The Royal Netherlands Army has begun testing armed unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to develop and refine platoon-level doctrine.
In this regard, the country has outpaced its NATO partners.
“As far as I know, we haven’t seen anything like this before in the West,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sjoerd Mevissen, commander of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems unit of the Royal Netherlands Army, to Janes.
The devices were developed by Estonian defence company Milrem Robotics. The unmanned ground vehicles are tracked hybrid modular infantry systems (THeMIS), capable of carrying a variety of weapons, including machine guns.
According to the publication, on 12 October the Netherlands’ 13th Light Brigade deployed the first four systems for tactical exercises in Lithuania.
Mevissen called the TheMIS testing an experiment, but noted that it is “not just a field exercise.”
“We are under close scrutiny from the Russians, so we are, as it were, in a semi-operational environment,” he said.
Ground robots with machine guns tested by the Netherlands are not the first in the world. In 2019, Estonia развернула an unarmed version of TheMIS in Mali. In the same year Iran показал beetle-like kamikaze robots Heidair-1.
In 2018, Russia’s Defence Ministry подтвердило tests of the Uran-9 combat unmanned ground vehicles in Syria. However later it emerged that the devices performed poorly and repeatedly lost contact with the operator.
In October, a video showing the deployment of an armed robopod, carried by a drone, circulated online.
In the same month, a coalition of six companies refused to develop or support the use of devices and software they had developed for military purposes.
In June 2021, the UN recorded the first case in history when a combat drone killed a person without a direct order from an operator.
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