Forterra, a US builder of autonomous vehicles, revealed today that more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs have been deployed in conflict zones in Ukraine for the past nine months, in what the company believes is the largest deployment of autonomous ground vehicles in combat by any US defense tech company.
“I believe this to be true of every defense technology that’s ever been created—until you hit the realities of combat, you’re just not going to know,” Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer and a former US Marine officer, told TechCrunch.
Funded by US defense dollars, the mission is part of growing effort to transform the US military through its support of Ukrainian resistance to Russian invaders. While aerial drones have garnered much of the attention in the fight, the dynamics they’ve created — extensive no-go zones where surveillance can lead to death from above — have led Ukrainian strategists to seek ground-based autonomy as well.
“There’s nowhere to hide,” Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens, who leads a program developing autonomous vehicles and tactics for the US Army, explained. “You become very, very vulnerable to be able to be attacked by [first-person view drones], other sorts of drones dropping munitions, artillery, mortar, the full range of things that they have.”
Ukraine is already building its own uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) to help move supplies and munitions, or evacuate wounded soldiers, but they are typically battery-powered and can only carry up to 250 kilograms, according to a soldier in the Ukrainian army who has worked with the vehicles and who TechCrunch won’t identify for security reasons.
Forterra’s Lancer vehicles, based on Polaris ATVs and equipped with a custom-built sensor and compute stack, are gas-powered and can …