robot on a 12-mile supply run, using AI to navigate for nearly the entirety of the mission.
The Lava Unmanned Systems Regiment of the 2nd Corps, or Khartiia Corps, of Ukraine's National Guard announced the completion of the autonomous logistics mission in a statement shared with Business Insider, calling it the "first of its kind under combat conditions."
The unit said that the robot completed 93% of its 20-kilometer trip on its own, delivering cargo and returning to its starting point autonomously, with an operator intervening for only 1.4 kilometers of the journey.
Before departure, a separate ground robot equipped with light detection and ranging technology, or LiDAR, mapped the route and terrain in 3D. Cameras on the supply bot detected obstacles while AI-powered navigation guided the robot.
"This mission has shown that autonomous ground systems are already capable of operating in real combat conditions," said Andrii Kopach, who serves as commander of the Lava Regiment's Unmanned Ground Systems Battalion.
"The biggest change is that the operator is no longer a driver but a dispatcher," he said. "Instead of controlling the vehicle every second, they monitor its movement and step in only when needed."
Kopach said that the unit's next ambitions are to enable a single operator to oversee multiple robots at once and expand autonomous missions to casualty evacuations. He added that more AI-powered ground robots would reduce dependence on "a constant control link," such as Starlink, a satellite internet service which recently saw major speed disruptions in Ukraine, negatively affecting front-line operations.
Ground robots have become an important tool for Ukraine, carrying out resupply, casualty evacuation, and assault missions. The Ukrainian military, and Western military leaders studying lessons from the war, hope that increased reliance on ground robots and aerial drones, as well as the increased integration of AI capabilities into these systems, can help reduce the risks to the troops who would otherwise perform those missions on increasingly dangerous battlefields.
A Russian jet-powered drone set homes on fire in Kharkiv’s Osnovianskyi district during the night, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES) reported. A small child was among the people hurt. Around 13:00 on 28 October, another Russian drone hit the same district, starting a fire, killing one person and injuring two, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Of the 88 Shahed-type drones Russia launched from 18:00 on 27 October, 38 were jet-powered, the Air Force reported. By its preliminary count at 08:00, defenses had downed or jammed 31 of those 38. Several drones were still in the air. Russia also fired an Iskander-M or S-400 ballistic missile from Taganrog. Even so, Russian weapons hit eight locations, and debris fell on two more.
Kharkiv Oblast head Oleh Syniehubov reported a drone strike on the district at 22:42 on 27 October. At 23:12, he clarified that a child hurt in the strike had acute stress reaction. At 23:39, he listed four people hurt: women aged 32 and 65, a 56-year-old man, and a 4-year-old boy. Three went to hospital. Eight minutes later, he added that a 65-year-old woman had acute stress reaction. His morning summary of the day’s strikes lists two 65-year-old women in Kharkiv, one wounded and one with acute stress.
The SES put the number of people hurt at five, including the child. Rescuers said a jet-powered drone struck the area, starting a 2,500 m² fire.
The Osnovianskyi fire was part of a run of Russian strikes on Kharkiv and the area around it. On the evening of 26 October, Russian multiple rocket launchers hit the city’s Novobavarskyi district, killing two people and hurting four. That night, jet drones struck three places in Kharkiv district, which surrounds the city. One hit, in the settlement of Vilshany, left people hurt. The SES counted three injured that night.
During the day on 27 October, another Russian jet drone hit a warehouse in the city’s Slobidskyi district. Preliminary reports showed no casualties. Drones also hit the Shevchenkivskyi district that afternoon, wounding one person, Terekhov said. Another hit damaged an administrative building in the Kholodnohirskyi district, he added. Hours later came the strike on Osnovianskyi. Across Kharkiv Oblast, 14 people were hurt over the past day, including a child, Syniehubov’s morning summary shows. In Osnovianskyi, rescuers were again working under the threat of repeat strikes.
This article first appeared on Pacific Forum and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here. With so much media focus in recent months on the war in Iran, it’s no surprise that Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby’s speech in Manila received so little coverage. That means very few know what […]
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Ukraine’s air defenses have been intercepting nearly 60% of Russian Geran-4 jet-powered attack drones over the past three months, with the interception rate reaching 80% during some attacks, Ukraine’s General Staff said.
Russia has increasingly used jet-powered drones in its attacks on Ukraine, adding a faster-moving threat to the Shahed-type drones Moscow deploys against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Ukraine is working to improve interception rates while reducing the cost of countering these aerial threats amid shortages of surface-to-air missiles.
The General Staff’s update did not mention interception rates for Russia’s more advanced Geran-5 jet-powered drone.
According to the General Staff, tactical aviation plays a significant role in destroying Russian jet-powered drones. Ukraine uses F-16s, French Mirage aircraft, and MiG-29 fighters to intercept them.
The military is also strengthening what it calls “short-range air defense” as Ukraine faces a shortage of guided anti-aircraft missiles. These systems include Gepard and Shilka anti-aircraft guns, newer Skynex, Skyranger, and Terrahawk Paladin systems, interceptor drones, and mobile fire groups deployed by different branches of Ukraine’s Defense Forces.
Mobile fire groups are equipped not only with machine guns and supporting equipment but also with man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS). Ukrainian troops have been successfully using these missiles to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones, the General Staff said.
Ukraine is also seeking to lower the cost of countering Russian aerial attacks by testing new interceptor drones.
According to the General Staff, some models have already downed dozens of Russian Geran jet-powered drones. The military did not provide further details about the interceptor models or the number of drones destroyed.
The rising interception rate reflects Ukraine’s efforts to adapt its air defenses to Russia’s evolving drone campaign while preserving scarce and expensive air-defense missiles for threats that require them.
German defense AI firm Helsing has unveiled Contra, an AI-run air defense system and two interceptor missiles designed to chase Russia’s jet-powered Geran drones, the company announced on 26 October. Officials pitch it as cheap, but it won’t reach the market this winter.
That leaves Ukraine on its own defenses as Russia shifts to jet drones. By early October, jet models made up about 40% of Russian drone launches, and Ukraine’s own interceptors for them won’t arrive in needed numbers before late November, Air Force Deputy Commander Yurii Cherevashenko said.
Contra is the command layer of air defense: it links radars and other sensors, tracks incoming drones and missiles, and assigns a weapon to each target, while people keep control over decisions, Helsing said. Besides the company’s own missiles, it can also use other firms’ interceptors, lasers, guns, or nets. AD-1 Inferno is jet-powered and designed to loiter, swarm, and re-engage targets, while AD-2 Ambush, a solid-fuel rocket, is designed to reach Mach 2.5, over twice the speed of sound, and a range of more than 20 km, the company said.
Inferno, with a 700 km/h speed and a 20-km range, would be the everyday shooter. Ambush would handle “leakers,” drones about to hit the ground, said Maxwell Adams, Helsing’s senior product director. Each shot should cost under $100,000, company officials said.
Ukraine once downed 90% of Russia’s slower, propeller-driven Gerans, copies of Iran’s Shahed, Defense News reported. Russia has since fielded thousands of jet Geran-4s and Geran-5s flying at 400–700 km/h, and almost half now get through, Helsing co-founder and co-CEO Gundbert Scherf said.
Ukraine’s own nightly rates swing widely. On 28 September, President Zelenskyy put the shoot-down rate for jet drones at 57%. Overnight on 7 October, it exceeded 82%, National Security and Defense Council Secretary Ihor Klymenko said. Russian output of the two models has reached 4,000 a month, Helsing said, citing unspecified intelligence reports.
Helsing has signed one Contra contract, Scherf said, but the system is still in testing, and he expects it on the market in the second half of 2027. Ukraine already uses Helsing’s HX-2 strike drones. Scherf said they should be integrated into a system like Contra.
Ukraine has finished its share of FREYJA, a joint European project to build a system against ballistic missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists on 17 October, Ukrinform reported. He added that Kyiv wants to test the first system as soon as possible.
Ukraine still relies on US-made Patriot interceptors to stop Russian ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy told ABC News on 23 October that Ukraine had received only 24 of them from the US in three months, while it needs 350 a month on average. FREYJA can not close that gap soon, because the system is still in development.
Zelenskyy said the partners’ share of the work, with 10 countries taking part, is still underway. He also said he had discussed the project with French President Emmanuel Macron, and he named Norway as a key partner.
Zelenskyy did not say what the partners still have to deliver. In August, he said Ukraine is capable of making the missile and launcher, while partners would supply critical components such as radars and sensors.
In May, Fire Point co-founder and chief designer Denys Shtilerman said all components of the FP-7.x interceptor are made in Ukraine except one. “As for that one part we don’t manufacture in Ukraine, we’ve contracted a certain quantity of it. We already have it,” he said, but did not name the part.
In June, however, Shtilerman told the Financial Times that mass production depended on an infrared seeker Fire Point hoped to get from Germany’s Diehl Defence. Neither statement says whether the seeker is that one part.
Fire Point co-founder Iryna Terekh said in September that FREYJA was going through testing and technical integration in combat conditions in Ukraine. The company plans its first intercept of a ballistic target by mid-2027.
The official timeline has since moved closer. On 21 October, Zelenskyy wrote that officials had identified where to speed up so FREYJA reaches testing by the end of this year. A test is still a step short of an intercept.
US Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Mhecaela Watts
A drone armed with a shotgun has been added to the Pentagon's list of uncrewed systems approved for purchase by the US military and other federal agencies.
Shotguns are commonly seen as a last line of defense against uncrewed aerial systems. Now, US troops could find themselves using a drone armed with one instead.
Earlier this month, Skyborne Technologies' AI-enabled Cerberus MI was approved for the Blue UAS List. The drone is a small, man-portable UAS that the company says was specifically designed to absorb the recoil of attached weapons. The company says the aircraft weighs about 40 pounds, can fly for roughly 35 minutes when armed, and engage targets at a range of over 300 meters.
Instead of simply mounting a shotgun on a commercial, off-the-shelf drone, Skyborne purposefully designed and built the aircraft with the recoil of a CHAOS 12-gauge shotgun in mind.
In addition to the shotgun, Cerberus MI can also be equipped to carry a HAVOC 40mm low-velocity grenade launcher. An operator can send the drone into action, fire its weapons, and fly it back for reloading. According to Skyborne, that makes it a reusable alternative to one-way attack systems that are typically destroyed after striking a target.
The idea of arming drones with shotguns isn't new. Ukrainian defense company 3DTech, for example, developed a drone equipped with a six-barrel recoilless shotgun system to shoot down enemy drones. Other companies are pursuing similar technology, including Federal Ammunition, Mossberg, and Palladyne AI, which are collaborating on the SwarmShot project.
The Pentagon's Blue UAS program was established in 2020 to identify drones that meet US government standards, particularly cybersecurity and supply chain rules. Last year, the Defense Contract Management Agency launched an official website cataloging the models approved for use.
The DCMA said that the list would expedite the process of getting drones into troops' hands as the US Department of Defense and other federal agencies push to rapidly integrate uncrewed systems into operations. Drones, drone parts, and software are part of the program.
A major focus of the list is identifying drones that meet restrictions on Chinese-made components. According to the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, Chinese companies control 90% of the commercial drone market. US officials have raised concerns about Beijing's leverage over the market.
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