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What we're looking at here is a Ukrainian ground drone armed with a heavy machine gun, taking out a Russian armored vehicle. The Ukrainians have revolutionized war by sending drones into the skies and out to sea. Now they're being used on land, too, to deadly effect. But what has prompted the shift from manpower to robot power? How effective are these machines? And in the future, could all infantry be replaced by drones? We are going to break down exactly how these drones work and examine the tapes to find out. This is the ground drone we just saw, the Droid TWW12.7. The first bit of the name references the company that makes it, Dev Droid. The TWW stands for tracked weapon, and 12.7 is the size of the bullet it fires, 12.7
mm. The headline figures are top speed a little over four miles an hour, 14 and a half mile maximum range, combat range of three miles, it can hit a target accurately a little over half a mile away, and it has an ammo capacity of 300 rounds. Now, let's take a look at it in a little bit more detail. The base of the drone consists of two parallel tracked treads with a sheet metal platform between them. Tracks allow the drone to traverse challenging terrain like mud and shell holes that it's likely to encounter on the battlefield. There's a lump on top of each of these treads towards the front which we assume contains the electric motors which drive them and square blocks behind this which probably contain the batteries to power
the system. There's headlamps at the front which can be illuminated so the driver can see where he or she is going and a set of roll bars to protect the drone in case it crashes. Resting on the sheet metal platform is a large box. This is where the ammunition is stored and we'll discuss it more in just a moment. Above that is a tripod mount for the machine gun. It is made of heavyduty steel supports which are screwed into the platform. This is similar to a folding tripod you'd use to mount the machine gun if it was being used by infantry in the field and is designed to provide stability. On the front of the tripod is a narrow rectangular box that looks kind of like the binoculars that
Luke Skywalker has in the Empire Strikes Back. This is actually a combat module which its Ukrainian designers have dubbed Wally. It has three cameras in the front which give the drone's controller a view of the battlefield in front of them which can toggle between normal vision and night vision. Wally can also automatically detect and track any enemies that appear on camera thanks to clever AI that has been included in its programming. The same AI can also calculate where exactly the driver needs to aim to hit their target if they're shooting over distance and will give them a hitbox to aim at. On the side here is a feed shoot. This is a metal belt that leads from the ammo box
underneath to the gun above to ensure the ammo feeds in smoothly. In the case of this robot, it's covered with a camo pattern cloth, presumably to stop light reflecting off it at night, making the robot harder to see. Then there's the gun itself. This is a Browning 50 caliber machine gun. It was designed by American John Browning towards the end of the First World War and has been in service since the 1930s. It has a detachable barrel that twists off like so and reattaches like this. To load it, the top of the gun is lifted up and the bullets are fed in from either the left hand or right hand side. The bullets are attached together with metal clips, meaning they form a belt. To load, the
top of the gun drops down and the charging handle on the right hand side is pulled backwards like this. Normally, the gun fires by holding down this wishbone looking trigger on the back between the two hand grips. However, on the robot version, since there's nobody to press the trigger, this little electromagnet is fitted to the left hand side. This uses electrical current to initiate the firing instead. But this can only be done by the drone's human controller rather than the AI. The bullet the Browning fires is the 50 BMG, 12.7 mm wide and 99 mm long. It's a big, heavy, powerful bullet that's useful not only against infantry. This is capable of punching through light fortifications
like brick walls, aircraft armor, and as you'll see in just a moment, lightly armored vehicles. At the back of the gun, parallel with the rear arms of the tripod, are these two piston arms. By extending and retracting, these allow the machine gun to pan left and right and tilt up and down. They're controlled remotely either by the AI or the drone's driver and are used to aim. Last, at the back of the robot is a metal archway with another platform on top. This is the remote controls for the drone. On the underside of the arch is a metal box. We're not certain what's inside, but it most likely contains radio frequency and LTE transmitters and receivers. These allow the drone's pilot to control it using radio waves or
mobile internet. Up here on top of the platform, there's space for a Starlink antenna. That's Elon Musk's internet service, which is powered by a network of low-flying satellites, making it extremely reliable. Together, these connections mean that it is very hard to disrupt or jam the signal between the drone and its pilot. If we go back to the tapes, then we can see what all of that looks like in real life. Here's the Ukrainians deploying the droid on its mission. You can see that it's night and they're using red torch light because it's harder to see that from a distance, meaning the Russians are less likely to spot them. Here's the two tracks we were talking about, allowing the drone to
cross tough battlefield terrain. And here's the roll bars, protecting it from anything it might crash into. Here's a driver's eye view of the battlefield. They're viewing the drone's camera feed on a tablet computer using a video game controller to steer the drone and aim the main gun. You can see the views in black and white. That's because they've activated the night vision. Down the bottom left is a map showing the drone's position. Up here is a bunch of information about the camera feed. This shows the drone's compass heading and whether or not it's level. And in the bottom center is a bunch more location
data. Here you can see the Browning machine gun with the bullets being fed in from the right. In the distance, those headlights are a Russian MBLT, a lightly armored troop transport. On the screen, you can see the AI generated aiming data. This is telling the driver exactly where to shoot to hit the vehicle. The Russians are trying to take advantage of the heavy fog to launch an attack. They're betting the Ukrainian FPV drones won't be able to see them and hit them. They're correct. But what they haven't banked on is this ground drone lying in wait for them instead. As they come within range, the driver opens fire with those powerful 50 BMG rounds.
According to the Ukrainians, they'd specially equipped this drone with the armorpiercing versions. The MBLT only has 14 mm of armor, so the bullets punch straight through. Sparks go flying as the bullets ricochet around inside the vehicle. You can see how the machine gun pivots to stay on target as the vehicle gets closer. At this point, it appears the vehicle isn't being controlled, and it almost runs over the drone. We assume that means the driver was either wounded or killed. and therefore not at the controls. The drone survives the collision and as the vehicle passes, it rotates to put some more rounds into the thinly armored rear. Russia's gamble has spectacularly backfired. Their attack
has failed with all the men inside this vehicle either killed or wounded in action. That's either very impressive or very scary depending on which side of the shooting you're on. To casual observers like us, maybe a bit of both. But why go to the bother of creating the drone in the first place? To understand why machines like this are popping up on the battlefields of Ukraine, we've got to go back in time a couple of years. This was around the time that drones started appearing on the battlefield in large numbers for the first time. These weren't ground drones, but aerial drones. Bombers designed to drop grenades or mortar shells and FPVs.
Kamicazi drones designed to fly into tanks and explode. They were the first because it's way easier to remotely control something in the sky than on the ground because there's less stuff to run into. Ukraine started using these things because it was running short of artillery ammunition. Typically the weapon of choice for destroying large numbers of enemy infantry or vehicles. But as the Ukrainians started to use the drones on mass, they figured out that actually they're way better at destroying things than artillery used to be. First, they're a lot cheaper. A NATO standard 155 mm shell costs around $5,000 to produce. Some of the cheapest drones cost just a few hundred. Second, they're way more precise. Artillery
works on probability. Shoot this many shells into that area with a Russian tank in it, and you've got X chance of hitting it eventually. Drones almost guarantee a hit. with the best pilots able to home in on the weakest spots on a vehicle or tank, making each hit much deadlier. This combination of cheap and deadly meant these drones were soon everywhere in the skies over Ukraine's eastern front line. And what this did was create a vast no man's land where it was completely lethal to venture. This is called the kill zone and is typically 3 mi wide, but in places can exceed 15 mi if the enemy is using particularly advanced drones with very long range.
Anyone venturing into that zone is liable to be immediately spotted, hunted, and then taken out by a drone. As you might imagine, that's caused huge problems for both Ukraine and Russia. Russia has solved the problem with sheer bloody-mindedness. Meatwave troops are thrown relentlessly at an objective on the basis that Ukraine's going to run out of drones sooner or later, or else they're encouraged to mount motorbikes and make a Mad Max style dash across no man's land as fast as possible, literally trying to outrun death. This has met with some success. In 2025, Russia advanced at the fastest rate since the opening days of the war by using these
tactics. But it has also produced some truly staggering casualty rates. As of early 2026, we think 1.2 million Russians have either died or been wounded in 4 years of war. That's about the same as all casualties suffered by the US, British, French, and Polish armies throughout the whole of the Second World War combined. Ukraine's solution has been to take humans out of the equation as much as possible. And that's where the ground drones come in. At first, these drones were tasked with logistical roles. That meant taking supplies like fuel, water, food, and ammunition to human troops who were holding the front line in or near the kill zone. The benefit of this was twofold. First, it meant human couriers didn't have to risk their lives by
moving around inside the zone. If the supply robot was hit, then it was only the robot and its supplies that were lost. Second, it meant that troops hiding within the kill zone could stay there longer without having to rotate out. Tired troops moving off the line and freshmen moving up to the front are both liable to be spotted from above and attacked. Next, ground drones were tasked with medical evacuations. If a soldier up on the front line did happen to get spotted and hit, these drones would be sent to rescue them. The wounded soldier would simply climb inside an armored shell on top of the drone and it would drive them to safety.
Again, two-fold benefit. Medics don't have to risk their lives driving into the kill zone to get the soldier and the soldier is better protected on the way out, increasing their chance of survival. But now, with the invention of ground drones that carry machine guns, the drones are starting to replace the soldiers themselves. Again, the benefits are multiple. First, you're not risking the lives of your troops by putting them into a zone where there's a good chance they'll be injured or killed. This is of paramount importance to Ukraine because it's fighting a war of attrition against an enemy with way more people than it's got. Second, unlike human soldiers, drones don't get tired or distracted.
Once they're up on the line, they're constantly watching and constantly defending their position. Third, drones don't need to be resupplied and don't get sick or injured, meaning you don't have to risk your logistics or medical evacuation drones trying to help them. Of course, they do need to charge their batteries and refill their ammo once they fired it. But to do that, you simply drive the drone itself off the battlefield. It's recharged and reloaded and then sent back out. Only one drone is put at risk. It may sound like fiction, but Ukraine's Third Assault Brigade actually put this theory into practice. They claim that one of these TWW12.7 droids defended a position by itself for 45 days against multiple
Russian attempts to attack it. Whenever an assault group launched an attack, the drone moved up, engaged them with machine gun fire, and pushed them back. The drone then returned to its Ukrainian drivers behind the front lines to recharge and rearm, ready for the next assault. So, for better or worse, it looks like we're going to be seeing a lot more robots like this on the battlefields of the future. That's where this tape stops, but we'll be back soon to play you through another episode of War on Tape. Hi everyone, thanks for watching. If you like this video and want to see all the other content we've made about Ukrainian
drones, hit the playlist link now.
