Ukraine Needs Robots on the Ground As Well as in the Air. (DISPATCHES)

• Date: 01 February 2025
• Author: Heckmann, Laura
• Published date: 01 February 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, Mary-land--The war in Ukraine has proved a living lab for electronic warfare, waged largely between airborne unmanned systems on both sides. But disrupting Russian drone activities has a place on the ground as well.

Col. Ivan Pavlenko, senior electronic warfare officer and chief of the electronic warfare and cyber directorate for the Ukrainian armed forces, said the war-torn country is seeing an "absolutely new warfare--and robots. I say robots, because today they fight most of all with [first-person view] dronesh... it's about UAVs."

But combating drones in the air could be a job for systems on the ground, and placing electronic warfare systems on robotic platforms "I believe... is the future," Pavlenko said at the Association of Old Crows International Symposium and Convention in December.

Systems designed to disrupt Russian drones, mounted on robotic ground platforms, are able to "proceed more effectively" and more safely than a human, and "we really understand that human life is extremely important," he said, noting that electronic warfare capabilities placed on a robot can help keep soldiers on the...