Ukraine's ground robots ran more than 100,000 missions in the first eight months of 2026. The Defense Procurement Agency will now buy logistics and strike ground robotic complexes according to specifications set by the Defense Ministry, rather than approving models one at a time, the ministry announced.

The mechanism is three days old. The agency applied the same structure to fiber-optic FPV drones on 22 August—classes, multiple lots each, no supplier above half a class. Ukraine is standardizing how it buys entire weapons categories, one category at a time.

The rules sort makers by class

Complexes will be divided into classes by operating range and payload, with four to five lots per class. No single manufacturer may take more than half the order within one class.

Suppliers must meet the technical specifications and hold at least one codified ground robotic complex. The procurement runs in a closed environment under defense security requirements.

"A tender is one of the best instruments for this, because we can buy more equipment for the same money and minimize the risk of supply disruptions by splitting the order among different manufacturers," Deputy Defense Minister Mstyslav Banik said.

Mission volume keeps climbing

Monthly figures of ground robot missions logged in the DELTA combat system rose almost without interruption: 7,511 in January, 11,028 in April, 19,969 in July. Units recorded another 15,729 between 1 and 20 August, about 790 a day compared with roughly 640 a day in July, The Defense Post reported.

Ukraine has contracted more than 22,000 ground robots since January, nearly double the total for all of 2025. The number of units operating them grew from 117 at the end of 2025 to 230 by mid-2026.

A commander disputes the evacuation case

The ministry lists casualty evacuation as one of the tender's purposes. A frontline officer challenged that three days ago.

Tetiana Chornovol, who commands an anti-tank guided missile platoon, said ground robots are too slow for evacuation and often easy targets for Russian drones, arguing brigades need staffed evacuation teams and small light-armored vehicles instead.

Drones have pushed armored vehicles off the roads to Ukraine's front line, a Ukrainian brigade commander told RBC-Ukraine. Denys Perch, who commands the 107th Territorial Defense Brigade, says the drone-saturated belt has grown so deep that pickups no longer reach forward positions. The one enemy weapon his jammers can't touch is the fiber-optic drone.

The war has become a contest over who can pull people off the battlefield fastest, as cheap drones make any human movement near the front a target. Ukraine keeps out-inventing Russia at the front, but Russia copies each advance and floods the line with it at state scale.

When armor becomes the target

Until recently, armored vehicles still drove supplies to logistics hubs near the front. That is now almost impossible. Perch says that when a large, armored machine appears, Russian forces treat it as a prize target and swarm it with dozens of drones and munitions. Perch would sooner park his armor than seat soldiers inside it.

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A kill zone that keeps widening

On the busiest sectors, Perch says, the kill zone—the drone-ruled strip around the contact line—now runs 15 to 20 kilometers deep. Some positions take three days to reach on foot. Where troops once drove most of the way and walked the last stretch, they now walk it all.

Robots take the drive

Under Perch, the brigade climbed, by his account, from around 22nd to third among Ukraine's Territorial Defense forces on the military's strike-results leaderboard, the home-guard units now fighting on the front. Ground robots—unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs)—do the work that armor cannot. They haul supplies and evacuate the wounded, though the robot often can't be brought back. His brigade runs over 1,500 logistics missions a month by heavy bomber drones alone, and still more by first-person-view (FPV) drones and robots. Russia hunts those bombers, he says, with interceptors that scramble the moment they hear one take off, so his crews mix high and low flight to slip past. Perch expects robots to move from supply runs into combat, hitting Russian troops in their rear.

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The drone his jammers can't touch

Both armies now field fiber-optic drones—machines guided by a hair-thin glass thread instead of radio. No signal means nothing to jam. Ukraine learned to block radio and digital drones, cutting their controls and video, Perch said. The glass-fiber ones his electronic warfare cannot reach, because there is no radio link to attack. His brigade still has no counter to them, Perch said, and he wants a technical fix that stops them.