Forterra, the US maker of autonomous vehicles, revealed today that more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs have been deployed to conflict zones in Ukraine over the past nine months, in what the company believes is the largest deployment of autonomous vehicles to combat by any US defense tech company.
“I believe this is true of every defense technology ever created—until you get to the realities of war, you never know,” Scott Sanders, Forterra’s chief growth officer and a former US Marine officer, told TechCrunch.
Funded by U.S. defense dollars, the project is part of a growing effort to turn the U.S. military on its support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invaders. While aerial drones have received a lot of attention in this war, the potential power they have created — wide no-go zones where surveillance can lead to death from above — has led Ukrainian strategists to seek ground-based independence as well.
“There’s nowhere for us to hide,” explained Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens, who leads the US Army’s autonomous vehicle and tactical development program. “You become very vulnerable that you can’t be attacked [first-person view drones]other types of drones drop weapons, ammunition, mortars, a lot of things they have.”
Ukraine is already building its own unmanned aerial vehicles (UGVs) to help transport supplies and weapons, or evacuate wounded soldiers, but they are usually battery-powered and can only carry 250 kilograms, according to a Ukrainian army soldier who worked with the vehicles and whom TechCrunch would not identify for security reasons.
Forterra’s Lancer vehicles, based on Polaris ATVs and equipped with a custom-built sensor and computer stack, are electric and can carry up to 750 pounds of cargo, making them versatile and useful. “The important thing is that this UGV for transportation and maintaining our defense is the most important UGV in Ukraine,” said the soldier. “It’s great, and we’re dying to get more.”
They didn’t feel that way at first. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have had mixed experiences with Western contractors bringing new technologies to the war, and at first Forterra’s offerings felt more targeted to the high-level needs of the US Army. Customizing the car—specifically, by adding a Starlink satellite Internet antenna—added a lot of value.
Since arriving in Ukraine last October, the vehicles have traveled more than 2,500 kilometers on more than 1,100 missions, carrying 777,440 kilograms of total weight and completing the evacuation of 52 victims. Some are lost in battle, especially if they are stuck in deep mud or some other place where the Russian forces can guide them at rest.
Forterra learned some useful lessons – about electronic warfare, updating their software remotely, how to navigate in challenging conditions, and making sure their vehicles don’t break down. The company, which has raised more than $500 million in funding from funds such as XYZ Venture Capital and Moore Strategic Partners, is now in a better position to compete for lucrative national security contracts.
They also saw the limits of autonomy: At the moment, the Ukrainian military mainly used vehicles in combat zones, partly because they are too important to be lost and partly because autonomous vehicles are not yet ready for the realities of war.
While, for example, vehicles can navigate autonomously in various environments, they are not yet at the point where they can identify unexpected enemy forces and react accordingly. “Actually, we need to be able to respond to the enemy’s threats, survive, while we are in front of the enemy, which independence is not yet known how to do,” explained a Ukrainian soldier.
Forterra, which started working on autonomous vehicles 20 years ago, is working on combining the kinds of algorithms that have given us self-driving cars with innovative AI software that allows machines to react to their surroundings in a familiar way. As with other autonomous systems, one of the main obstacles is collecting the right data.
“There’s a lot of things you have to do that aren’t available in the open source model because they’re not human-made, whether that’s finding a way to navigate a minefield or [operating] weapons system,” Sanders told TechCrunch.
Competitors in this space are solving similar challenges, such as Scout AI, which raised $100 million earlier this year to train basic models and develop a series of autonomous military platforms including UGVs. Other startups like Field AI and Overland AI are testing UGVs with the US military.
Although there are limitations to UGVs, American military experts are convinced that its time to invest in these devices. “Lower independence is being achieved now and we’ve seen it,” said Wilkens.
Scott Philips, chief innovation officer at Forterra, visited the unit’s Ukrainian operations center to see the vehicles first-hand, earning the unit respect for visiting the site of the Russian attack.
“What really impressed me was seeing exactly what the seams were: what steps were still manual, where data had to be re-entered or re-verified manually, and where the team had found ways to automate or speed things up,” Philips told TechCrunch. “That’s the kind of ground truth you can’t find in a slide deck because it shows you exactly where using better tools can overwhelm people doing this work in real time.”
One challenge the Ukrainians have issued: Make it cheap. Forterra’s Lancers are not expensive in their class, due to their reliance on Polaris’ commercial supply chain for the vehicle itself, but they are still very important to be deployed as freely as UAVs can be.
“Attack is the reality of this battlefield, and we’ve lost quite a few right now, and it’s painful, and we need more, so we need it cheap,” a Ukranian soldier told TechCrunch.
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