Ukraine to field 25,000 ground robots in push to replace soldiers for frontline logistics

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine will contract 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, more than double the 2025 total, as the Defense Ministry moves to shift all frontline logistics off soldiers and onto robots.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared the target after meeting with domestic UGV manufacturers last week, where he also announced that the ministry had already begun signing contracts for 2027 to stabilize long-term manufacturer pipelines.

“UGVs perform important logistics and evacuation tasks on the front line,” Fedorov wrote in a Facebook post on April 18. “In March alone, the military carried out more than 9,000 missions using them.”

“Our goal — 100% of frontline logistics should be performed by robotic systems,” the minister said.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has spent over 14 billion hryvnia, or roughly $330 million, to push more than 181,000 drones, UGVs and electronic warfare systems to the front since January through a digital procurement system that allows frontline units to order equipment directly from domestic manufacturers, Fedorov said Thursday.

Within days of Fedorov’s announcement, Kyiv codified the Bizon-L — a 300-kilogram-payload logistics robot with a 50-kilometer range — under NATO cataloging standards and cleared it for operational use across Ukraine’s armed forces and those of allies.

Ukrainian forces have run more than 22,000 unmanned missions in the past three months, sparing that many soldiers from the war’s most dangerous work, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an April 14 Arms Makers’ Day address.

Zelenskyy pointed to one operation in particular.

The president described how, last summer, operators from a robotic strike unit in the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, NC13, used only aerial drones and unmanned ground vehicles to take a fortified Russian position in Kharkiv Oblast.

Russian troops raised a cardboard sign reading “We want to surrender” before drones guided them into captivity, brigade commanders said, according to CNN .

“For the first time in the history of this war, Ukrainian warriors captured an enemy position using exclusively unmanned platforms ," Zelenskyy said.

Scaling production of tens of thousands of UGVs to deploy across 1,200 kilometers of frontline within the year is no simple feat, but Ukraine’s defense leaders have said they believe they are up to the task.

“We have around 300 ground-drone companies in the Brave1 ecosystem, up from zero in 2022,” Brave1 CEO Andrii Hrytseniuk told Military Times in February, adding that the organization has issued 175 grants to ground-drone developers in the same period.

Brave1 is Ukraine’s government-backed defense-tech cluster, coordinating grants, testing and frontline feedback for domestic and international manufacturers.

Zelenskyy emphasized the priorities of leaning into defense tech innovation in his speech earlier this month.

“This is about high technology protecting the highest value — human life,” Zelenskyy said.

乌克兰基辅——乌克兰国防部计划在 2026 年上半年订购 25,000 辆无人地面车辆，是 2025 年总量的两倍多，以此将所有前线后勤保障工作从士兵转移到机器人身上。

国防部长米哈伊洛·费多罗夫上周与国内无人地面车辆制造商会面后分享了这一目标，他还宣布国防部已经开始签署 2027 年的合同，以稳定长期制造商的供应渠道。

费多罗夫在4月18日的一篇Facebook帖子中写道：“无人地面车辆在前线执行重要的后勤和撤离任务。仅在3月份，军方就使用它们执行了9000多次任务。”

“我们的目标是——100%的一线物流工作由机器人系统完成，”部长说。

费多罗夫周四表示，自今年1月以来，乌克兰国防部已花费超过140亿格里夫纳（约合3.3亿美元），通过数字化采购系统向一线部队输送了超过18.1万架无人机、无人地面车辆和电子战系统。该系统允许一线部队直接从国内制造商订购装备。

费多罗夫宣布消息后几天，基辅就根据北约编目标准对 Bizon-L（一款有效载荷 300 公斤、行程 50 公里的物流机器人）进行了编目，并批准其在乌克兰武装部队及其盟国军队中投入使用。

乌克兰总统泽连斯基在4月14日武器制造者日讲话中表示，过去三个月，乌克兰军队执行了超过22000次无人任务，使许多士兵免于从事战争中最危险的工作。

泽连斯基特别提到了其中一次行动。

总统描述了去年夏天，第3独立突击旅（NC13）的一个机器人打击部队的作战人员如何仅使用无人机和无人地面车辆就攻占了哈尔科夫州的一个俄军防御工事。

据美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）报道，旅级指挥官称，俄罗斯士兵举起一块写着“我们想要投降”的纸板，然后无人机引导他们进入俘虏营。

泽连斯基说：“在这场战争的历史上，乌克兰战士第一次完全使用无人平台攻占了敌方阵地。”

在一年内将数万辆无人地面车辆的生产规模扩大到 1200 公里的前线并进行部署并非易事，但乌克兰国防领导人表示，他们相信自己能够胜任这项任务。

“Brave1 生态系统中已有约 300 家地面无人机公司，而 2022 年时还为零，”Brave1 首席执行官 Andrii Hrytseniuk 在 2 月份接受《军事时报》采访时表示，并补充说，该组织在同一时期向地面无人机开发商发放了 175 笔资助。

Brave1 是乌克兰政府支持的国防科技集群，负责协调国内外制造商的拨款、测试和一线反馈。

泽连斯基在本月初的讲话中强调了加大国防科技创新投入的优先事项。

泽连斯基说：“这是用高科技保护最高价值——人类生命的问题。”