NEW YORK, March 22. /TASS/. Ukraine is looking for opportunities to mass-produce unmanned ground vehicles domestically to replace foreign-made ones, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.

According to the media outlet, the Ukrainian armed forces are using these "robot-like vehicles" to strike enemy forces, plant and defuse mines, as well as to evacuate the wounded. However, such vehicles are not as widely used as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and water drones. "Land drones typically face bigger hurdles than those in the air and water, not least the need to navigate around buildings and across uneven terrain," the WSJ notes.

Given the current issues with Western funding, Kiev plans to boost domestic technologies, reducing production costs as much as possible, the paper writes. However, according to the WSJ, although Kiev’s allies, including the US, have been testing unmanned ground vehicles for decades, they still "haven’t deployed them in a meaningful way."

Russian forces are also using ground robots in the special military operation zone. A Russian defense industry source told TASS in September 2023 that troops had started using the BRG-1 ground-based robotic complex to evacuate the wounded and deliver cargo. News came in October that the BR-1 and BRG-1 platforms would be equipped with artificial intelligence.