American autonomous ATVs see first large-scale combat use in Ukraine

US autonomous vehicle maker Forterra has quietly operated more than 100 self-driving ATVs in active combat zones across Ukraine for the past nine months—marking what the company says is the largest autonomous ground vehicle deployment by any American defense contractor in actual warfare.

Why ground autonomy matters in Ukraine#

The proliferation of surveillance drones has transformed modern combat, creating extensive areas where any visible movement invites aerial attack. As Sergeant Major Corey Wilkens of the US Army put it, "You become very, very vulnerable" to first-person view drones, munitions drops, artillery, and mortars. Ukrainian forces, already stretched thin by Russian invasion, have recognized that autonomous ground logistics vehicles could solve a critical problem: moving supplies and wounded soldiers without exposing personnel to constant aerial surveillance.

Ukraine has been building its own uncrewed ground vehicles, but they're typically battery-powered and limited to 250-kilogram payloads. Forterra's Lancer vehicles—based on Polaris ATVs and fitted with custom sensors and computing—run on gasoline and can carry three times that cargo weight, making them substantially more valuable for supply runs and casualty evacuation.

Deployment results and real-world adaptation#

Since arriving in October 2025, Forterra's fleet has logged more than 2,500 miles across 1,100-plus missions, transported over 777,000 pounds of material, and completed 52 casualty evacuations. Yet deployment revealed critical gaps between commercial design and battlefield need. Ukrainian forces initially found the vehicles overly tailored to US Army specifications. Adding a Starlink satellite antenna transformed the platform from a high-tech curiosity into an essential tool—as one Ukrainian soldier bluntly told TechCrunch: "It's fucking fantastic, and we are dying to get more."

The autonomy gap in combat#

For now, Ukrainian operators are primarily teleoperating the vehicles in active zones rather than running them fully autonomously. Two constraints explain this: the vehicles are too valuable to risk losing to system failures, and current autonomous systems simply aren't ready for war's unpredictability. While the Lancers navigate diverse terrain without human input, they cannot yet detect hostile forces and respond appropriately—a capability that human drivers, or soldiers controlling them remotely, can improvise.