Military medics of Sweden’s Life Guards Brigade (IB 1) held joint consultations with their Ukrainian counterparts from the 1st Separate Medical Battalion to learn from Ukraine’s experience in evacuating casualties using ground unmanned robotic complexes in the kill zone.
This was reported by the press service of the Life Guards on Instagram.
As reported, traditional casualty evacuation by vehicle or infantry under fire from FPV drones and artillery often results in the loss of additional personnel on top of the already wounded. The solution has been the use of armored unmanned robotic complexes (URCs) on wheeled or tracked chassis, operated remotely.
“At the end of the day, it is about saving lives. The more people we can evacuate safely, the more of them will survive,” said the commander of the 1st Separate Medical Battalion, Asan Charуkhov.
According to him, some of the casualties evacuated by ground drones could not have been saved by any other means. Each mission is planned individually, taking into account the nature of the wound, the terrain, and the situation in the area.
The 1st Separate Medical Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is considered one of the pioneers of robotic evacuation at the front. It was in this battalion, through cooperation with the Come Back Alive foundation, that the MAUL platform was developed — a ground evacuation robot based on a quad bike with an internal combustion engine, capable of reaching speeds of up to 70 km/h, equipped with an armored capsule to protect the casualty from shrapnel and munitions dropped from drones.
The vehicle is fitted with special airless metal wheels that allow it to continue moving even after running over a mine; its range reaches up to 110 km on roads and up to 100 km off-road, while the onboard systems are designed for up to 48 hours of autonomous operation.
However, the success of robotic evacuation has also created a new problem: ground robots have become targets for Russian drones and artillery. According to the commander of the battalion’s 3rd Medical Company, Maksym Shtrul, there have been cases where several robots had to be deployed simultaneously to evacuate a single casualty. One notable mission, codenamed GVER, saw six URCs lost before a wounded soldier was successfully extracted on the seventh attempt from a settlement under enemy control. The evacuation lasted 5 hours and 58 minutes, during which the drone traveled 64 km — 37 km of which with a damaged wheel. En route to the casualty, the URC was hit by an anti-personnel mine and was also struck by a munition dropped from a UAV. The wounded soldier was unharmed thanks to the armored capsule.
