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.

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