Razor Wire Hauling Ground Robots Increasingly Repair Ukraine's Defense Breaches

When barbed wire barriers were damaged in the past, combat engineers were tasked with the repairs, a dangerous job given their vulnerability to aerial drone attack.

But increasingly, Ukraine is using ground robots loaded with wire to make the repairs. The bots connect their wire spool to the broken end and fix the breach. It saves time - and lives. JL

David Axe reports in Forbes:

A Russian assault outside Pokrovsk left behind ruined Russian vehicle (but) it also wrecked a razor-wire barrier Ukrainian forces had erected. The Ukrainians swiftly repaired the barrier breach by deploying one of their razor-wire-hauling ground robots. A Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle laid fresh wire, taking over a dangerous task that once fell to sappers. Many Ukrainian brigades deploy radio-controlled UGVs for risky engineering tasks. The wire-laying robots are tracked vehicles with a bed in the back for a coil of wire. Driven to the front line by a remote operator seeing what the ’bot’s own camera sees, the UGV hooks the end of the coil onto existing wire and then unspools the coil.

An overconfident, flag-waving Russian assault outside Pokrovsk on Thursday left behind ruined Russian vehicles and at least one smoldering corpse. It also wrecked a razor-wire barrier Ukrainian forces had erected to slow down Russian attacks.

 

As one Ukrainian blogger pointed out, the Ukrainians swiftly repaired the barrier breach—apparently by deploying one of their razor-wire-hauling ground robots.

The Thursday assault was an outlier. Short of purpose-made armored vehicles, Russian regiments increasingly attack on foot or in civilian vehicles. But the Kremlin is trying to restore momentum to its faltering assault on the fortress city of Pokrovsk—and marshalled a dozen armored vehicles including at least one modern T-90M tank.

But the armored attack ran into a wall of Ukrainian artillery and drones—and a mass of flesh-shredding, vehicle-entangling razor wire. The assault was “unnecessary confirmation of the offensive weakness of the Russians,” a second Ukrainian blogger noted.

A Ukrainian ground robot lays razor wire.

93rd Mechanized Brigade capture

Breach!

The T-90, apparently damaged, its crew either dead or about to bail out, rolled through the wire before grinding to a halt. Overnight on Thursday, someone—or something—repaired the gap in the wire. A Ukrainian aerial drone survey the following morning depicted a fresh stretch of wire around the tank.

 

Special Kherson Cat, who blogs from southern Ukraine, speculated that a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle laid the fresh wire, taking over an especially dangerous task that once fell to specially trained sappers.

It’s possible. Many Ukrainian brigades deploy radio-controlled UGVs for the riskiest engineering tasks. “It makes it much easier to work in all areas,” a trooper from the 93rd Mechanized Brigade explained in an official video.

The wire-laying robots are simple tracked vehicles with a bed in the back for a thick coil of wire. Carefully driven to the front line by a remote operator seeing what the ’bot’s own front-facing camera sees, the UGV hooks the end of the coil onto existing wire—and then unspools the rest of the coil.

If the Russians spot the ’bot and destroy it, it’s no big deal. “It’s better to fuck up a robot,” another 93rd Mechanized Brigade soldier mused.