The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine

Even with the limitations on UGVs, American military experts are convinced that its time to invest in these tools. “Ground autonomy is achievable now and we’ve seen it,” Wilkens said.

Scott Philips, the chief innovation officer at Forterra, visited a Ukranian unit’s operations center to see the vehicles in action first-hand, winning respect from the unit for visiting an area in range of Russian attacks.

“What struck me most was seeing exactly where the seams are: which steps are still manual, where data has to be re-entered or re-verified by hand, and where the team has already found ways to automate or speed things up,” Philips told TechCrunch. “That’s the kind of ground truth you can’t get from a slide deck because it shows you precisely where better tooling could take pressure off the people doing this work in real time.”

One challenge issued by the Ukrainians: Make it cheaper. Forterra’s Lancers aren’t expensive for their category, thanks to relying on Polaris’ commercial supply chain for the vehicle itself, but they are still too valuable to be deployed as freely as UAVs can be.

“Attrition is just a fact of this battlefield, and we have lost a few at this point, and it hurt, and we need more, and therefore we need them cheaper,” the Ukranian soldier told TechCrunch.