A Ukrainian brigade has released footage of one of its uncrewed ground vehicles opening fire on a Russian armored personnel carrier, offering a rare glimpse at the emerging technology in action.
The 5th Separate Assault Brigade said on Wednesday that it deployed a Droid TW 12.7 — a remotely operated tracked system developed by a Ukrainian defense tech company — on a road deemed likely to be a route for advancing Russian troops.
The brigade said that the ground-based drone later encountered a Russian MT-LB, a lightly armored fighting vehicle often used to transport infantry.
Thermal footage filmed at night from the uncrewed ground vehicle, or UGV, shows it opening fire on the vehicle, its operator swerving a targeting reticle across the MT-LB’s front.
Business Insider could neither independently verify when nor where the footage was filmed.
The Droid TW 12.7 is equipped with an M2 Browning machine gun that fires .50 caliber rounds, which would typically pierce an MT-LB’s armor.
The 5th Brigade said it used armor-piercing incendiary rounds for the mission.
Sparks fly from the armored vehicle’s chassis as it slows to a crawl and drifts in front of the UGV, which continues firing point-blank.
“The 12.7 mm bullets punch through the MT-LB’s side, striking the crew and onboard systems,” a narrator said in the 5th Brigade’s video, referring to the metric measurement for .50 caliber bullets.
The MT-LB appears to be aimlessly crawling past the drone, indicating that its driver is incapacitated or its controls are damaged.
The UGV then pivots and begins firing on the rear of the MT-LB, “killing the infantry in the troop compartment,” the narrator said.
The 5th Brigade said that it found in the morning that the MT-LB crew and their passengers were “completely wiped out,” publishing short clips of the aftermath shot by a first-person-view aerial drone.
Wednesday’s published footage provides insight into how UGVs are increasingly used on the battlefield in Ukraine, where troops on both sides are experimenting with ground drones to perform missions that human soldiers must otherwise conduct.
While official statistics show that uncrewed aerial vehicles still dominated the drone warfare space last month, the spread of UGVs offers a possible future where Kyiv can rely on remotely operated systems for ground operations instead of risking its troops.
This year, Ukraine said that it aims to manufacture and deploy at least 15,000 UGVs across the battlefield.
Ukrainian and Russian teams have developed hundreds of such systems, ranging from buggies that can ferry provisions near the front lines to trucks outfitted with remotely operated machine guns.
The 5th brigade and DevDroid, the company that makes the Droid TW 12.7, did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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