Russia Put A €100k Bounty On This Autonomous War Machine in Ukraine

Cheddar News

Meet the autonomous tanks defending Ukraine's front lines and discover why Putin is now fighting to get a hold of one.

Transcript

00:00The battlefield of tomorrow won't just feature human soldiers.

00:04Autonomous systems are transforming how wars are fought,

00:07from unmanned ground vehicles to precision missile systems that can operate independently.

00:12Leading the charge of these game-changing technologies is Milram Robotics.

00:17What are we standing in front of telling me all about the Havoc?

00:19Yeah, so this is the first time she's ever been out in public.

00:22We have electric axles, and so we have instant torque, like a Tesla.

00:26So when you press the gas, there's no lag.

00:28And so we've designed this vehicle to be able to go approximately 70 kilometers an hour,

00:32both in forward and in reverse.

00:34Because we have eight-wheel steering and we have an autonomy kit on both ends.

00:38I've never seen anything like that in my life.

00:39The idea being is she can come up out of a hide site,

00:42engage a target, and then quickly get back to hide from FPV threats,

00:46anti-tank missiles, anything like that.

00:48Who are some of the other crucial partnerships,

00:50either on software or the hardware side,

00:52that are required to make something like the Havoc a reality?

00:55Open architecture.

00:56So that's the reason we did it that way.

00:58So if our customer wants to use Starlink,

01:00hey, here you go, we'll plug it in.

01:02Open architecture on the inside,

01:04open architecture with ARKOS communication systems and situational awareness.

01:08One C2 system in UAE is not the same C2 system in the Netherlands.

01:13So we have to have that open architecture that allows us to be more flexible

01:16to our customer's requirements.

01:17Today, if you look at operations in Ukraine,

01:20there are no tanks, there are no APCs.

01:23All of these capital assets full of people are unable to go and operate on the front lines.

01:28It's because they have no protection.

01:30So you take a vehicle like Havoc here today, you take the turret off,

01:33we put a counter UAS system on top of this vehicle.

01:36And then with the autonomy kit that Milram has developed over the course of the last 10

01:41years of existence, you say, hey, here's five vehicles, stay in the middle and protect them

01:46from threats above.

01:47And so with something like a 30 millimeter cannon,

01:49we can project force out to 15, 20 kilometers and protect those capital assets from the FPV threat

01:56at a really low cost per kill ratio.

01:58But the Havoc is just one part of Milram's broader strategy.

02:02The company has also developed the Themis, a smaller but equally capable platform that's

02:07already being deployed in combat.

02:09What we're demonstrating here is the ability and the flexibility of Themis

02:13to integrate any system.

02:15As long as it weighs 1000 kilos or less, we're able to integrate local products.

02:19We're able to bring local industry into our baseline.

02:22And then we're going to take this system and we're going to offer it to Ukraine.

02:25In fact, there's a 100,000 euro bounty by the Russians on capturing one of our systems

02:31with the base station and with the controller.

02:33Some of the tech specs that most stand out to you are personal favorites on this particular

02:37piece of machine.

02:37Yeah, so Silent Watch.

02:39So we've been in Ukraine under our own investment for the last 18 months,

02:43and we've been working all the time with them trying to figure out what the best mix

02:47of gas versus electrical power is.

02:49And so we've tuned Themis to have enough Silent Watch mobility that we can turn the engine off.

02:56We operate at night.

02:58There's no thermal signature.

02:59And so she can go up, pick people up.

03:02She can come back and as soon as she's out of the threat environment,

03:04turn the engine on and continue on her way.

03:07We just did that mission a few weeks ago where the gentleman who got struck by an anti-personnel

03:12mine, he was stuck in a field.

03:14It was nighttime.

03:16It was too dangerous because of the FPV threats.

03:18So they turned the motor off.

03:19They sent her in.

03:20The guy crawled up into the basket.

03:22We brought him home.

03:24The guy survived, kept both of his legs.

03:26You know, like these are things that we see every day

03:28and these are missions we're doing all the time.

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