Near Russian border, NATO grapples with ground robots in combat

RIGA, Latvia — Exercising in Latvia’s dense pine and birch forests this week, local troops found themselves in an unfair fight against a new enemy: unmanned ground vehicles.As NATO tries to keep pace with fast-changing drone warfare, the alliance used Latvia’s Crystal Arrow exercise to test unmanned ground combat, equipping opposing forces with wheeled robots. The systems gave the red team an element of surprise over a blue team relying only on aerial drones, said Lt. Col. Andris Brūveris, the Latvian battalion commander leading the opposing side.“They are force multipliers, and they are here to stay,” said Brūveris, who commands Latvia’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion, in a briefing with reporters at the Sēlija training area in central Latvia on Monday, during a press trip organized by NATO.“We are a little bit behind because we’ve been using only the air drones,” he added. “I hope we will move forward with this at a quick pace.”Ukraine reshaped aerial drone warfare, and now appears poised to do the same for unmanned ground vehicles, with plans to buy 25,000 UGVs by the end of June. For Crystal Arrow, Brūveris relied on Ukrainian veterans for training and tactics, using wheeled robots for gathering intelligence, attacking enemy positions, resupply and casualty evacuation.At the Sēlija training range, less than 200 kilometers from the border with Russia, the opposing force engaged the blue force using UGVs and aerial drones without direct troop-to-troop contact, according to Brūveris. After two days of reconnaissance, the exercise moved into a kinetic phase on Monday, with the opposing force pushing back the flanks of the blue force.“We specifically, deliberately employed the UGVs here with the opposing forces to allow the friendly forces to understand what the threat was, and how they would counter that,” Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, Allied Land Command’s deputy chief of staff for transformation and integration, told Defense News.Brūveris said he made particular use o