The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine

More than 100 self-driving ATVs are currently operating in Ukraine. Forterra, a US builder of autonomous vehicles, revealed today that these machines have been deployed in conflict zones for the past nine months. The company believes this is the largest deployment of autonomous ground vehicles in combat by any US defense tech firm.

Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer and a former US Marine officer, told TechCrunch that the true nature of combat remains unknown until the technology actually faces it.

Funded by US defense dollars, the mission supports the broader effort to transform the US military through its backing of Ukrainian resistance against Russian invaders. While aerial drones have received most of the attention, the no-go zones they create have forced Ukrainian strategists to seek ground-based autonomy as well.

Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens, who leads a program developing autonomous vehicles and tactics for the US Army, explained the tactical reality. There is nowhere to hide. Soldiers become extremely vulnerable to attacks from first-person view drones, munition drops, artillery, and mortars.

Ukraine is already building its own uncrewed ground vehicles to move supplies, munitions, or evacuate wounded soldiers. However, these are typically battery-powered and can carry up to 250 kilograms. A soldier in the Ukrainian army who worked with the vehicles and asked not to be named for security reasons noted this limitation.

Forterra’s Lancer vehicles are different. Based on Polaris ATVs and equipped with a custom-built sensor and compute stack, they are gas-powered and can carry 750 kilograms of cargo. This makes them more versatile and useful. The soldier described them as the most important UGV in Ukraine for logistics and maintaining defense. They are fantastic, and the unit is desperate for more.

Initial reactions were not so positive. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have had mixed experiences with Western contractors bringing new tech to the battle. At first, Forterra’s offerings felt too geared for the high-end requirements of the US Army. Modifying the vehicle for the situation, particularly by adding a Starlink satellite internet antenna, made it a huge value add.

Since arriving in Ukraine last October, the vehicles have driven more than 2,500 miles across more than 1,100 missions. They carried 777,440 pounds of total weight and completed 52 casualty evacuations. Some have been lost in combat, particularly if they get stuck in deep mud or other terrain where Russian forces can target them at leisure.

Forterra has learned useful lessons about electronic warfare, updating software from afar, maneuvering in challenging conditions, and ensuring vehicles do not break down. The company, which has raised more than $500 million in venture funding from funds like XYZ Venture Capital and Moore Strategic Partners, is now better positioned to compete for lucrative national security contracts.

They have also seen the limits of autonomy. For now, Ukrainian soldiers have mainly been teleoperating the vehicles in combat zones. This is partly because they are too valuable to lose and partly because autonomous vehicles are not quite ready for the realities of war.

While the vehicles can navigate autonomously across diverse terrain, they are not yet at the point where they can identify unexpected enemy forces and react appropriately. The Ukrainian soldier explained that the team needs to be able to respond to enemy threats live while they are in front of the enemy, which the current autonomy does not know how to do.

Forterra, which began work on autonomous vehicles 20 years ago, is working on how to combine the kinds of algorithms that gave us self-driving cars with newer generative AI software that allows machines to react to their surroundings in a generalized way. As with other autonomous systems, one of the key obstacles is gathering the right data.

There are a lot of things you have to do that are not available in an open source model because they are not things that humans do, whether that is figuring out how to navigate a minefield or operating a weapon system. Sanders told TechCrunch that you need to be able to turn the dials on some things more of a classical robotics approach, and then use AI where you need to.

Competitors in this space are solving similar challenges. Scout AI raised $100 million earlier this year to train foundation models and develop a suite of autonomous platforms for the military that includes UGVs. Other startups like Field AI and Overland AI are trialling UGVs with the US military.

Even with the limitations on UGVs, American military experts are convinced that it is time to invest in these tools. Wilkens said ground autonomy is achievable now and they have seen it.

Scott Philips, the chief innovation officer at Forterra, visited a Ukrainian unit’s operations center to see the vehicles in action first-hand. He won respect from the unit for visiting an area in range of Russian attacks.

Philips told TechCrunch that what struck him most was seeing exactly where the seams are. He noted which steps are still manual, where data has to be re-entered or re-verified by hand, and where the team has already found ways to automate or speed things up. That is the kind of ground truth you cannot get from a slide deck because it shows you precisely where better tooling could take pressure off the people doing this work in real time.

One challenge issued by the Ukrainians is to make the vehicles cheaper. Forterra’s Lancers are not expensive for their category, thanks to relying on Polaris’ commercial supply chain for the vehicle itself, but they are still too valuable to be deployed as freely as UAVs can be.

Attrition is just a fact of this battlefield. The Ukrainian soldier told TechCrunch that they have lost a few at this point, it hurt, and they need more, and therefore they need them cheaper.

What it means

The deployment confirms that autonomous ground vehicles are now a practical reality on the front lines, not just a laboratory concept. However, the data also shows that full autonomy is not yet ready for independent decision-making against active threats. Human operators remain essential for high-value tasks and complex combat scenarios. The focus for companies like Forterra must shift from pure capability to cost reduction and survivability if these assets are to be used at the scale the Ukrainian army requires.