Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Even as Ukraine ramps up its use of unmanned ground vehicles, demand for Russian UGVs has reportedly collapsed and all of their developers are facing bankruptcy for lack of demand. The reason is the blocking of Starlink for the Russian side. ⬇️

2/ Russian drone developer Alexey Chadayev writes about the currently disastrous state of Russian UGV deployments, which were reliant on Starlink access but can no longer be used effectively since the cutoff in February:

3/ "In short: while the enemy is ramping up their use, the Russian Armed Forces are scaling back. And it’s not because they’re in short supply—there are thousands of them sitting in the military depots.

4/ "It’s because the losses are too high—both from enemy fire and simply from a lack of communication (the latter being even more common). While Starlink was operational, the second problem didn’t exist.

5/ "In other words, the issue isn’t about fielding a large number of self-sufficient crews—it’s about the presence, or more accurately the absence, of a communication network at the front that’s resistant to jammers and radio blackouts.

6/ "It’s also clear how to set up communication—it’s not Newton’s binomial theorem—but right now, all the companies that have invested in such solutions are on the verge of bankruptcy due to a lack of orders.

7/ "For the same reason, we haven’t yet launched mass production of our vehicles, which performed quite well in range and frontline tests—but driving on fibre-optic cable is expensive, and without it, radio communication is a lottery, most often ending in the loss of equipment.

8/ "If you really want to direct the fervour of your civic criticism somewhere, direct it toward the issue of mass digital communications for the front; it’s not just the robots that need it—everyone does." /end

Source:
t.me/chadayevru/4737