Iraq'i UGCV (Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle) Shows Up In MosulOP

I thought this was interesting when checking for updates on twitter today. Does anybody have any background on who makes these and what their capabilities are???

It seems once they actually entered Mosul, they started to sustain some heavy casualties. I suppose it made sense to start rolling out the robots. Hopefully these things are more affordable than the tanks and HUMVEE'S that are getting blown up out there.

I see what appears to be ATGM, but no gun. Maybe its visible from another angle?

a reply to: worldstarcountry

it depends what its role is - the " mechanicals " of a unmanned system are pretty simples - its the sensors and more important the software and communications // control thats the real magic - and very costly and hard to get right

and TBH - i see very little to impress me - unless its just a system to advance a weapon 100m infront of its parent unit - then fire

Looks a bit of a sort of bodge job as the platework is buckling at the front of where the gun is secured, also the tyres are well exposed making it easy to disable. Its not designed to last but to last long enough to probably get close to somewhere and fire off a dozen rounds before getting blown up itself.

Theres a hatch which looks like its for feeding it ammo and there seems to be a camera at the back so i'd imagine theres one at the front..sounds good for a suicide run to perhaps take out a building etc with no real risk and probably a hell of a lot cheaper than sending in an airstrike/tomahawk or whatever.

a reply to: Maxatoria

Yes by the looks of its design it is a rapid response or support vehicle for units on foot maybe to assist in countering enemy armor. Looks like the weapons system can be swapped out for niche roles. I imagine this is like an unmanned baby version of the Stryker, and can be adapted with gun turrets or AA system as well.

So who is making these?? Northrop?? Honeywell?? Oshkosh, Lockheed??? First one I have noticed of this design in an operation.

Alrobot. It's an Iraqi attempt at technology the US hasn't even managed to get a grip of yet.

It was designed by two Iraqi brothers. At home in Bagdad.

a reply to: sg1642

holy smokes, I thought you were opening up for a joke, but a quick search confirms it!! Looks like Popular Science did an article on this in August, and somehow I missed it. Thank you for that information!

Popular Science
Twitter user @nomorestans, who spotted the story, says the robot made its debut at the IQDEX weapons conference in Baghdad earlier this year. Alrobot would not be the first robot to hit the sands of Baghdad, but it might become the first to actually fire a weapon. Back in 2007, the U.S. Army deployed three armed ground robots called the Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, or SWORDS, from weapons maker Foster-Miller (now owned by Qinetiq). SWORDS basically consisted of a Foster-Miller TALON robot armed with a machine gun. But the SWORDS were pulled off the battlefield before they were able to take a single shot.

They pulled that from the Baghdad Post, however it is in NOT ENGLISH so I have no clue what its saying. Link it anyways. How innovative of the brothers. Could this be the beginning of a domestic defense production industry??

“Alrobot,” as it is called, was first spotted by the Baghdad Post. The story clarifies little about the machine: it’s made by two brothers, it’s remote-controlled, and it can fire both a machine gun and Russian-made rockets.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

You can tell looking at it that it is rather crude. The whole unmanned ground platform concept is still in its infancy and a lot of the most up to date and technologically advanced equipment coming out of the US is found lacking. I've seen some of them being tested and they tend to have a lot of issues so god knows how that thing performs. Having said that, there is a lot of potential in that field and we are only scraping the surface just now.

a reply to: sg1642
I wonder if they are getting the sensors from Turkey, Israel, or Russia? I doubt American defense is going to sign contracts, or even get approved to through congress to sell to such a small time new upstart run by two brothers. And the Iraqi manufacturing and technology sector is not quite up to snuff in either capability, or equipped with properly educated researchers to do this domestically.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

You could probably do it with off the shelf stuff for toys basically, it seems like its pretty short range in the radio communications but thats not surprising. what do you need as a basic function accelerate and decelerate, turn left/right and move the gun around and up and down..not exactly requiring a lot of functionality. Theres probably small scale RC tanks that are available for fun that do this sort of thing so all you need to do is scale it up a bit with perhaps a few cheap cameras bolted on so the operator can see whats going on and job done.

As maxatoria said you could build a primative version of one of these with simple RC technology. The hardest part would be zeroing the weapon to the camera/sight and even that isn't 100% necessary as you could use the fall of shot and adjust your aim from that.

I was really speaking of the tracking technology for the guided missile. Or, it could be simply mounted with an imported ATGM, cuz that is what it looks like is attached. Although the videos do show a different weapon attached as well.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

They're not guided.

They're just some readily available from a few dozen countries unguided rockets.

At best they're toophan's / Dragon's (Iranian clones of very early versions of American guided ATGM of very simple types.

The other posters are spot on about the optics and the chassis as well... Cheap Chinese commercial stuff that you too can own if you have a valid credit card and an alibaba.com account.

The chassis is a cheap knock off 4 wheeler with a bunch of cheap Chinese crap bunged on.

It's not anything remarkable in the slightest.

a reply to: roguetechie

looks like it came from a four wheeler. I was just curious then how well those optics and sensors were.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Yes a cheap Chinese 4 Wheeler...

That part is actually fairly smart since you can't actually armor these things more than superficially.

So having a nice crated chassis' delivered 20+ to a shipping container every time one gets destroyed.

On a side note, I actually expect the optics packages control systems and etc to start getting exponentially better while maintaining the prices of the cheap Chinese stuff...

Also between the Chinese and Russian GPS constellations plus some other stuff...

Suffice it to say that the West's abilities to deny certain capabilities tied to certain technologies is likely at an end.

Warfare is on the verge of getting much more dangerous and much less one sided...

For better or worse, truthfully it doesn't matter, it's just going to be what it's going to be.