CNN: "Silent Death" - Ukrainian killer robots sow fear among Russian soldiers

There is a buzzing sound, then a cloud of dust, a pause as the grainy image comes back into focus, and then a devastating explosion. Underground, dozens of kilometers away, veterans of Ukraine's most brutal urban battles, near Avdiivka and Bakhmut, are commanding a new kind of killing - one they cannot feel, smell or see up close. The entire mission to direct six blasts at three Russian targets on the front line in eastern Ukraine is taking place without Ukrainian soldiers on the ground; the battle is instead fought from gaming chairs, monitored from above by reconnaissance drones and conducted via dedicated live video feeds, writes the American media outlet CNN (CNN).

Ukraine, which has been facing a manpower crisis and uncertain support from the United States for months, has undergone a remarkable evolution. Large parts of its war effort are now unmanned, with robots, drones and remotely controlled tanks giving it a sudden, if fragile, advantage over the sluggish and overburdened Russian attacker. In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that for the first time a Russian position had been taken solely by robots and drones, adding that the unmanned machines had carried out 22.000 missions since January, CNN wrote in the article "Silent Death: Ukrainian Killer Robots Instill Fear Among Russian Soldiers," published on the media outlet.

Survival is the mother of invention, under the orange glow of computer processor fans and discreet overhead lighting. Here, the unit has learned from Russian prisoners of war that their enemy calls these robots—each of which carries a large explosive payload on a four-wheeled chassis—"silent death." They can only hear them approaching when they are ten meters away, well within the blast radius.

The first robot encounters aluminum debris as its wheels frantically try to grip the ground and get around the obstacle. It eventually manages to skirt the crater in its path, and from the reconnaissance drone above, the white glow of a small mushroom cloud is visible - the thermal trail of the first explosion. A second one follows. The initial salvo of attacks is intended to distract the Russians and allow four more robots to break through behind enemy lines.

The math here is simple: over the course of more than 164 assaults, the 3rd Assault Brigade's "NC13" unit calculated that it would need 2.300 soldiers to achieve the same effect as their robotic attackers. They would expect to lose half of their unit - killed or wounded - in the attacks, meaning that the unmanned, clumsy bombs on the screen in front of them are a technological advance that saved a thousand Ukrainians.

"I couldn't have imagined such a thing back then. But I realize that if such equipment had been available back then... more of my comrades would have survived," said Barr, the unit's deputy commander, speaking of his time in brutal urban combat in Donbas.

For Mikola "Makar" Zinkevich, the unit's commander, the new world is losing something.

"Back then, war was somehow, let's say, more manly. Your skills mattered there — how well-trained you were, how disciplined you were, and so on. Now technology decides everything. There's no going back." It's simply a question of who can adapt and evolve faster in a world of unmanned, remote killing.

New war, new heroes

The Ukrainian approach stemmed from a manpower crisis, as the smaller population was hit hard by the devastating toll of a four-year Russian invasion. But Kiev’s early embrace of drones, as well as the mass industrialization of their precision and power, began to exact a decisive price on Moscow.

Ukraine's policy is now to kill or wound 35.000 Russians a month, which they have managed to achieve this year, in order to force the Kremlin into an unpleasant and unpopular recruitment drive from urban centers and the middle class. An estimate by the British intelligence agency GCHQ, published on Wednesday, put the total number of Russian deaths at 500.000, citing new information.

This new way of warfare has new heroes. Here, one of them is Gora, a 22-year-old who quickly corrects herself when she says she's just a "software engineer."

"I'm an embedded hardware and software engineer," she insists, initiating a live feed from their command center to the workshop where robots are repaired and built. She was 18 when the war began, and after Russian drone strikes kept her awake in eastern Kiev, Gora realized her IT talent was the new front line.

"The key is not the vehicles, the key is the minds and the way they plan, how they connect the communication between the vehicles, between the operators," she said.

And the challenges are mounting. “Salamander 6 is jammed,” one operator tells his commander. “We’ve roughly plotted a course and are navigating without GPS.” On the battlefield, control over location data is crucial, and sometimes they have to make do with daily drone footage and painstaking research for the best route across a furrowed agricultural field.

Two more robots approach a vague tree line, followed by devastating explosions; the unit says Russian positions were spotted there earlier. The fifth robot is less effective, rolling onto its side in a trench, while the sixth is intercepted by the Russians.

On the surface, robots are replacing even the most basic infantry tasks. Ciber's team works quickly under the net to mount a huge Browning heavy machine gun on the tank's tracks. The vehicle has a series of cameras that give it a wide view of targets. They clean dried mud from the tracks and blow away dust. The machine can hide in the undergrowth for days, waiting for prey. It doesn't need water, food, or cramping legs. The only thing it needs to replenish, Ciber says, is ammunition. After firing 400 rounds, it must return to base.

"When we used the robot against the enemy, they just panicked; they crawled around, crouched down on the ground and just didn't know what to do."

Cyber's unit has five of these machines, which are used sparingly, and is preparing another, faster robot, capable of traveling 16 kilometers per hour, which will carry light weapons such as Kalashnikovs into battle. The speed and scope of Ukrainian automation is astonishing. In just a few months, unmanned vehicles have gone from being a rare curiosity on the front lines to standard equipment. The robots are rescuing the wounded or supplying soldiers on the front lines.

Under constant Russian drone attacks, even recharging supply robots is dangerous. Members of the 93rd Brigade race around the town of Druzhkivka to deliver ammunition, food, and water to supply robots hidden under trees. The town itself is still inhabited, but the precision and range of Russian drones mean that Ukrainian soldiers cannot blend into civilian life.

One load is delivered to a nondescript farmhouse, where five boxes of ammunition are attached to the robot. It buzzes to life as its remote pilot takes control from a bunker miles away and slowly moves down a narrow, muddy path between two village fences, past uninterested villagers, beginning its ten-hour journey to the front lines.

A year at the front

These deliveries are urgently needed, as Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are often stretched to their limits. Hours later, a CNN crew comes across two devastating indicators of how much Kiev is really struggling to find enough able-bodied men.

Owl and Creepy, nicknames for two soldiers from the 24th Mechanized Brigade, spent 344 and 334 days, respectively, in the trenches on the front line. Owl's slight stumble and long, blank stare tell of his ordeal, which ended at dawn this morning, when he began a twelve-hour, 32-kilometer walk to safety.

"The only thing that kept me going were my children and my wife, otherwise I would have lost my mind a long time ago," he said.

He will be home soon, but he will miss his nine-year-old son's birthday by a day. However, he has not spoken to his wife since leaving for his position.

"I would record a message to her over the radio and send it," he said.

The eerie scent accompanies its pungent scent with an attitude of invincibility. The drone attacks were relentless, exhausting their ability to build defenses quickly enough during what he remembers as the worst day of fighting.

"We didn't have time to fill the bags with soil and set them up. We were running out of bags. We used everything we had at hand to cover ourselves, so they wouldn't hit us and so we wouldn't get killed," said Jezivi.

As the two men drink their first soda in almost a year and talk longingly about clean clothes, another FPV drone is heard over the city of Kramatorsk, sending the locals fleeing. Machines are omnipresent and are redefining this war.