SAA event in Kursk, Volfino area, Russian Federation on Thu 19th September 2024

Back in May, Ukrainian developers revealed a new armed ground robot—the Fury. Four months later, a Fury has fought—and reportedly won—the type’s first major skirmish. On or just before Thursday, one of the four-wheeled, shopping-cart-sized Furies assaulted a trench in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Dodging mines and firing its machine gun in coordination with explosive drones and mortars, the ’bot defeated a small group of Russian soldiers.

“The result: part of the enemy was destroyed, the rest fled,” the 1st Detachment of the 8th Special Purpose Regiment, the ’bot’s operator, announced on social media. “The [robot] received several hits from RPGs and FPVs”—rocket-propelled grenades and first-person-view drones—“but persevered, completed the mission and returned to recovery.”

The Fury is one of several armed unmanned ground vehicles Ukrainian engineers have developed in the 30 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine—and one of the first types to see major combat. A Fury has four wheels, a radio for receiving operator commands, video cameras and a remotely-aimed machine gun. It’s thickly built with armor plates protecting its most vulnerable components.

“The Fury robot attacks the Russian positions and covers our defenders during the assault,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s innovation minister, wrote in May. “The military liked that it was easy to control, and noted the robot’s high level of radio and video communication, as well as its good sight and automatic fire both day and night.”

The Fury isn’t unique—the Russians have armed ground robots, too. But in winning and surviving its first big fight, the Fury stands out. Where aerial drones can maneuver freely in three dimensions, ground drones struggle with the many obstacles they routinely encounter even on paved surfaces: potholes and craters, fallen branches, steep slopes.

Unpaved surfaces are even more difficult to traverse. Simply reaching a battlefield is a big challenge for an unmanned ground vehicle—to say nothing of doing anything useful once it arrives. The Fury’s developers wisely emphasized mobility, and gave their ’bot big wheels, a low center of gravity and a high chassis with plenty of ground clearance.

It’s interesting where the Fury fought its first major skirmish: in the Russian village of Volfino, just across the Russia-Ukraine border. Volfino is on the western end of Ukraine’s second major thrust into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, which kicked off last week.

While a large Ukrainian forces fights to hold the 400 square miles of Kursk it captured back in August, a much smaller force—including the 8th Special Purpose Regiment and its Fury robot—is trying to advance into Kursk 20 miles to the west, apparently aiming to encircle Russian forces between it and the main Ukrainian salient.

It’s a long-shot operation for an overstretched Ukrainian military. But it’s got a little high-tech help in the form of at least one gun-armed ground robot.