TL;DR: interesting, no doubt … but don’t expect a revolution or something that changes the war.
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I think the “reason to exist” is still more in the PR world and a few edge-cases (which will get talked up) than in real-combat countrywide…
Bear in mind this comes from a news outlet from UKR which might have an agenda (beyond mere reporting facts) …
Also, if we see more of those ground robots, we will see more countermeasures as well (barbed wire comes to mind or simple spools of plastic curly ribbons like on x-mas presents )
… right now they have the benefit of 1st movers… but that will not stay this way.
(maybe battlefields will look “merrier” in the future)
I assume the robots are controlled from afar and do not have the capability to develop their own tactics on the fly, if that’s the case simply jamming the zone to stop them from receiving instructions should render them ineffective.
Unfortunately, the terminology in common use totally ignores the control aspect of munitions. So when a news article or person talks about a “drone” or “robot” they may or may not be referring to a remotely operated device or an autonomous device.
And I think the governments deploying the devices are happy that the common confusion continues.
Depends on the tech used to communicate with them. Some drones are controlled via fiberoptic cable which are immune to jamming. The robots could be controlled the same way.
If the robots’ cameras are good enough to spot such things, equipping them with scissors/wire cutters would allow the controller to avoid that trap.
But the cable would entangle with things on the terrain, or with the other robot’s cable, or with itself if the unit has to backtrack…
It may work for flying drones in simple trajectories (I don’t think the drones dogfight for example) but for infantry robots doesn’t seem practical.
That will depend on how robust the robot is. If it’s armored enough that it can ignore small arms fire, it can just go directly to the enemy position and not have to do stuff humans would do to avoid enemy fire (ducking under cover, etc.). That should let it avoid a lot of the terrain issues as well as tangling their lines.
I don’t think so, it’s a robot not an anime mecha, it has to take cover, retreat, use paths, avoid hills, use ravines, etc.
If it’s just some kind of unstopping terminator that advances in a direct line it would be easy to destroy.
You use some of each. Send some fiber-optic controlled mecha directly to attract the enemy’s fire, while the smaller, non-fiberoptic controlled robots are using cover to flank the enemy.
Better yet, send out some jammer-attacking drones (similar to anti-radiation missiles that home in on radar emitters) to eliminate the jamming devices and then you don’t have to worry about your robots being jammed.
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