More than 100 American self-driving ATVs have been quietly operating in Ukraine for nine months
The first major deployment of U.S.-built autonomous ground vehicles in active combat is happening right now—in Ukraine. Forterra, a California-based developer of self-driving technology, revealed that over 100 of its Lancer vehicles have been moving supplies, evacuating wounded soldiers, and navigating some of the most dangerous terrain on earth since last October.
Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer and a former U.S. Marine officer, told TechCrunch the experience is a brutal reality check. “I believe this to be true of every defense technology that’s ever been created—until you hit the realities of combat, you’re just not going to know,” he said.
The vehicles are funded by U.S. defense dollars, part of a broader push to modernize the American military through support for Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces. While aerial drones have dominated headlines, the surveillance threat they create has driven Ukrainian commanders to seek ground-based autonomy too.
Why ground robots matter when drones rule the sky
Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens, who leads a U.S. Army program developing autonomous vehicles and tactics, put it bluntly: “There’s nowhere to hide.” He explained that soldiers on the ground are extremely vulnerable to first-person view drones, artillery, mortars, and other attacks. That makes unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) a critical tool for keeping troops out of harm’s way.
Ukraine has been building its own battery-powered UGVs, but they max out at around 250 kilograms of cargo. Forterra’s Lancer, built on a Polaris ATV chassis with a custom sensor and compute stack, runs on gasoline and can haul 750 kilograms. That extra capacity makes a real difference.
“The bottom line is that this UGV for logistics and just maintaining our defense is the most important UGV in Ukraine,” a Ukrainian soldier who works with the vehicles told TechCrunch. (His identity is withheld for security reasons.) “It’s fucking fantastic, and we are dying to get more.”
2,500 miles, 1,100 missions, 52 casualty evacuations
The numbers tell a powerful story. Since arriving in Ukraine last October, Forterra’s Lancers have driven over 2,500 miles across more than 1,100 missions. They’ve carried 777,440 pounds of cargo total and completed 52 casualty evacuations. Some vehicles have been lost—typically when they get stuck in deep mud or difficult terrain, becoming sitting targets for Russian forces.
Those losses hurt, but they’ve also taught Forterra hard lessons about electronic warfare, remote software updates, maneuvering in extreme conditions, and keeping machines running under fire. The company, which has raised over $500 million in venture funding from investors like XYZ Venture Capital and Moore Strategic Partners, is now better positioned to compete for major national security contracts.
Teleoperation still rules the battlefield
Here’s the honest part: Ukrainian soldiers are mostly teleoperating the vehicles in combat zones. The machines are too valuable to risk on full autonomy, and the technology isn’t ready for the chaos of war. The vehicles can navigate diverse terrain on their own, but they can’t yet identify unexpected enemy forces and react appropriately.
“We actually need to be able to respond to the enemy threats, live, while it’s in front of the enemy, which the autonomy doesn’t know how to do yet,” the Ukrainian soldier explained.
The hard road to full battlefield autonomy
Forterra has been working on autonomous vehicles for 20 years. The company is now trying to blend classical self-driving car algorithms with newer generative AI that can handle generalized, unpredictable situations. One major bottleneck: gathering the right data.
“There’s a lot of things you have to do that aren’t available in an open source model because they’re not things that humans do, whether that’s figuring out how to navigate a minefield or operating a weapon system,” Sanders said. “You need to be able to turn the dials and some things more of a classical robotics approach, and then leverage AI where you need to.”
Competitors are chasing similar goals. Scout AI raised $100 million earlier this year to train foundation models for military platforms including UGVs. Startups like Field AI and Overland AI are also trialing unmanned ground vehicles with the U.S. military.
What American troops can learn from Ukraine’s war
Scott Philips, Forterra’s chief innovation officer, visited a Ukrainian unit’s operations center—an area within range of Russian attacks. That hands-on visit earned him respect from the soldiers he met.
“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 said. “That’s the kind of ground truth you can’t get from a slide deck.”
American military leaders are convinced the time for ground autonomy is now. “Ground autonomy is achievable now and we’ve seen it,” Wilkens said.
The price problem: cheaper UGVs needed for mass deployment
One clear message from Ukrainian troops: Make it cheaper. Forterra’s Lancers are already relatively affordable because they use Polaris’ commercial supply chain, but they’re still too expensive to deploy as freely as drones. “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 Ukrainian soldier said.
That cost challenge will shape the next generation of military autonomous vehicles. For now, the Lancers are proving that ground robots can survive combat—and that there’s still a long way to go before they fight on their own.
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