Senior Research Officer, the 3rd Central Research Institute of the Russian Defence Ministry, A.P. Anisimov reported on the critical deficiencies of the modern Russian Uran-9 large, Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV).

The Uran-9 UGV is a Russian modern combat unmanned vehicle (also called the Russian tank in miniature) designed to provide remote reconnaissance and fire support to a variety of tasks conducted by the counter-terrorism, reconnaissance and military units in urban environments.

During 10th All-Russian scientific conference “Actual problems of protection and security”, which was held from 3 to 6 April 2018in the N.G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy in St. Petersburg A.P. Anisimov revealing the details of Uran-9’s combat test in Syria, which resulted were identified a list of deficiencies classified into critical.

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As a result of the tests, it became known that the Uran-9 complex is not capable of performing the tasks assigned to it. In particular, in carrying out of combat missions, the average range of sustainable management from the advanced control point was 300-500 m in the conditions of the settlement with low-rise buildings, , while also were recorded 17 cases of short-term (up to 1 min) and 2 cases of long (up to 1.5 hours) loss of Uran-9 control.

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The low reliability of the running gear elements – supporting and guiding rollers, suspension springs is revealed. The chassis of the Uran-9 cannot be used in ground close-combat roles for a long time and requires field repair.

During a study of reconnaissance capabilities, it was revealed that the electro-optic stations allow reconnaissance and identification of targets at a range of no more than 2 km. The OCH-4 optical station does not allow detecting optical observation and targeting devices of the enemy and gives out multiple interferences on the ground and in the airspace in the surveillance sector.

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There were also cases of unstable operation of the 30mm 2A72 automatic cannon – 6 delays and failure. The UGV provides fire only from the site, which significantly reduces its combat capabilities (armament, sighting and reconnaissance devices are not stabilized).

As a result, it was concluded that the modern Russian combat UGVs are not able to perform the assigned tasks in the classical types of combat operations.