Dec 21, 2023
VIA SOCIAL MEDIA
This summer, Russian forces in Ukraine devised a powerful new weapon. Well, new to them.
They packed old armored vehicles with tons of explosives and a remote trigger, rigged their controls for unmanned operation and sent them rolling toward Ukrainian lines.
That’s right: vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or VBIEDs. Just like militant groups used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
Russia’s VBIEDs are crude … but getting less crude by the day. The latest improvisation is the most foreboding for Ukraine. A video that circulated online this week depicts an explosives-laden MT-LB armored tractor wearing a first-person-view drone on its hull.
The pairing is a comical one on its face. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. An FPV drone has a point-of-view camera that streams live video to its operator. Strapping a drone to a VBIED instantly gives the VBIED a forward-looking camera that should greatly improve the controllers’ situational awareness.
Russian VBIEDs first appeared this summer. They were brute simple: old T-55 tanks and MT-LBs packed with several tons of radio-triggered mines, shells or line-charges. A brave operator would drive the vehicular bomb toward Ukrainian lines and, at the last minute, jam the controls and leap out.
Russian kamikaze MT-LB with remote control and FPV drone with camera installed on front of the vehicle. The MT-LB hit a mine before reaching the target. pic.twitter.com/2VdwGkfxzq
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) December 21, 2023
These VBIEDs were unmanned, but they weren’t robotic—because they couldn’t maneuver once their driver had ejected.
More recent VBIEDs are inching closer to becoming truly robotic, with remote controls allowing their operators to steer them in real time. You wouldn’t strap an FPV drone to a VBIED as a crude form of remote vision if you weren’t also installing simple radio-based remote controls in the same explosive vehicle.
Adding remote vision and remote controls to a VBIED makes the VBIED more expensive, but may also mitigate one of the VBIED’s biggest vulnerabilities. Many, possibly most, Russian VBIEDs, don’t get anywhere near Ukrainian lines—because they run over mines while en route.
With remote vision and remote control, a VBIED operator might be able to see, and avoid, unburied mines. That’s not what happened with the FPV-strapped MT-LB: it eventually ran over a mine. But with time and repetition, Russia’s VBIED-controllers could get better—or at least luckier.
The destructive potential is enormous. VBIEDs are popular with militant groups because they’re an easy way of delivering a lot of explosives. A VBIED with four or five tons of explosives can kill unprotected enemy troops from 500 feet away—and hurt them from 3,000 feet away.
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Those things are a stupid idea, no matter how you control them. They are a waste or resource. When a large vehicle lumbers towards Ukrainian lines, I’m sure the AFU troops won’t just wait for it to arrive. I’m sure they will try to destroy it en route. I’m sure that there is also a high rate of losses en route through mines. And, assuming it reaches the AFU lines, what then? It explodes and puts a hole in the ground. So what?
But, I’m okay with anything stupid the roaches do to reduce their own capacity to fight.