Cool footage shows a Ukrainian Brave1 ground drone armed with a browning machinegun engaging an approaching MT-LB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ao0gL_MJY0U
Moreover, many combat-configured GRSs today are essentially logistics platforms with weapons mounted on them. Military personnel consistently emphasize that logistics, not strike missions, must remain the priority for GRS deployment under current battlefield conditions.
This does not mean Ukraine should abandon the development of combat-capable GRSs, especially as russia pursues similar systems. But fielding fully operational combat robots will require resolving key issues related to tactics, weapon employment, and how to maximize their battlefield effectiveness.
edit: I would also stress as I have said before that focusing on unmanned ground vehicles for logistics and casualty evacuation gives Ukraine a clear path forward for a post war reality where it can leverage experience from the war to create world renowned live saving and disaster response unmanned vehicles and integrated systems. If I was Ukrainian I would take a genuine sense of pride from that as I think this is just the beginning of seeing how robots can be used to save countless lives in practical logistics and medical evacuation applications.
Suchomimus is being a bit silly here with positing that maybe a higher caliber weapon mounted on this UGV than a .50 HMG would penetrate. The Ma Deuce is a monster, the fact that Ukraine immediately went straight to .50 cal machine guns for mounting on their ground robots would be comical if we weren’t talking about war. There is NO WAY that armored vehicle made it past that encounter unscathed, there is a good chance much of the crew was eliminated immediately and there is a dead man’s foot on the accelerator situation going on here.
Very few armored vehicles can drive away from a sustained burst from a Browning .50 HMG at point blank range. The amount of energy and vibration would be catastrophic for everything inside or strapped to the hull even if penetration didn’t occur. This is one of the reasons these .50 HMG UGVs are effective at combating Russian armored vehicles even though they are so derpy and simple of a design (just strap a machine gun to the robot and go!), a .50 cal especially against thinly armored Russian vehicles (i.e. all of Russia’s armor pretty much) is absolutely an Anti-Tank weapon. Penetration is less important than raw repeated cataclysmic kinetic impact, vibration and heat. At a minimum this kind of attack has a very high chance of disabling the optics sensors and drone counter measures on armor, which is in itself a death sentence, but it takes a lot of armor to prevent point blank penetration from a sustained .50 burst in the same spot like this, people just don’t normally talk about it because who would charge a heavily armored vehicle with an unarmored .50 machine gun before unmanned robots? Not many…
Looks like a MT-LB has a max of 16mm of armor.
At point blank range the .50 has enough power to punch right through the armor but it depends on what type of bullets it was loaded with and the angle they hit the armor.
I doubt the ones dead on to the front did much. The MT-LB has a sloped front which likely deflected most of them.
The last bit of the video where they hit it in the flat rear area. That likely fucked them all up. That’s usually the thinnest armor and the lack of slope means no deflection.
I don’t know exact numbers here because it hardly matters but I do know 16mm of armor is a joke against a sustained .50 burst from close range. You have to remember even in ideal circumstances for the Russian crew they are still inside of a metal vessel being repeatedly slammed by an incredible amount of force and inveitably violent vibration/shockwaves. I have no idea what kind of special hell it would be experiencing that, but it isn’t the kind of thing the human body could sustain for long whether the armor is penetrated or not.