Ukraine's robot army is a glimpse of future warfare
The 'Zmiy', or 'Snake', is one of dozens of Ukrainian-made robots recently approved for combat that are helping Kyiv replace soldiers with machines.
Guided by a pilot in a bunker a few miles away, it doesn't slither like its reptile namesake – it silently crawls low to the ground, detonating Russian mines in its path.
The model is one of several that will make up the 15,000 robots that Kyiv has pledged to deploy to the battlefield in 2025 in an effort to help overcome its crippling manpower shortages at the front, where Ukrainian troops are outgunned and often outmanned by Russians at a rate of three-to-one.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the less-developed field of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are being built to save lives, but there are also fears they reduce the barriers to killing, pushing the conflict into uncharted territory.
The proliferation of machines on the battlefield of Ukraine also offers a glimpse into a future where humans and robots increasingly do battle, and one in which even the most highly trained soldiers are little match for an engineer with a controller, hiding in a bunker.
The developers behind this fledgling robot army told The Telegraph that the so-called 'war of the robots' – although still in its early, experimental stages – is already here.
The focus, they said, was not about replacing infantry, but integrating robots into military operations to gain the technological edge against Russia in a war of grinding attrition.
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