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⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 Ukraine Just Exposed The RUSSIAN Space Failure
16:54 Putin’s Mach-10 “Wonder Weapon” is a MASSIVE Failure in Ukraine
38:30 Ukraine Just Unleashed Robotic Breachers on Russian Lines… It Changes the Entire War
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⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 Ukraine Just Exposed The RUSSIAN Space Failure
16:54 Putin’s Mach-10 “Wonder Weapon” is a MASSIVE Failure in Ukraine
38:30 Ukraine Just Unleashed Robotic Breachers on Russian Lines… It Changes the Entire War
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
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NewsTranscript
00:01Russia has a dream. Granted, it was a dream born from a nightmare.
00:06After relying on SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation for much of the war,
00:10Russia was cut off and forced to go in a different direction.
00:13The dream became its own constellation, filled with satellites built and launched in Russia
00:19to give Putin's forces an edge.
00:21That space dream is now literally falling from the sky.
00:25The Rasvet satellite network is falling, as satellites can't reach proper orbit
00:30or are flat-out dropping back to Earth.
00:32Russia's hope of replacing Starlink is close to ruin,
00:35and there doesn't seem to be much that the Kremlin can do to stop the backward momentum.
00:39The latest news about Russia's Rasvet satellites comes from the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW.
00:46It says that Russia launched 16 satellites in July, which are meant to be part of the Rasvet constellation,
00:51that will serve as Russia's version of Starlink.
00:53Not a single one of those satellites has managed to reach its expected altitude of 870 kilometers,
01:00with most hovering around the halfway point between 300 and 400 kilometers.
01:05Zero out of 16 isn't a record that anybody wants, outside of a who's-the-best-loser competition.
01:12But that's the score Russia hit in July.
01:15Russia is likely rushing to launch Rasvet satellites to compensate for the loss of Starlink connectivity over Ukraine,
01:20the ISW declares, which is only going to feed into the problem.
01:25Space launches aren't something to be rushed.
01:27Trying to do things too fast is likely one of the reasons why Russia is in its current position.
01:32What Russia seems to have on its hands here is a home-brew version of a much more expensive,
01:37better-designed, and far better-handled satellite constellation.
01:40A copy, and not a good one, that is failing to get any of Russia's satellites to where they need
01:46to be.
01:46Oh, and July isn't unique.
01:49It's not as though Russia has had one bad month after a series of successes.
01:53Russia has conducted two launches of its Rasvet satellites this year,
01:57the July one we just covered, and a different one in March.
02:00The March launch also delivered 16 satellites into low-Earth orbit,
02:04and together these launches were meant to represent about a tenth of the satellites Russia needs to get Rasvet up
02:10and running,
02:10well enough to provide connectivity to civilians in the military.
02:13Would you like to guess how many of the March satellites are where they needed to be?
02:17If you answered zero, then well done.
02:20Russia has launched 32 satellites in 2026, and none of them have managed to escape low-Earth orbit yet.
02:27Some have ended up facing worse fates than simply languishing in space too, but we'll get to that.
02:33First, a question you might have on your mind.
02:35What's the problem, really?
02:36It's a logical question to ask, because Russia has managed to get its satellites into space.
02:41You would think that it's now a case of those satellites engaging the plasma engines built into them
02:45to get the appropriate altitude.
02:47That was indeed the plan.
02:49Likely a cost-cutting measure, Russia used its Soyuz rockets to deposit its 2026 batches of Rasvet satellites
02:55much closer to Earth than the 800km plus target altitude,
03:00with the expectation being that the satellite engines would then take them the rest of the way.
03:04That hasn't happened.
03:05We can't say exactly why.
03:07Perhaps the engines ran out of fuel or were never powerful enough to move the satellites
03:11to where they needed to be in the first place.
03:13But what we can say is that the positions that most of the satellites have taken in low-Earth orbit
03:18are a problem.
03:19There are direct physical consequences involved.
03:22The longer a satellite stays at lower altitude, the more it's subjected to the atmospheric drag,
03:27which requires the burning of fuel to counter.
03:29When fuel is burned while the satellite is stuck, the operational lifespan of the satellite decreases.
03:35Even though satellites that Russia has managed to get into the 400-500km region face this problem of faster degradation,
03:42as they are not able to maintain position,
03:44they are still working to get there in the first place, long after the work was supposed to be done.
03:50United24 Media has more information about the fates of the 16 July satellites.
03:54It says that nine have been recorded maneuvering a few extra kilometers, but not to the extent needed.
04:00Even the best of the nine is still over 400 kilometers away from its target altitude.
04:04Two others appear to have dropped below 300 kilometers, suggesting that they are on a descent.
04:09That's the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing.
04:12Russia's space stream is quickly turning into a disaster.
04:15Putin won't really care what this means for the average Russian.
04:18He thinks it's easier to control people when they're not connected to the internet.
04:21So RASVET failing could prove to be a positive domestically, at least in Putin's mind.
04:26But for the Russian military, the entire point of these launches was to replace Starlink.
04:31If the RASVET satellites are failing, Russia is falling behind in the race for a replacement.
04:36And Russia doesn't want to fall further behind.
04:39Its military has been feeling the pain of the Starlink shutdown all year.
04:42In early February, SpaceX finally made the move that Ukraine had been calling for.
04:47The organization shut down the illicit Starlink terminals that Russia had been using for communications
04:52and to support its drone attacks against Ukraine.
04:55The effect was practically immediate.
04:58A February 8 United 24 media report said that Russia's command and control capabilities
05:03across several parts of the front have been dramatically weakened, leading to unwanted shifts in tactical behavior.
05:09Russia was forced to deploy small assault groups supported by drones, which were easy pickings
05:13for Ukraine's own drone-laden defenses.
05:16Russian soldiers started talking about feeling like they'd been reduced to cavemen,
05:20relying on old radio, pen and paper to communicate.
05:23In a single night, we utterly descended into the Stone Age, one soldier complained in a rambling video.
05:29The Kremlin didn't help matters at all by announcing a crackdown on the Telegram social media service at around the
05:35same time.
05:36As if losing Starlink wasn't enough, it was starting to feel like Putin actively wanted his soldiers to be at
05:41a disadvantage.
05:42All because he fears people using Telegram to communicate messages that aren't Kremlin approved.
05:48Russia hasn't been able to get out from under the Stone Age ever since.
05:51Chaos soon created opportunities for Ukraine.
05:54Russia's communications collapses set the stage for a spring and summer when Ukraine made targeted counterattacks,
06:01leading to large amounts of territory being reclaimed.
06:04By August 12, Ukraine had liberated 745 square kilometers of territory in the Oleksandrovka direction,
06:11with other pockets of liberation as well.
06:13All of this led to a Russian spring and summer offensive that didn't go to plan,
06:18and it can all be traced back to the loss of Starlink.
06:21Russia has been trying to replace Starlink ever since.
06:24It has yet to find an adequate replacement or workaround.
06:28Razvet is helping a little.
06:29In April, United24 media reported that Razvet has started to provide intermittent battlefield connectivity over Ukraine.
06:36But while this is concerning, it was also nothing to shout home about.
06:40Intermittent seems generous.
06:42Patchy to the point of near-uselessness is more accurate.
06:45Russian forces were getting temporary communication windows lasting between 15 and 20 minutes,
06:50as Russia's satellites passed overhead.
06:53That was enough to establish some data links and enable limited military communications,
06:58but certainly not a fix, and nothing has gotten better for Russia since April.
07:02If anything, things are getting worse, as the March satellites will struggle to make it to their desired altitude.
07:07We're not saying that Razvet isn't a problem.
07:10If Russia can get it working in the way it's intended to work, Ukraine will clearly have a problem on
07:14its hands.
07:15Euronews delivers that very warning, noting that though Razvet has failed so far, it is still a threat.
07:21If Russia is able to get it up and running, even partially and non-patchily,
07:25it will have support for artillery and drone strikes in some parts of the frontline,
07:30as well as the ability to keep frontline forces connected to command and control in the rear.
07:34Still, it's not looking good, is it, Putin?
07:37And the longer the delays, the worse it gets for Russia's forces.
07:40However, we're only just scratching the surface right now.
07:43There are other failings in the Razvet network that we haven't covered yet.
07:47And there's the problem that underpins all of this,
07:49which is that what we're seeing from one of the world's former great space powers
07:52is a fall from grace fueled by the Ukraine war and its impact on the Russian space program.
07:57We'll come back to Razvet, but before we dig deeper,
07:59this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.
08:02There's a lot more where this comes from, so make sure you're subscribed
08:05and have notifications enabled if you're getting value from our channel.
08:09There's more about the March group of 16 satellites that you need to know.
08:13According to TechRadar, that launch was even less successful than it appeared on the surface.
08:17There is a satellite catalogued as NORAD-68363,
08:22which never managed to even raise its orbit after separating from its rocket.
08:26That satellite started to plummet, eventually re-entering the Earth's atmosphere on June 6th.
08:32It's basically gone now, lost forever to Russia's satellite constellation,
08:36likely soon to be joined by the two satellites from the July launch
08:39that appear to be on a downward trajectory.
08:42Neither of those satellites, numbered 17 and 23 by Russia,
08:45appears to have conducted any sort of maneuver that would see it climb higher since being launched.
08:50So, Russia has a 100% failure rate for getting its 32 satellites into the required orbit,
08:56and it seems to have a 10% failure rate for those satellites even working at all.
09:01Now, there's a caveat here. These are space launches.
09:05Technical anomalies are far from unusual in space launches,
09:08especially when dealing with high numbers of satellites.
09:10Ars Technica points out that about 5% of SpaceX's initial batch of Starlink satellites failed straight after launch,
09:18and more failures were recorded afterward.
09:20The 60 prototypes SpaceX sent eventually ended up with a failure rate of 13%.
09:24The next 420 were tweaked based on the knowledge learned from those issues,
09:29leading to the failure rate dropping to around 3%.
09:31And now, SpaceX's Starlink version 2 satellites have a failure rate of 0.01%.
09:37The European Geosciences Union also points out that a batch of 49 Starlink satellites released into orbit on February 3,
09:452022.
09:4638 were eventually lost, with 32 of them never being tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
09:53This makes it seem like nothing is out of the ordinary for Russia with its failed Razvet launches.
09:58But that's the exact point. Nothing is out of the order.
10:01Failure is to be expected in a project like this.
10:03The idea is always to try, fail, improve, try again, and so on until you get it right.
10:08But what Russia is doing is trying to find as fast a solution to its Starlink problem as possible,
10:14without realizing that it's going to take a lot more time to set up than it anticipates.
10:18Putin can't simply point at the sky and say, put satellites there, and expect it to happen.
10:23That's not how it works.
10:25The best of these satellite constellations the world has to offer went through a ton of trial and error before
10:30they reached that pinnacle.
10:32Russia is trying to get there in a fraction of the time, with as little cost as possible.
10:36Of course, its Starlink replacement dream is failing.
10:39And that brings us to what is supposed to be happening with Razvet, from the Russian perspective,
10:43and why these failures are happening so widely.
10:45On the face of it, Razvet is a massive project, seemingly with the budget to match.
10:50Russia has reportedly allocated about $1.28 billion to the project,
10:55all of which has been delivered to an organization called Bureau 1440,
10:59which claims that it's aiming to get 250 satellites operational by 2027,
11:04with the goal being a total of 900 by 2035.
11:08Already we're starting to see problems.
11:10It's September 2026, and Russia has launched 32 of the 250 satellites it intends to have in orbit by 2027,
11:18and none of them have reached their required altitudes.
11:21Getting almost 220 more satellites into orbit in the next 16 months or so seems ambitious,
11:27if we're being kind, and outright ludicrous, if we're being realistic.
11:31And that budget isn't all it's cracked up to be.
11:33According to an October 2019 Business Insider report,
11:37Morgan Stanley estimated the total cost of getting Starlink to where it is today at around $60 billion.
11:43And that assumed each Falcon 9 cost $50 million, and each satellite was about $1 million.
11:50Granted, Starlink is much larger than what Russia has planned for Razvet,
11:53but it's also worth noting that this estimate doesn't cover all of the research and development that went into Starlink.
11:59Russia also has to consider what it takes to get these satellites into orbit.
12:03The United 24 media reports that Russia will require at least 18 Soyuz 2.1b rocket launches to get the
12:10intended satellite group in the air,
12:12and that it currently manages between 6 and 8 of these launches annually.
12:17Assuming this baseline, it's going to take Russia around 3 years just to carry out the launches needed to get
12:22Razvet online,
12:23and that assumes each launch goes to plan and nothing goes wrong with any of the satellites.
12:28We can already see plenty going wrong with the satellites as we speak.
12:32As for the Soyuz launches, well, Ukraine has a little something to say about those.
12:36We'll get to that in a minute.
12:38For all of Russia's attempts at planning, there's no denying that it's starting to look like a slapdash effort.
12:42The Kremlin thinks it can throw money at the Razvet problem and expect it to be solved.
12:47That's just not how it works.
12:48And we don't just mean that in terms of the trial and error aspect of getting Razvet satellites to do
12:53what they're supposed to do in the first place.
12:54What Russia is really dealing with here is a series of deep-seated issues with its space program,
13:00that is coagulating into a constellation of satellites that can't fly high enough.
13:04Let's talk funding.
13:06Sure, Russia has committed over $1 billion to its attempt at copying Starlink,
13:10but that cash is band-aid on the gaping wound that has been slashed into Russia's space program and left
13:15to fester for years.
13:16On April 10th, the scientific director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute, Lev Zelenyi, spoke at the
13:24Russian Space Forum.
13:25He admitted that Russia basically had no space projects of note lined up, barring the creation of a new Russian
13:31orbital station,
13:32and that the country had fallen far behind its rivals in the space race.
13:36Of course, there should be Russian-manned lunar cosmonautics, but we must find some difficult, non-standard solutions to go
13:42from lagging behind to overtaking, Zelenyi said.
13:45The numbers bear this out.
13:47United24 Media reports that Roscosmos carried out 17 orbital launches in 2025, which was the same number as New Zealand.
13:55The US conducted 181 of these types of launches, whereas China carried out 91.
14:01Russia's current launch level is at its lowest since 1961, which was the year that the Soviet Union sent Yuri
14:07Gagarin into space for his first flight.
14:09What all of this means is that Russia is trying to get Razvet off the ground, literally,
14:13at a time when the scientists responsible for making it happen have less experience and understanding of what they're trying
14:19to do than at any point since the very early days of the space race.
14:23Russia has deprioritized space for decades.
14:26Now it's paying the price as it struggles to get tech and infrastructure in place to launch satellites into orbit.
14:32Taking a broader look at Russia's tech landscape, the Kyiv Post reported in July that Russia has cut funding to
14:37eight of its technological leadership programs,
14:40so it can save $2.6 billion, likely to fund the war effort.
14:45The only one of those programs to receive the promised budget, and a little extra on top, was Russia's drone
14:50development initiative.
14:51As for the most significant cuts, they affected the space technology program.
14:55It lost out on $129 million.
14:58So when Russia says it's committing $1.3 billion or so to Razvet, what it really means is that it's
15:03expecting that money to pay for decades of space program neglect,
15:07in a country that is falling behind the major space players and is not on par with relative minnows like
15:12New Zealand.
15:12Or to put it another way, Russia is running out of money because of Putin's Ukraine war, and its entire
15:18space program, including Razvet, is feeling it.
15:21Defense News reports that the Kremlin has been forced to cut non-military spending by 35% and federal staffing
15:29by 15% as it struggles to deal with a budget deficit of $65.3 billion.
15:34SpaceX may have spent something like that to get Starlink working, so what hope does Razvet have when Russia is
15:40over $60 billion in debt?
15:42And then there's Ukraine.
15:43The Kremlin couldn't have honestly thought that Ukraine would just stand by and watch as Russia tried to get its
15:48Starlink replacement operational.
15:50Ukraine now has drones that can easily fly thousands of kilometers into Russia, and it's not like Russia has many
15:56places where it's building and launching the Soyuz that carry its satellites.
15:59There are Razvet-related stationary targets inside Russia that are basically sitting ducks for Ukraine, and it's no surprise to
16:06anybody that Ukraine has started striking.
16:09Today, there are new significant results from our deep strikes.
16:12In Russia's Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos, the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things,
16:19in electronic production, was hit.
16:21Flamingo missiles were used, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky declared on August 15th.
16:27Samara is where most of Russia's rockets are made, especially those being tasked with getting Razvet satellites into space.
16:33Both the Soyuz 2 and newer Soyuz 5 are built at the Progress facility Ukraine hit.
16:38It's unclear how much lasting damage has been done to Russia's Soyuz manufacturing in these strikes, but that's not really
16:43the point.
16:44Ukraine knows what it needs to hit, and it's proven that it can strike that target.
16:48The Progress plant can't be lifted up and transported across Russia. It's the sitting duck we spoke about.
16:54On the evening of July 5, 2025, every air raid app in Ukraine went off at once.
17:01The trigger was a single aircraft rolling down a runway more than 600 kilometers away, a modified MiG-31 interceptor
17:09carrying a missile the size of a telephone pole.
17:11That missile was the Kh-47M2 Kinzol, and for a few years, it was the most feared conventional weapon in
17:19the Russian inventory.
17:20Russian President Vladimir Putin had introduced it to the world in 2018 as a hypersonic dagger that no air defense
17:28on Earth could stop.
17:29Ukraine's own monitoring channels spotted the takeoff at around half past five in the afternoon.
17:34Two missiles came off the rails minutes later, aimed at the Hemelnetsky oblast.
17:39Then, nothing happened.
17:41During the alert, there had indeed been a Russian attack, but there were no casualties and no destruction.
17:47Euromaiden press ran the story under a headline that's aged extremely well.
17:51No hits, no harm.
17:53Fast forward to August 2026.
17:56Russia is firing more missiles at Ukraine than at any point in the war.
18:00Ukrainian cities are being hit night after night, and one weapon is conspicuously missing from the mix.
18:06According to Major General Vadim Skibitsky, Deputy Chief of Ukraine's Defense Intelligence, the Kremlin stopped building the Kinzol in April.
18:15One reason he gave was that the missile kept missing.
18:18A weapon in that class supposedly needs to land within five to seven meters of its aim point to be
18:23worth firing.
18:24The Kinzol often lands within 30 meters or more.
18:27His verdict on four and a half years of combat use was that they could hardly recall a single instance
18:32where the missile hit its target precisely.
18:35So, let's dive into the Kinzol and what makes it potentially useful, how it failed, and what exactly is being
18:41done about it.
18:43With that said, let's begin with the design of the Kinzol, as all its problems stem from there.
18:48The missile was never designed from a blank sheet.
18:51According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, concept drawings showing Iskander missiles hung from a MiG-31 were
18:59circulating online as early as 2010,
19:01reportedly lifted from a Russian defense industry brochure.
19:04The Kinzol was reportedly an adaptation of the 9M723.
19:09The concept was that you take a short-range ballistic missile, redesign the tail section, trim the rudders, add a
19:16stub to protect the engine nozzle during high-speed flight,
19:19and hang it off an aircraft that can already cruise above Mach 2 at 60,000 feet.
19:23Only the last part is actually innovative.
19:26Launching a ballistic missile from a fast, high-flying aircraft hands the weapon a huge amount of energy.
19:32The carrier does the first stage's job for it.
19:35A missile that reaches a few hundred kilometers from a truck can reach well over a thousand from a jet,
19:40and the launch point moves.
19:41CSIS also listed the Kinzol as having a 480-kilogram nuclear, or conventional payload, and a range of 1,500
19:49to 2,000 kilometers.
19:51A 2018 TASS report claimed that figure would exceed 3,000 kilometers if the missile was carried by a proper
19:582-22M3 bomber.
20:00It entered testing in 2017.
20:03By December of that year, the system entered a trial period at airfields in southern Russia with a batch of
20:08modified MiG-31 case.
20:10In March 2018, Putin unveiled it in his address to the Federal Assembly as one of the six next-generation
20:16weapons,
20:17alongside the avant-garde glide vehicle and the Poseidon torpedo.
20:21Reports that year indicated six MiG-31s had been modified to carry Kinzols.
20:26A Kinzol was reportedly deployed to Syria in 2021, although there's no reliable evidence that it was fired there.
20:33In early 2022, Kinzol-capable MiG-31Ks were reported deploying to Kaliningrad.
20:39And in March 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced it had struck an underground munitions depot near Deliatin in
20:47Ivanovranskievsk Oblast,
20:49the first known combat use of the weapon anywhere in the world.
20:52So, what was it supposed to be for?
20:55This is where the marketing and the engineering start to drift apart.
20:59CSIS assesses that Russia likely developed the Kinzol to threaten critical European infrastructure, like airfields and strategic centers.
21:07The logic is that most of these can't actively shoot at an aircraft that uses a beyond-visual-range weapon.
21:13So, a MiG-31 can fly to the edge of a defended area, launch, and give shorter-range systems like
21:19Patriot minimal time to react.
21:21Better still, an aircraft can attack from any compass bearing it likes, and Patriot radar doesn't cover a full 360
21:28degrees.
21:28Then there's the missile speed, which reportedly hits Mach 10.
21:33CSIS noted the missile accelerates rapidly to around Mach 4 after launch, and that this speed, combined with an erratic
21:39maneuvering trajectory, could complicate interception.
21:42But while Putin called the weapon hypersonic, it's more fair to call it a slightly faster ballistic missile, as that's
21:49how it operates.
21:49So, how does it stack up against Western equivalents?
21:53Well, it turns out that when put within its actual category, it doesn't have that much more of an advantage.
21:59The United States has spent the better part of a decade trying to field an air-launch hypersonic weapon, and
22:04repeatedly fell on its face.
22:06The AGM-183A ARRW, a boost-glide missile carried by the B-52, was effectively shelved after the Air Force
22:15decided in 2023 not to proceed with the program, although the Air Force later considered reviving it.
22:21The Army's ground-launch Dark Eagle, formerly known as the long-range hypersonic weapon, entered fielding in late 2025 after
22:28years of delays.
22:29The Air Force's scramjet-powered HACM has slipped repeatedly. As of mid-2026, the Government Accountability Office was still writing
22:39about schedule constraints and production bottlenecks.
22:42On paper, Russia won that race by eight years.
22:45The real Western analogues are Israeli.
22:48The Rampage, unveiled in 2018 by Israel Military Industries and IAI, is an air-launched ballistic missile with a range
22:55of only 150 to 250 kilometers.
22:58Air Laura, rolled out by Israel Aerospace Industries in June 2024, is bigger and has a range of 430 kilometers.
23:07Both are fractions of the Kinzhal's reach, but they both fit on a stock F-16 rather than requiring a
23:13bespoke interceptor conversion.
23:15And more importantly, both are advertised with a circular error probable of around 10 meters, whereas Ukrainian intelligence says Kinzhal
23:22missiles can deviate by 30 meters or more.
23:25That's the whole argument in one line.
23:27The Kinzhal is unique because it's a strategic-range nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile with no direct NATO counterpart
23:35in service.
23:36But being unique is not the same as being useful, and the metric that decides whether a precision weapon is
23:41worth its price tag is how accurately it lands.
23:44Which brings us to the combat record and to May 2023.
23:48But before we do all that, we need your support.
23:52If you like the military show and want to support our effort of providing up-to-date news, you can
23:57become a member and get access to exclusive videos.
24:00For the first 14 months of the full-scale war, the Kinzhal really was untouchable.
24:05Ukraine's Soviet-era S-300s were never designed for that threat.
24:09Kinzhal's carriers took off, Ukraine went to a nationwide alert, and there was nothing anyone could do but wait.
24:15Then Patriot batteries arrived.
24:17On the night of May 4, 2023, Ukraine reported intercepting a Kinzhal over Kyiv for the first time.
24:24The crew that operated the interceptors only realized what they had killed when they found the debris.
24:29Twelve days later, Russia reportedly sent six Kinzhal's at Kyiv in a single night.
24:34Ukraine's then-commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzny, said all six were intercepted, along with nine Calibers and three Iskanders.
24:42Moscow insisted Russia hadn't launched as many Kinzhal's as Ukraine claimed to have shot down, while simultaneously claiming that a
24:48Kinzhal had destroyed a Patriot radar and five launchers in Kyiv.
24:52Then the numbers started coming out, and they were unkind to the original Russian claims.
24:57Ukrainian Patriot operators told The Economist in June 2023 that the missile's real speed was closer to Mach 3.6.
25:05By 2026, the Mach speed was re-evaluated as Mach 5.7.
25:10That's up against the claimed Mach 10, a substantial difference between the advertised and assessed speeds.
25:15By July 2024, Ukraine suggested more than 20 Kinzhal's had been aimed at Kyiv since Patriot went on combat duty,
25:24and that every single one had been intercepted.
25:26And when Kinzhal's were fired at places Patriot was not covering, they generally got through.
25:30Which is why the accuracy problem is the real story, because Russia can put a missile over a target, what
25:37it apparently can't do is put the warhead on it.
25:39Let's look at the Sterakosty Antoniv airbase.
25:43It's home to the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade, and it sued 24 bombers.
25:48And it's been one of Russia's most persistent targets since 2022.
25:52It's absorbed drones, cruise missiles, and Kinzhal's for years.
25:55And when Euromaiden press reviewed satellite imagery of the base in 2026, the craters were ringing the airfield rather than
26:02sitting on it.
26:03Russian military correspondents themselves circulated satellite images in November 2025 that showed deviations of up to 144 meters, and those
26:13sources were arguably pro-Russian.
26:15So why does a missile with an inertial navigation system, satellite correction, and a terminal radar seeker land 30 or
26:23100 meters off?
26:24There are several plausible reasons, and it's likely that they stack up.
26:28Guidance inherited wholesale from the Iskander was never built for the thermal and plasma environment of a much faster, higher
26:35energy air launch profile.
26:37Satellite correction is jammable, and Ukraine has poured enormous effort into electronic warfare, since Ukrainian forces have deployed EW systems
26:45intended to confuse the missile's flight controls and push it off course.
26:49And a terminal seeker looking through a superheated shock layer at Mach 5 Plus is solving a much harder problem
26:55than the same seeker at Mach 3.
26:56Now here's the part that should have embarrassed somebody in Moscow years earlier.
27:01Back in March 2022, days after the first combat use, then-CNA analyst Michael Kaufman wrote publicly that he didn't
27:08understand the interest in the Kinzol, and that there was nothing special or particularly exciting about the system.
27:14He characterised it as essentially an Iskander adapted for a more complicated and expensive launch method.
27:20And yet, it took the Russian Ministry of Defense roughly four years to arrive at the same conclusion.
27:25And when it did, the decision was ruthless.
27:28According to Russian Defense Ministry documents, Kolomna contracted 44 Kinzols in 2024 and 144 in 2025.
27:37And then, the production line stopped dead by April 2026.
27:41But other lines for ballistic missiles are humming.
27:44In July 2026, Russian industry reportedly produced 65 Iskanders against a target of 60, hit 140% of plan on
27:52the KH-101 and 111% on the Kalibr,
27:56with Ukrainian military intelligence assessing the main missile lines running at 110 to 120% of plan overall.
28:03So, the Kinzol is arguably disappearing because it lost an internal budget fight to cheaper missiles that actually hit what
28:10they're aimed at.
28:11The last confirmed Kinzol launch may have been on May 14, 2026, when three of them went out as part
28:17of a strike involving 731 missiles and drones.
28:21The threat didn't go away.
28:22Russia instead shifted resources toward other ballistic missiles, particularly the Iskander.
28:27Now, if you're finding this useful, take a second to subscribe.
28:31This channel digs into the systems behind the headlines, and the algorithm only shows you the next one if you
28:36tell it to.
28:38Now, let's get to the part everyone gets wrong.
28:41Because there's a widespread assumption that Ukraine handled the Kinzol by shooting Kinzols down.
28:47It didn't.
28:47And Ukraine's record against ballistic missiles is, frankly, poor and only getting worse.
28:52The Royal United Services Institute sent out a report in November 2025, which examined a data set of Russian missile
29:00strikes compiled by Ukrainian researchers.
29:03By late October 2025, 939 Iskanders and Kinzols had been fired at Ukraine.
29:10Only 227 were intercepted.
29:13That's 24%, which sounds tolerable until you look at how those intercepts are distributed.
29:18Across 345 attacks involving those missiles, there were only 18 in which most or all of the incoming missiles were
29:26stopped.
29:26In 273 of those, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted nothing at all.
29:31And a total of 593 of those missiles got through.
29:35Russi's point is that intercept data against ballistic missiles is bimodal.
29:39Either you kill nearly all of them or you kill none of them, depending on whether the target was inside
29:44the coverage of one of Ukraine's small number of Patriot and Samty batteries.
29:49And the trend inside those defended areas has been going the wrong way.
29:53Russi noted intercept rates in Patriot defended areas dropped around 15% across 2024, recovered somewhat in mid-2025 to
30:02roughly 30% over the summer, then fell again to 17% across the first three weeks of October 2025.
30:09Russi examined three explanations and didn't identify any one of them as distinctly responsible, suggesting that they were likely adding
30:16up.
30:17The first is that Russia is firing Iskander's on steeper, more lofted trajectories, which shortens the defenders' engagement window.
30:24Because lateral maneuvering force scales with velocity squared.
30:28This lets the missile jink harder on the way down.
30:30The second is improved decoys, as the Iskander has long carried six 9B999 decoys in its base.
30:37And reports of a software upgrade fit a decoy improvement better than they fit a trajectory change.
30:43The third is saturation salvos, where other missiles were used as bait.
30:47This one is most contested since ballistic tracks are relatively easy to identify and prioritize even in a crowded raid.
30:54Whatever the cause, by 2026 the situation had become dire.
30:59And the reason is that the Patriot Pact-3 MSE is Ukraine's most capable interceptor for engaging maneuvering ballistic missiles
31:05in their terminal phase.
31:07And Ukraine ran out of them.
31:09And the resupply picture got worse rather than better.
31:12The war with Iran that began in late February 2026 tore through the global Patriot inventory.
31:18CSIS has estimated the United States expended more than two-thirds of its pre-war interceptor stockpile.
31:24Combined American production has also been running at under 1,000 interceptors a year.
31:29Ukraine has reportedly received about 600 interceptors in four years, but says it needs 2,000 a year.
31:35Then came the political whiplash.
31:37At the NATO summit in Ankara, President Donald Trump publicly announced that Ukraine would receive a license to manufacture Patriot
31:44interceptors,
31:45although subsequent reporting indicated uncertainty over the timing and location of production.
31:50And in late July 2026, Ukrainian President Vladimir asked for several hundred interceptors in the Oval Office and was refused,
31:59with Trump citing depleted American stocks.
32:01In August, the US ambassador to NATO said that no long-term production agreement would be concluded before winter.
32:07At the same time, Zelensky said Ukraine was receiving around two and a half times fewer interceptors than in 2025,
32:14while Russia was firing roughly twice as many ballistic missiles per month.
32:18So, Ukraine can't shoot down the ballistic threat and can't buy enough of what would let it.
32:23What did it end up doing?
32:25It went after the launchers and it started building its own interceptor.
32:29Let's start with the campaign to remove the offensive pressure of firing the missile.
32:33In August 2026, the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Ukrainian forces appeared to be targeting Russian ballistic
32:40missile launch infrastructure,
32:42precisely because of the anti-ballistic interceptor shortage.
32:45It went after fuel depots, munitions depots and the airfields themselves.
32:49And no target illustrates that better than Savaslieka, an airbase in Nizhny Novgorod oblast, roughly 650 to 700 km from
32:58the Ukrainian border and home to MiG-31 case.
33:01A 2024 strike started a major fire in the fuel and lubricant storage area,
33:06and footage filmed by Russian personnel appeared to show a drone striking the aircraft parking apron with a MiG-31
33:12visible in frame.
33:13In June 2025, Ukraine claimed it damaged two aircraft, likely a MiG-31 and a Su-30 or Su-34.
33:21And in August 2026, Zelensky said that Savaslieka had been hit again, with domestically produced flamingo cruise missiles and drones
33:29reportedly involved.
33:31Monitoring channels reported four MiG-31s scrambling away from the base toward Begishevo Airport in Tatastan while the attack was
33:38underway.
33:38This strategy works against Kinzals precisely because it's a much more specialized Iskander.
33:44The Kinzals' entire launch chain can be described as a bottleneck.
33:48An Iskander launcher is a truck.
33:50Russia has a lot of trucks.
33:52They hide in tree lines, they shoot and scoot.
33:54The Kinzals needs an airbase, and it needs an aircraft that exists in tiny numbers.
33:58The MiG-31K and MiG-31I fleet, which comprises the models that can carry the missile,
34:04has been estimated to be only around two dozen airframes.
34:07And Russia is no longer producing MiG-31s to replace or retrofit them.
34:12Those airframes also need long runways and specialist maintenance.
34:16The MiG-31 burns T-6, a heavy heat-stable kerosene formulated for sustained supersonic flight at altitude, where ordinary
34:23jet fuel would cook.
34:25The aircraft can technically fly on standard kerosene, but with restrictions on flight modes that would basically prevent it from
34:31deploying at Kinzal in the first place.
34:33Burn the specialist fuel farm at Savasly Acre, and you've made every subsequent sortie harder.
34:38The economics are also brutal in Ukraine's favour.
34:42A long-range strike drone can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
34:45Ukraine's newest deep strike types run in that range, with one recent design reported at around $50,000.
34:51Against that, a single Kinzal cost about $4.5 million, and its carrier is an out-of-production interceptor that
34:59Russia can't build more of.
35:00As a result, Russia has been forced to shelve the missiles and applicable aircraft deeper into the interior, with Kinzal
35:07carriers reportedly being pushed farther east, potentially increasing their reliance on aerial refuelling from the II-78 tankers.
35:14This is counterbalanced by Ukraine's domestic interceptor, that is FREYA, a European-led anti-ballistic missile project involving Ukraine and
35:22multiple European partners.
35:24Ukraine builds the interceptor and the launcher. European partners are involved in developing or supplying radar, seeker and sensor components.
35:31The interceptor itself is the FP-7.X from Firepoint, unveiled in July 2026 and derived from the company's FP
35:40-7 ground-launched ballistic missile.
35:42What makes FP-7.X a possibly viable solution is its ancestry.
35:47Firepoint based the FP-7 on the 48N6, which is the interceptor that arms Soviet-built S-300 batteries.
35:55Ukraine has operated the S-300 for decades, understands the airframe intimately, and has a large rocket industry capable of
36:02producing solid propellant.
36:04The plan swaps the 48N6's aluminum structure for a lighter composite frame with better manoeuvrability.
36:10The genuinely hard part is the seeker, as the 48N6 rides a beam from a ground radar, while a modern
36:16hit-to-kill interceptor requires an advanced seeker capable of providing terminal guidance.
36:21That's beyond Ukraine's industry's abilities today, which is why Firepoint says it's co-developing the seeker with Germany's deal defense.
36:29The approximate cost for a Freya round is also only $700,000 against roughly $4 million for a Pac-3.
36:36But Freya has not yet demonstrated a ballistic missile interception.
36:39Firepoint representatives initially said the system could begin intercept testing by the end of 2026, while later statements pushed the
36:47expected operational timeline into 2027.
36:51By August, he was describing a full-scale launch of the anti-ballistic interceptor by mid-2027.
36:57Zelensky's own framing on August 6 was that Ukraine expects concrete results by the turn of 2026-27.
37:04The Firepoint is also under investigation by Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau over allegations of inflated component prices and overstated
37:13drone deliveries, meaning that it's possible those timelines are inflated.
37:17So if you ask which Ukrainian domestic solutions have actually worked against the Kinzhal, the honest answer is not the
37:23interceptor.
37:24It's the three unglamorous ones.
37:26First, you have long-range drones and Ukrainian-built cruise missiles reaching vital nodes in the launch chain.
37:32Second, you have electronic warfare, aimed at the guidance rather than the airframe, likely contributing to the failures in accuracy
37:39that made Russia stop producing more.
37:41And third, Ukraine is capable of tracking the missiles in flight.
37:45Then there's another wrinkle in that Ukraine is building its own Kinzhal.
37:48That's Firepoint FP9 with a range of 850km and an 800kg warhead.
37:55If that ever flies, Ukraine joins a club of about two.
37:59So the verdict is that the MAC-10 wonder weapon failed because it was oversold in its uniqueness compared with
38:05how it actually performs and what's needed.
38:07Its advertised speed was roughly double its measured speed.
38:10Its accuracy, per Ukrainian military intelligence, is four to six times worse than the standard for its class.
38:16It cost $4.5 million a shot and required a bespoke fleet of two dozen irreplaceable aircraft to deliver.
38:24And in April 2026, Russia turned off the line and gave the fuel and components to missiles that work.
38:31Somewhere in the Kharkiv sector, a 12-tonne tracked armoured vehicle is grinding forward at walking pace along a dirt
38:38road.
38:39It's filthy, boxy and unmistakably old, designed when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House as president.
38:46But bolted to the front is a heavy mine-clearing attachment, chewing up the earth ahead of it.
38:52Draped over the top and sides is a lattice of welded steel cage armor.
38:56And jutting outward from the hull is a spiked frame that looks like something dragged off a WWII beach in
39:021944.
39:03Then, the ground erupts. A mine detonates under the clearing attachment, throwing dirt and smoke across the frame.
39:11The vehicle keeps going.
39:13And when that mine went off, there was nobody inside.
39:16A no-crew compartment full of sappers waiting for the blast.
39:19The operator was sitting somewhere well behind the tree line, holding a modified console controller,
39:25watching the vehicle's point of view through a live camera feed.
39:28That vehicle started as an M113, an American armoured personnel carrier that entered service in 1960.
39:36But Ukraine's National Guard turned it into a robot.
39:39So, we'll walk through exactly what was done to it, component by component,
39:44because the specifics here are far more interesting than the headline implies.
39:48Then we want to explain why each of those specific changes matters on this particular battlefield,
39:53and what the strategic logic behind the whole project actually is.
39:57Let's start with who did it.
39:59The unit is Kartia, the 13th Brigade of Ukraine's National Guard, which by mid-2026 sat at the core of
40:06the 2nd National Guard Corps carrying the same name.
40:09Kartia has spent the war building a reputation as one of the most aggressively robotic formations in Ukraine's order of
40:16battle.
40:17In December 2024, in the area just north of Kharkiv, the brigade ran a first-of-a-kind uncrewed combined
40:24arms assault, involving dozens of systems working together.
40:28It used aerial surveillance drones, mine-laying drones, one-way explosive ground robots, and gun-armed ground robots to clear
40:35a Russian trench line,
40:36and no Ukrainian infantrymen crossed the open ground to do it.
40:40So when Kartia shows off a new piece of hardware, it's worth paying attention.
40:45This is not a unit experimenting for the sake of a press release.
40:49This is a unit that's been operating unmanned ground vehicles in combat, at scale, for years,
40:55and which knows precisely where the existing systems fall short.
40:58So here's what they built.
41:00The base is the M113 armored personnel carrier, which was then fitted with a remote control system.
41:06According to Kartia, the vehicle is operated using a conventional remote control unit that transmits commands to an onboard control
41:14system over a secure radio link.
41:16Video cameras mounted on the hull feed the operator a real-time picture.
41:21The onboard electronics then translate the operator's inputs into control of the vehicle's driving systems.
41:27There's also an emergency stop function built in.
41:30Now, the brigade has deliberately withheld the operating principle, the hardware configuration, and the technical specifications of the control system,
41:38citing security reasons.
41:40That's a sensible decision, and we'll come back to what it implies later.
41:44On top of the drive-by-wire conversion, the engineers added protection specifically tuned to the drone threat.
41:50There's a metal cage armor, the now familiar slatin mesh structure, designed to make an FPV drone's warhead detonate at
41:57a standoff distance rather than against the hull.
42:00And there is a second, more unusual layer, a hedgehog-style protective frame, a set of outward projecting spikes intended
42:08to physically snag or prematurely trigger a drone before it can reach a vulnerable surface.
42:12And finally, mounted at the front, there's the mine clearing attachment itself.
42:17One military analysis outlet identified it as a flail or a rotating drum swinging heavy chains that beat the ground
42:24ahead of the vehicle, detonating pressure-fused mines at a safe distance from the hull.
42:29That's the package, cameras, remote controls, radio equipment, anti-drone armor, and a mine flail on a 60-year-old
42:36American APC.
42:38Now, why does each of those pieces matter?
42:41First, there's the control system, simply because it's the least glamorous and the most important.
42:46The reason this conversion is even possible is that the M113 is mechanically simple.
42:51It has a diesel engine, a conventional transmission, and a steering system that, in its original form, was operated by
42:58two mechanical levers.
42:59There is no complex digital architecture to reverse engineer, so you're essentially adding actuators to a set of levers and
43:07pedals.
43:07That simplicity potentially allows a brigade workshop to perform the retrofit without going through the lengthy process of developing and
43:15procuring an entirely new vehicle.
43:17It's also why the same kit can theoretically be dropped onto almost anything else with an engine and a gearbox.
43:23The emergency stop function mentioned earlier might sound like a footnote, but it's not.
43:28A 12-ton track vehicle that loses its control link and keeps driving is a serious hazard, both to friendly
43:34positions and as a gift to the enemy.
43:36A hard-wired failsafe makes the system usable in a real unit.
43:41Secondly, the cameras matter for a reason that anyone who's operated a ground robot will recognize immediately.
43:47Unmanned ground vehicles are far harder to drive than drones.
43:51A quadcopter operates in open air with a clean line of sight.
43:54A ground vehicle has to negotiate craters, ditches, mud, tree stumps, shell holes, and collapsed roadway,
44:01all through a narrow, low-mounted camera view with no depth perception and no feel for the vehicle's attitude.
44:07Guardia staff officers have noted that terrain analysis was one of the major challenges in planning their early 2025 assault.
44:15Getting the camera coverage right on a large-track vehicle prevents it from diving nose-down in a trench.
44:21Third, the anti-drone armor matters because of what a mine-clearing vehicle actually looks like from the air.
44:27It's large, loud, has limited maneuverability, and moves at a crawl.
44:31It also follows the road, which means its path is predictable.
44:35If you're designing a target specifically to be easy for a first-person view drone operator,
44:40you would design a demining vehicle.
44:42This is why Ukraine's existing breaching fleet has suffered so badly.
44:46Back in 2023, during the summer counteroffensive,
44:50Ukraine lost roughly half of the specially adapted Leopard 2R mine-clearing vehicles donated by Finland.
44:56Those were rare, high-value, purpose-built assets,
44:59and they were consumed almost immediately once they entered the breach.
45:02And that threat has only intensified.
45:05Ukraine's existing mine-clearing fleet consists of American-made assault breaches,
45:10German-made Wiesentz, and an assortment of ex-Soviet engineering vehicles.
45:14Every one of them is manned, making it even riskier to operate than drone systems.
45:18Fourth, the flail weapon matters because of physics.
45:21And this is the point that explains why Ukraine couldn't simply solve this problem with the small robots it already
45:27has.
45:27Ukrainian forces field thousands of unmanned ground vehicles.
45:31Most of them are purpose-built, but most of them are also small, weighing a couple of hundred kilograms.
45:36This kind of weight and size works when you need to lug out gear or carry an injured person away
45:41from the front.
45:42But mine-clearing is a different category of work entirely.
45:45A flail, a plow, or a roller weighs tons on its own.
45:49Driving one requires serious engine torque because the attachment is actively fighting the ground.
45:54The vehicle carrying it has to survive repeated blasts from the mines the vehicle is deliberately detonating.
46:00And the work is slow and grinding, covering kilometers of road and field at walking pace,
46:05which demands endurance and cross-country mobility that a small battery-powered UGV simply doesn't have.
46:12And all of this is exactly what a 12-ton diesel-powered tracked APC gives you.
46:17Which brings us to the genuinely clever part of the whole idea, the choice of platform.
46:22It turned out that Ukraine has a lot of M113s.
46:25Over the course of the war, allies have shipped at least 1,700 M113s and vehicles built on the same
46:32chassis.
46:32They came from the United States, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
46:40That makes it one of the most numerous Western armored types in Ukrainian service.
46:44But the M113 has also been a problem.
46:47It was designed in the late 1950s as a lightweight air transportable battle taxi with an aluminum alloy hull chosen
46:55specifically to save weight.
46:57In its baseline configuration, it offers protection against heavy machine gun fire from the frontal arc and rifle caliber rounds
47:04elsewhere.
47:05That was appropriate for 1960, but insufficient for clearing mines or squaring off against mine carrying drones.
47:11This is precisely why the US Army spent decades shifting toward the Bradley and is now replacing the M113 outright
47:18with a dedicated armored multipurpose vehicle.
47:21Those weaknesses have shown up in the lost figures.
47:24The open source tracker Oryx has visually confirmed more than 500 Ukrainian M113s lost or damaged in the field.
47:31And a March 2026 analysis put the loss figure above 650.
47:36Oryx only counts losses documented with photographic evidence, so the second figure is likely closer to reality and that was
47:43months ago.
47:44But if you take the people out of the vehicle, most of its flaws stop being a problem.
47:49An unmanned M113 that gets hit by an FPV drone is a maintenance problem.
47:54An unmanned M113 that drives over an anti-tank mine and loses a track is a recovery problem.
47:59Both are bad, but they don't cause further casualties.
48:03And when one is destroyed beyond repair, you can reuse the control kit for another vehicle in the fleet that's
48:08being retrofitted.
48:09Now if you're getting something out of this breakdown, take a second to subscribe and hit the notification bell.
48:15We go deep on this kind of battlefield engineering every week and your support helps the channel reach more people
48:21who care about this stuff.
48:23So that's the tactical picture, but the true value of the vehicle lies in strategy.
48:28Ukraine is the most heavily mined country on Earth, with an estimated 2 million landmines laid across the country by
48:35mid-2025.
48:36The scale of the contamination is difficult to hold in your head.
48:40By April 2026, it was estimated that roughly 128,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory were potentially mined, of which
48:48somewhere between 20 and 30 percent require direct clearance.
48:52That's practically the same area as what Russia occupied.
48:55And earlier government figures put the total territory affected by the war at over 174,000 square kilometers, nearly 30
49:03percent more again.
49:04Regardless of the exact figures, it's a massive swath of territory on both sides of the front.
49:09The World Bank had estimated the full cost of demining Ukraine at around $34.6 billion back in 2024, revising
49:17that down to $28 billion in 2026 as Ukraine removed mines or made the process more cost effective.
49:24And the damage is more than just economic, as mines kill and injure civilians and soldiers alike.
49:30According to figures reported in mid-2026, explosive devices have killed 380 people and injured nearly 1,000 more in
49:37Ukraine since 2022.
49:39Now, here's the constraint that ties all of this together, and it's the single most important thing to understand about
49:46why the robotic M113 matters.
49:48Ukraine doesn't have enough deminers.
49:51As of early 2025, Ukraine had somewhat more than 4,500 sappers and deminers.
49:57Against a contaminated area larger than many European countries, that workforce is nowhere near sufficient, and every assessment suggested the
50:05number needed to grow enormously.
50:06But combat engineers are among the hardest military specialists in the world to replace.
50:11You can't train a competent sapper in six weeks.
50:14The skill set combines technical knowledge, nerve, and accumulated pattern recognition that only comes from time on the job.
50:21A sapper killed clearing a road sets the program back months, and each loss only compounds the potential risk.
50:27This is Ukraine's binding constraint across the entire war effort.
50:31Ukraine is fighting a country with over four times its population,
50:34and the arithmetic of that mismatch shapes every operational decision Kyiv makes.
50:39This is precisely why the Defense Ministry is on track to buy more than 22,000 domestically-built unmanned ground
50:45vehicles since the start of 2026,
50:48nearly double the 2025 figures, with further contracts still to come.
50:53Set the robotic M113 against that background, and its strategic logic becomes obvious.
50:58It doesn't add a new capability that Ukraine didn't have, but it does remove the irreplaceable component from a job
51:05that has an extremely high rate of consuming irreplaceable components.
51:08An unmanned vehicle can be much more easily written off than a human life at this point in the War
51:14of Attrition's timeline.
51:15There is a second strategic layer, and it concerns the shape of the modern battlefield rather than manpower.
51:21The old distinction between the line of contact, the rear area, and the safe zone has largely collapsed.
51:27Standard FPV drones initially created a kill zone of roughly 10 kilometers, which subsequently expanded to something closer to 35
51:35kilometers as the technology matured.
51:37More advanced systems now consistently reach 100 kilometers in the mid-range, and hundreds on the long-range.
51:43Just look at the coverage of the Firepoint drones, which were considered pivotal in the first half of 2026.
51:50For an engineering unit, that means the moment of maximum vulnerability has stretched from minutes to hours.
51:55A demining vehicle is exposed on the approach march, during the task, and on the way out, potentially across tens
52:02of kilometers, in a zone permanently patrolled by loitering drones.
52:05Under those conditions, a man-breaching vehicle is a sitting duck waiting to be fired on or have FPV drones
52:12swarm it.
52:13Removing the crew doesn't make the vehicle itself more survivable, but it does make it likely to fulfill the mission
52:19before the risks outweigh the benefits.
52:21And there's also one more caveat to the entire retrofit.
52:25While the vehicle is being used as a mine clearer, it hasn't lost its initial function.
52:29The footage Guardia released shows the robotic M113 doing more than clearing mines.
52:35It's also delivering supplies to infantry positions.
52:38That matters more than it might sound.
52:40One of the most dangerous routine tasks on the modern battlefield is not the assault.
52:44It's the resupply run to a forward position, done repeatedly along a predicted path under drone observation.
52:51An armoured-track, 12-ton logistics robot with a mine flail on the front can clear the route and then
52:56use it,
52:57which consolidates two support missions into one, all while using a single platform and needing one operator to run it.
53:04Now for the part with the widest implications, which is scale.
53:08The most important potential characteristic of what Cartier built is that the conversion system could be adapted to other platforms.
53:15Cameras, servos, a radio link, and a control box don't care what they're bolted to.
53:20The same basic equipment should work on almost any vehicle with an engine and a gearbox,
53:25which means Ukraine is potentially looking at a large-scale conversion pipeline.
53:29Of course, not everything is eligible.
53:31Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles with manually loaded main guns and complex fire control systems are poor candidates,
53:38because the crew is doing far more than driving.
53:41But engineering vehicles, supply trucks, and armoured ambulances are close to ideal.
53:46Those are precisely the roles where the crew's job is largely to get the vehicle from A to B,
53:51and exactly where the crew is exposed for the longest, with the least ability to fight back.
53:56Think about the economics for a moment.
53:58A purpose-built UGV has to be designed, prototyped, tooled, manufactured, and delivered.
54:03A conversion takes a vehicle that already exists, already has armour, already has a drivetrain,
54:09already has spare parts in the supply chain, and already has mechanics who know how to fix it, and adds
54:14a kit.
54:15Ukraine has hundreds of M113 hulls. Some fraction of them are damaged, worn, or sitting in depots as spare donors.
54:22A conversion programme doesn't compete with domestic UGV production for factory capacity.
54:28It runs alongside it, using inventory that's already in the country.
54:32And this is not an idea confined to Ukraine.
54:34The United States Army still owns tens of thousands of M113s,
54:39and it's run its own experiments with unmanned variants,
54:41including modified M113s tested with remotely operated weapon systems.
54:46An essay published on the official US Army blog specifically argued for converting obsolete M113s to unmanned breaching vehicles capable
54:55of mass unmanned assaults against prepared defences.
54:58This is practically the same thing Ukraine is doing, suggesting that turning obsolete vehicles into remotely operated machines can save
55:06money and lives in modern warfare dynamics.
55:09Another point for the argument is the long-term viability of the process.
55:13As the army runs out of M113s, subsequent generations of armoured fighting vehicles could be automated as they approach obsolescence.
55:21Ukraine is field testing a similar idea under fire.
55:25Under the old model, a platform ages out, gets replaced, and goes to a storage yard or a scrapyard or
55:31a foreign military sale.
55:32Under this model, aging out of the crewed force is the moment a vehicle becomes eligible for a second career
55:38as a robot.
55:39Western armies sitting on legacy armour now have the potential to do the same and are essentially just waiting for
55:45Ukraine to show more results to determine the idea's viability.
55:49Let's also be clear about what we don't know, because the story is also a bit murky in places.
55:54We've seen at least one vehicle.
55:57Cartier has confirmed the conversion and released footage of it.
56:00But there's no real confirmation of how many exist, whether the kit is in serial production or how it performs
56:06over a sustained period.
56:07There's also no mention of the control system's specifications, because Cartier has deliberately not published them.
56:13That's the right call operationally, but it means the most important question is unanswerable from outside sources.
56:20How does it hold up under electronic warfare?
56:23A radio-controlled vehicle in the drone-saturated zone near the front line is operating in one of the most
56:28contested electronic warfare environments in history.
56:31Both sides have utilised fibre-optic control or mesh networking precisely because of jamming, and the former doesn't really work
56:38when you're trying to get rid of mines.
56:40Whether this system uses frequency-hopping radio, a mesh relay, satellite control, or something else is not public, and neither
56:48is its effective control range.
56:50Those are the variables that will determine whether this becomes a fleet or stays a demonstration.
56:55And one more distinction worth drawing, because it gets blurred constantly in coverage of this subject.
57:00A flail-equipped robot during combat breaching is not the same thing as humanitarian demining.
57:05Combat clearance opens a lane fast enough for a unit to pass through and accepts that some percentage of ordnance
57:12survives.
57:13Humanitarian demining certifies that a piece of ground is safe for a farmer and his children, which requires clearance rates
57:19approaching 100% and a formal certification process.
57:23This robotic M113 addresses the military problem.
57:26It won't fully resolve the $28 billion civilian one, though the technology developed under wartime pressure will very likely feed
57:33into it.
57:34None of that undercuts the significance of what Kartia has done.
57:38While the new M113 isn't a wonder weapon, it's still a move in the right direction and an advantage Ukraine
57:44can use to push back.
57:45The vehicle is also a part of a pattern here that Ukraine has repeated over and over in the war.
57:50The BRDM-2M was the same story, with a different chassis.
57:55A Soviet-era reconnaissance vehicle, rebuilt with remote-controlled technology, a Ukrainian remote-weapon station, and upgraded armour, capable of
58:03operating with or without a crew.
58:05Take something old, obsolete, and available in quantity, identify the specific thing about it that's become a liability, and engineer
58:13that liability away, rather than trying to build a better vehicle from scratch.
58:17That approach has produced some of Ukraine's real battlefield advantages, and it's consistently outpaced the procurement cycles of much wealthier
58:24militaries.
58:25A defence ministry anywhere in NATO would need years, and a nine-figure budget to reach the point Kartia's workshop
58:31reached with cameras, servos, a radio, and a welding torch.
58:35The M113 turned 66 this year.
58:38It was built for a Cold War that ended before most of the soldiers operating it were born.
58:43It's been called obsolete for the better part of three decades.
58:46And in July 2026, a National Guard Corps in the Kharkiv region found the one job on the modern battlefield
58:53that a 66-year-old aluminum box is perfectly suited for.
58:57Dying so that a Ukrainian sapper doesn't have to.
59:00That's the whole idea, and it's a good one.
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