Latest news with #Milrem
Business Insider
27-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Ukraine is using this company's ground robots in ways it didn't quite expect
A company that makes ground robots to defend against Russia said that Ukrainian soldiers have been using its technology in ways they were not expecting. Kuldar Väärsi, the founder and CEO of Estonian company Milrem Robotics, told Business Insider that "Ukrainian troops are really creative, and they really find very simple ways how to get even more out of the equipment," including adding and attaching things to Milrem's robots. The company makes autonomous ground robots that can gather intelligence, evacuate wounded soldiers, dispose of explosive devices, and fire weaponry like machine guns. He said that it makes sense that Ukraine's soldiers are finding ways to adapt. "If you give a tool to a soldier, then he will use it as it seems most appropriate," Väärsi said. For the Ukrainian troops, "it is literally a question of life and death," so they are motivated to use the equipment "in the best possible manner." He could not give many details due to security concerns, "but the creativity of Ukrainian troops is really admirable," he said. The company's THeMIS model is being used in Ukraine as part of the fight against Russia's invasion. The robotic vehicle can carry a payload of up to 2,645.5 pounds and travel at up to 12 miles per hour. It can be fitted with a variety of weapons and used to clear mines, carry cargo, and move out injured troops. The remotely controlled robots can use AI for navigation, carry much more equipment than humans can, and get a lot closer to Russian positions than many soldiers would want to. Ground robots are becoming increasingly Yabchanka, head of the robotic systems for Ukraine's Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, told Business Insider that his unit also uses robots to lay mines, collect bodies, and explode near Russian targets. Robots are being made both inside and outside Ukraine and come with a lot of flexibility in how they're used. Most models are designed to be used in different configurations or with different weaponry, like using machine guns or grenade launchers, up top. "The ground robotized systems are Lego sets," Yabchanka said, explaining that his unit does not have different robots available for different mission sets. "We all remember Lego. We were growing up together with those kits," he said. Innovation in battle Throughout the war, the Ukrainians have repeatedly modified and tweaked Western and Soviet-era weaponry, as well as invented new types, and used them in unexpected ways throughout Russia's invasion. They've mounted old guns on trucks to stop Russian attacks, turned trucks into makeshift rocket artillery, transformed small, cheap commercial drones into strike weapons and surveillance tools, built cages for tanks to protect them from attacks, adapted Western missiles to make them suitable for Soviet-designed jets, adapted anti-ship cruise missiles for land-attack missions, and worked with the US to make "Frankenstein"-style air defense weapons out Western surface-to-air missiles and Soviet-designed launchers. It has also pioneered new weapon types with its growing defense industry, like drone boats and AI-enabled gun turrets. Milrem Robotics is just one of the companies making the robots that are being used in Ukraine. In Ukraine, companies in the space include Roboneers and FRDM, while companies like Germany's ARX Robotics and Czechia's Isolit-Bravo are also working with Ukraine to build robotic systems. It's a technology that Russia is also embracing. Väärsi said the war in Ukraine has justified the company's bet on the technology. Milrem Robotics was founded in 2013, but Väärsi said that before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there were doubts about the tech even as people recognized that there were opportunities in defense. This war "has demonstrated that unmanned ground vehicles have a really important place on the battlefield," he said. Robots have been used by the West in previous conflicts, but not at this scale. The intensity of this war has pushed new innovation and investments. It is something that is far from being used by every unit in Ukraine, but it's largely seen as something that's worth pushing for a Ukrainian military that's fighting against a Russian military that has a lot more troops and more weapons. Väärsi said that, at least for now, the goal for his company's robots is supporting Ukraine's soldiers and keeping them safe rather than replacing them altogether. He said that soldiers can "use the unmanned systems as a first line of defense or offense" and don't need to push troops to the front. An Estonian, Väärsi said he is motivated to help Ukraine. Estonia is beside Russia and was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. The country is one of Ukraine's biggest partners, is part of the EU and NATO, and is one of the countries warning loudly that Russia could attack elsewhere in Europe. "It's our mission to support Ukraine as much as we can, to help them win this war. And even if it's as little as sending our vehicles, then we should certainly do it," Väärsi said. Väärsi said Europe needs to adapt based on what it's seeing in Ukraine to be ready if necessary. "What I consider very important is that in Europe we need to learn and very seriously learn what is ongoing in Ukraine: what works, what doesn't work, what mindsets need to be shifted to be better equipped if — hopefully that never happens — but if Russia decides to expand their activities in the warfare." He said it is important for Western defense companies to have their technology in Ukraine to learn how it performs on the battlefield. His company has made changes to its products as a result of lessons learned. The company regularly visits Ukraine and works directly with operators and is now taking that a step further with plans for a new team based in Ukraine to "be closer to Ukrainian forces and to support them even better," he said.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
European Defence Fund funnels money to drones, hypersonic defense, AI
PARIS — The European Union's executive arm picked 62 defense projects for a combined €910 million ($1 billion) in financing in the latest funding round by the European Defence Fund, focusing on areas including drones, autonomous mine sweeping and defense against hypersonic weapons. Flagship projects in the funding round include Eurosweep, which aims to develop an unmanned minesweeping system, ENGRT II to develop a next-generation rotorcraft, and the iMUGS2 project to test unmanned ground vehicles, the European Commission said on Wednesday. 'This is a major step to close critical defense capability gaps and reinforce Europe's strategic autonomy,' European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said in a post on social media. The latest EDF funding allocation 'supports both advanced R&D and real-world defense capabilities,' he said. The fund started operating in 2021 to support collaborative defense research and development in Europe, and the latest round means the EDF has now allocated half of its budget of nearly €8 billion through to 2027. The commission picked the most recent winners from a record 297 proposals received in response to the EDF 2024 call for proposals. Ukraine's defense industry was able to participate in EDF projects for the first time, which 'deepens our cooperation and helps integrate Ukraine into the European defense industrial base,' Kubilius said. The EDF provides significant funding, and its budget for the 2021-2027 period accounts for around 15% of all EU defense R&D spending, with only France and Germany spending more, the International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote in an October report. Small and medium-sized companies accounted for 27% of total funding in the 2024 call, according to the commission. That's the highest yet, after three rounds in which SMEs accounted for between 18% and 20% of funding. Among specific projects, European Next Generation Rotorcraft Technologies Phase II or ENGRT II received €100 million in EU funding on an estimated total cost of €160 million. The project is led by Airbus Helicopters at the head of a consortium of more than 40 companies and institutes. The iMUGS2 project, coordinated by Milrem, received €50 million for field testing and a trial of unmanned ground systems, with the project seeking to develop system architectures to allow new and legacy military vehicles to integrate autonomous and swarming capabilities. Milrem was founded in Estonia and now belongs to EDGE Group, a state-owned technology conglomerate of the United Arab Emirates. Eurosweep led by Norway's Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt was awarded €28.5 million to develop a naval minesweeping system with autonomous features. The EDF also provided €78 million in financing for a classified project that aims to counter hypersonic glide vehicles. Funding included €35 million for Scepter, a research program to develop interoperable and standardized radar, electronic warfare and communication systems for airborne platforms, coordinated by Spain's Indra Sistemas. The Boosting European Advanced Missile System Technologies project, or Beast, aims to develop a future short-range, air-to-air missile under the lead of Diehl Defence, and received €34.9 million. A project to upgrade European cyber defense led by the Estonian Ministry of Defence's CR14 and called Citadel Range was allocated €48 million in funding. A concept study for a new mid-sized European military transport aircraft with a 20-ton payload, led by Airbus within the Fasett2 project, received €30 million in funding. A Rheinmetall-led project to develop non-jammable precision munition called Ninja2 received €29.6 million. The EDF also funded five smaller projects working on resilient drone navigation or swarming capability in non-permissive environments, and four projects to apply artificial intelligence for satellite-image analysis, including for the detection and monitoring of military activities.
The National
17-02-2025
- Automotive
- The National
Glimpse of a future robotic battlefield at Idex defence expo
At the Idex defence fair in Abu Dhabi, a massive range of robotic ground military systems was on display, from tiny buggies that drop off supplies or offload a single mine to full-scale armoured vehicles capable of autonomous driving with no crew. For industry professionals, fully robotic wars are here – clashes with few soldiers in sight – despite challenges in fielding autonomous ground systems. Experts say a major draw for the systems is the high casualty rates seen in modern warfare, which could be lessened by advancing robotic systems soaking up enemy fire, forcing enemy troops to expose their positions by shooting at ground drones. An unnerving twist to such an attack, recently seen in Ukraine, could involve simultaneous aerial attacks by drones, some of which can already pick out targets using computer vision. Ground systems are also highly versatile and often modular, meaning that we could soon see everything from unmanned vehicles firing massive anti-ship missiles, like the US Rogue Fires JLTV made by Oshkosh, to small systems dropping off medical supplies. 'We have 19 customers for Themis,' a representative from Milrem Robotics, an Estonian company specialising in unmanned ground equipment, told The National. Milrem, which is majority-owned by the UAE's Edge Group, has worked with the Emirati company on one of the world's largest unmanned ground system projects. Themis, a highly mobile tracked weapons system, can bristle with remotely fired guns, day or night sensors and even anti-aircraft missiles. Its quiet operation and low profile make it hard to spot on the battlefield, and its modular design allows it to take on different roles over several kilometres. That's well within typical gun-battle range and roles can include evacuating casualties or delivering supplies close to the front line, where supply lorries make for large, easy targets. With recent events in Ukraine, robots like Themis will be a common sight on the modern battlefield, as well as much larger combat vehicles like Milrem's eight-wheel drive, turreted Havoc, which is designed to be controlled from nearby armoured vehicles, an approach known as human-machine teaming also explored by the British and US armies. Havoc can also navigate using computer vision, or AI. It's a growing trend, from vehicles that drive and potentially fight autonomously, like Rheinmetall's Mission Master, to systems that help soldiers make quick decisions under fire. While radio-controlled systems sometimes have a range limited by hills and large buildings, Milrem's systems can be used with nearby dedicated control vehicles with radio links, including a dedicated NIMR mobile armoured control centre – made by the UAE company of the same name. That ensures they can stay operating right on the front line, keeping the enemy off balance, and follows a pattern of armies envisioning their unmanned systems controlled by troops in nearby armoured vehicles, or able to move autonomously. A low profile, the Milrem spokesman says, is good for "silent watch", where the vehicle switches off its engine to reduce noise and its visibility to thermal cameras, but keeps monitoring the battlefield using its sensors. Last month, defence analyst Tim Mak described what some believe may have been history's first fully semi-automated attack with unmanned ground vehicles and aerial drones working together. The assault took place in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, and involved dozens of aerial and ground drones dislodging Russian forces from their positions. One account said the attack created panic among the enemy, although it still required a large number of soldiers to organise and control the machines. It appears to have been a long time in the making – although it's not the first time flying drones and ground robots have fought in the same clash. Ukraine is said to have tested around 100 different types of UGVs, using them to deliver mines, evacuate casualties and in some cases fire weapons remotely at the enemy. Both Russia and Ukraine had armed unmanned vehicles before Russia's 2022 invasion, but the war has spurred a race to innovate. Ukraine's Defence Minister Rustem Umerov has said his country is planning entire units of unmanned ground vehicles, meaning that entirely unmanned attacks could be increasingly common. One defence industry expert on unmanned ground systems, who wasn't authorised to speak to the media, told The National at IDEX that manpower problems for countries like Ukraine are increasingly a challenge in modern war, amid worsening demographics in the industrialised world. Israel, which has struggled to maintain mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in post-October 7 wars in Gaza and Lebanon, says its forces have mounted what they called 'robotic combat missions' using unmanned M113 armoured personnel carriers and flying drones in Gaza. The M113s, widely considered obsolete, were used to deliver equipment and in some cases, simply filled with bombs to demolish buildings, a tactic also seen in Ukraine. Using unmanned vehicles in urban environments and bomb-damaged landscapes is challenging, says Sam Cranny-Evans, an independent defence consultant and associate fellow at Rusi, a think tank. 'For a land platform, whether it's remotely controlled or autonomously navigating, it has to deal with the terrain,' he says. For automated or remotely controlled systems, Mr Cranny-Evans says it can be hard to assess areas of broken ground that could be craters that could trap the vehicle. Autonomous platforms also have 'trained' computer vision, navigating with onboard 3D maps of urban areas. 'If somebody flattens a building and you previously had 3D-mapped the area, that's no longer valid, right?' Mr Cranny-Evans says. Challenges like this are influencing how defence planners view the systems, from expendable and cheap unmanned systems that might only be able to travel 1-2km at best, to highly advanced, large and expensive systems with multiple all-weather, day-and-night sensors and robotic vision, which US firms such as General Dynamics are still working on. 'We have many solutions,' says a spokesman for LIG Nex1, a South Korean defence corporation currently working on unmanned systems. 'Through co-operation with the platform company, we believe we can develop a more customised solution for unmanned ground vehicles and manned-unmanned teaming operations. For example we are conducting a co-development and co-production project with the UAE,' he tells The National. The uses for unmanned ground systems keep expanding, suggesting they are here to stay. Parson Engineering, which has historically made equipment for clearing minefields or other man-made enemy obstacles, as well as rivers, has adapted its equipment to experimental, large-scale US combat robots. As with the advantage of keeping soldiers alive, the unmanned mine clearance robots can save on expensive, large systems like the Leopard 2R mine-clearing vehicle, which costs several million dollars. Many Leopard 2R's supplied to Ukraine were destroyed during mine-clearing operations, with crew killed or wounded. 'One way to reduce the impact of disabling a limited number of engineering assets is to disperse capability by equipping fighting vehicles with some level of capability that provides independent manoeuvre. Pearson Engineering has developed a range of equipment that achieves this without impacting the lethality or survivability of the combat vehicle,' a spokesperson for the company told The National. 'We're seeing clear interest in exploring the art of the possible with regards to integrating engineering capability with uncrewed vehicles. Minefield breaching is a particularly dangerous task and the ability to remove people from harm's way can only be a good thing.'
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Estonia's Milrem reveals first look at new war robot
MILAN — Estonia-based Milrem Robotics revealed a first look at its new 8x8 wheeled combat robot, which builds on the company's existing family of unmanned ground vehicles. A mockup of new hybrid-electric vehicle, dubbed Havoc, is on display here at the IDEX and NAVDEX trade shows that run Feb. 17-21. The platform shares commonalities with other of Milrem's platforms, including the tracked Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV), enabling reduced procurement and maintenance costs as well as streamlined logistics, according to a company press release. According to Milrem, the Havoc has a greater operational range and can move nearly silently, an advantage if deployed to congested combat zones. Milrem, which is owned by Emirati conglomerate Edge Group, appears interested in tapping into the Middle East market as the first potential customers for the ground vehicle, promoting its capabilities to operate in 'open deserts, urban combat zones to high-altitude mountain passes.' At the 2024 UMEX drone fair in Abu Dhabi, Milrem signed a contract with the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense to provide Emirati forces with 20 tracked RCVs and 40 THeMIS unmanned ground vehicles. For several years, the THeMIS cargo, casualty-evacuation and route-clearance variants have been deployed by the Ukrainian military to provide transport and demining assistance. Lessons drawn from real-world operations such as these are reflected in the development of the Havoc, a Milrem spokesman told Defense News. 'One major takeaway has been the importance of seamless command and control integration – the Havoc has been designed to operate within a large ecosystem, integrating effectively with both manned and unmanned systems to increase combat efficiency,' spokesman Gert Hankewitz said. In one picture released of the vehicle, it is seen mounted with the French-made Pilar V acoustic detector produced by Metravib Defense, typically designed to protect heavy and light armored vehicles. When asked whether Milrem's Emirati owners provided specific elements for the design of the UGV, Hankewitz said that they were actively exploring ways to maximize synergies across platforms, including integrating existing Edge payloads.
