Russian battlefield robots are decades behind the US?
For battlefield robot technology, in addition to the chassis platform design, the most important factor is the control system.
Recently, the Central Research Institute 3 of the Russian Ministry of Defense gave negative assessments of the battlefield robot - the Uran-9 self-propelled tank.
The most important of these include criticisms that the Uran-9 was a rushed project, with a weak, low, unsuitable chassis, prone to breakdowns, and an easily overpowered electronic system.
The most disappointing thing about the Uran-9 robot is that its control range is too short, no more than 500 m in open terrain conditions. If there are obstacles, the control signal will almost certainly be lost, even hindering our army's combat process.
Russian Uran-9 battlefield robot. |
Compared to the US, first of all in terms of control technology, an American sergeant sitting in the US territory can still control an aircraft operating in Afghanistan in real time, without delay, and receive and process battlefield situations with extremely high precision.
American drones operate reliably in the sky for dozens of hours continuously, with an extremely high take-off frequency, and almost no technical errors, while air vehicles are many times more complex than ground vehicles.
US MQ-9 Reaper drone. |
This is the case of individual operations. If they meet on a battlefield, the only possibility is that the Uran-9 will be detected and destroyed by the Reaper from a very far distance with Hellfire missiles, not the other way around. Of course, in terms of fire support and destroying enemy forces, UAVs flying high above have a much greater advantage.
Russia also knows its shortcomings in drones, so they have chosen the "niche market" of unmanned tanks in the hope of narrowing the gap in battlefield robots compared to the US, but reality shows that they are failing.