Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense will contract 25,000 ground robotic systems in the first half of 2026, doubling the total procured during all of 2025, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced Friday. The systems will handle logistics, evacuation, and the actual capturing of enemy positions, most of which are currently manned by Russians wearing the remnants of boots their great-grandfathers once wore into combat.
A wannabe Mars rover. (Brave1 )
Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has already signed 19 contracts worth 11 billion hryvnia with domestic manufacturers. The sector, which did not meaningfully exist in February 2022, now comprises more than 280 companies producing over 550 distinct battlefield platforms. Russia, by contrast, continues to rely on a portfolio including one (1) coal-powered aircraft carrier they don’t dare let near the combat zone, several hundred artillery pieces manufactured before the Carter administration, and what defense analysts have described as “probably mules.”
In March alone, Ukrainian forces carried out more than 9,000 logistics and evacuation missions using ground robots. The first quarter of 2026 saw roughly 21,500 such missions, none of which needed to be shipped back home in flag-draped coffins. Russian forces managed a comparable volume using a mix of horses, donkeys, Lada hatchbacks, and human beings, ranked here in descending order of how much the Russian command cares if they come back intact.
The Ukrainian ministry has introduced measures to accelerate deliveries, including synchronizing funding flows, allowing contract adjustments amid price changes, and the radical bureaucratic innovation of telling manufacturers what they will be asked to build more than thirty days in advance. A dedicated competence center for ground robotic systems is being established to coordinate deployment with the Armed Forces and General Staff. The Russian equivalent of this is an office in Khimki where a 76-year-old half-deaf man named Sergei opens mail with a spoon because the letter opener was requisitioned in 2023 and has not been seen since.
Fedorov identified ground robotics as one of the fastest-growing sectors within Ukraine’s defense technology ecosystem, a phrase untranslatable into current Russian military doctrine without at least four loanwords and a priest. The Russian equivalent, robotics company Rostec (or whatever subsidiary of Rostec handled robotics before its director was defenestrated last autumn), has issued 175 press releases, 40 contracts to companies owned by the director’s nephew, and precisely one prototype which cannot turn left.
The ministry is also scaling engineering systems for mining and demining, combat robotic platforms, loitering ground systems, and automated turrets designed to counter aerial threats. “Our focus — low-cost and effective strike ground systems that the state can scale quickly,” Fedorov said. Russia’s focus remains on the timeless industrial question of whether it can produce one tank per week at its main factory, Uralvagonzavod, a goal last achieved in 1987 and since then pursued mostly as an inspirational goal.
Earlier this year, Ukraine reported the first confirmed case of a Russian position captured entirely by unmanned systems, without any infantry involvement or Ukrainian casualties. Russian troops surrendered to the robots, which is roughly the tenth-most-humiliating thing to happen to the Russian army this month, and will likely not make the top five by Wednesday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the operation was conducted using drones and ground robotic platforms. The Kremlin has yet to respond, reportedly because the relevant telegraph operator is on leave.
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