Soldiers of the 47th Mechanized Brigade, Ukrainian Armed Forces, told about a mission they had carried out recently. It involved delivery of supplies to the vanguard position of troops and evacuation of their wounded comrade.
After three days of planning, they sent an unmanned ground vehicle on a task. Assisting the robot were aerial drones that relayed the control signal and thus extended its operational range. This way, the wheeled drone managed to cross 10 kilometers to the designated area and then back with the passenger.
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"Operating the drone isn't difficult … It's more about knowing the route and being able to set up the connection properly," says drone platoon commander, call sign "Sat."
The supplies, according to the serviceman, were to help equip the second defense line. Sat says it's not just more convenient but also safer to let the robotic platforms carry the weight, especially in contested areas. The UGV had to carefully avoid russian electronic warfare systems that constantly try to jam the connection between drones and their operators.
The evacuated soldier, too, would be at risk if he tried to cover the distance on his own, especially with a leg injury. Sending in a vehicle to take him would also be risky:
"In order to do the same with a pickup truck, you'd need at least two troops to move out there. The pickup truck would get damaged and the servicemen lost. Instead, we have the ground drone here to go there on its own," explains the Chief Sergeant, call sign "Pekar."
In general, using unmanned platforms to handle transportation of wounded personnel is becoming a common and trusted practice in the Ukrainian Defense Forces. Just the other day, Defense Express pointed out how the Ratel H UGV copes with the task.
The variety of drones capable of that and actively used in the Ukrainian military is astonishingly wide. These include domestic systems, born out of the drone tech boom in Ukraine during the war, and those supplied by foreign partners like the Malloy multicopter-type heavylift UAV.
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