The snowy, rugged terrain has forced the drone units to adapt to what is capable and which type of tech to send into the field. Land drones, or UGVs, can look like a lunar rover, or like a robot-dog and each come with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Tamiris Pereira dos Santos, a land platforms analyst at the defense-intelligence company Janes, said the use of UGVs in Ukraine has shown their current limitations but also gives developers a real-world scenario to observe and improve drone technology for the next conflict. "What the deployment of UGVs in Ukraine has done is to catalyze testing and experimentation of these platforms for other armed forces and larger manufacturers," he said.