Ukraine is testing homemade, remotely controlled off-road buggies for the first time, Kyiv disclosed on Friday, as the country looks for reliable ways to supply troops this coming winter.
Brave1, the Ukrainian state-backed innovation platform, said it held closed trials for buggies developed by local manufacturers with a special unit under Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency.
The testing aimed to validate whether the optionally manned vehicles could perform under battlefield conditions, with winter in mind.
“As winter approaches, Ukraine’s military needs affordable, fast, and highly mobile vehicles that can operate both with a driver and remotely,” Brave1 said in a statement.
Ground robots have become a vital component of Ukrainian logistics this year and are part of a broader effort by the military to replace soldiers with machinery in dangerous front-line missions, whenever and wherever possible.
Many of these robots, however, have “limitations,” Brave1 said, characterizing them as slow and warning that they could struggle in the snow and mud of winter.
Courtesy of Brave1
Ukraine is now prioritizing the development of locally made buggies to fill that potential capability gap.
Ukrainian forces have long used foreign-made buggies — lightweight four-wheel vehicles with no external protection — for infantry assaults, rapid movement, and other specialized missions, as well as logistics. Ukraine’s special operators have used them on missions, dodging enemy drones in the process.
Some of these buggies, though, have been plagued by high costs, insufficient remote-control capabilities, and an inability to meet battlefield demands, Brave1 said.
“Our goal is to build a fully-fledged Ukrainian buggy market,” Brave1 said, adding that it has provided grants to more than half the developments available in the country and is working with manufacturers to make them remotely operated.
Following the trials, Brave1 said the manufacturers are now tweaking their buggies based on the feedback they received. The next step is to collaborate with the Ukrainian defense ministry to scale the deployment of these vehicles on the battlefield.
Ukraine’s defense ministry had previously signaled that it intended to mass-produce buggies.
The push for remotely controlled off-road buggies comes amid a broader effort by the Ukrainian military to field robots, drones, and other autonomous systems in combat against the much larger Russian fighting force.
“We are steadily moving toward a more robotic front line — and keeping our service members out of harm’s way,” Brave1 said.
