Uran-9

Russia's much-hyped "robot tank" — a tracked unmanned combat ground vehicle bristling with a 30 mm autocannon, a machine gun, anti-tank missiles and thermobaric rockets. Unveiled as a glimpse of robotic ground warfare, it instead became the cautionary tale of the UGV age: on its 2018 Syria debut it repeatedly lost its control link, could not fire on the move, and had its sensors blinded by nearby buildings, leading Russia's own researchers to conclude that combat UGVs were not yet ready for real war.

Overview

The Uran-9 is a tracked unmanned combat ground vehicle (UCGV) developed by JSC 766 UPTK, now associated with Kalashnikov Concern and marketed for export by Rosoboronexport. It mounts a turret with a 30 mm autocannon, a coaxial machine gun, four Ataka anti-tank guided missiles and a bank of Shmel-M thermobaric rockets, and is tele-operated from a nearby mobile control point. Conceived as remote reconnaissance-and-fire-support for combined-arms and counter-terror units, it was Russia's flagship attempt to put a heavily armed robot into front-line combat. Its significance in this Lexicon is partly as a capable-looking system and partly as a lesson — the gap between a robot tank's spec sheet and its battlefield reality, exposed years before Ukraine's cheaper UGVs succeeded where the Uran-9 struggled.

Development

The Uran-9 was designed in 2015 and promoted by Rosoboronexport for export from that year, per Wikipedia. It entered Russian military service in January 2019 after its Syria trials, and reporting placed the number built at around 342 by late 2022 following Russian defense-budget boosts. It was developed within the same Russian robotics push that produced the Uran-6 demining robot and the Nerekhta UGV, and was repeatedly showcased — at Army-2016, the Vostok 2018 and Zapad 2021 exercises, and the 2022 Victory Day Parade (where, tellingly, the parade vehicles were carried on trucks with their sensors removed). Its real test, however, came in Syria in 2018, and it did not go as advertised.

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