Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
They all watched videos in which a real hero—the company commander—rescues two wounded fighters whom they were trying to evacuate with the help of a ground robotic evacuation complex (NRC). I see the heroism of a single person who tries to oppose a global tragedy. The global tragedy is that we have nothing with which to evacuate the wounded.
Please understand that the modern NRC is usually not suitable for evacuating the wounded! It is a means for evacuating bodies of the dead, nothing more. It is a solution that is used out of desperation, from the lack of normal means. Because there is nothing else. There is a complete functional failure in this matter.
Because our state lacks the conscience and the wit to invest in normal means of evacuating the wounded. Money exists. For what—anything, but there is money from partners for evacuation! There is simply no order from us, no formulated need. The state condemns the Ukrainian soldier in the kil-zones to a slow death in case of injury. This is the tactical plan as it stands; there is no other way to put it. Because when there is no evacuation, it is impossible to provide medical care. When there is no medical care, even a light wound or a small shrapnel fragment can lead to death or a severe disability.
What is the NRC? Usually it is a slow means, with an average speed not exceeding 7-10 km per hour. In the best case. In almost every first case, evacuation turns into a multi-hour operation, when comrades go gray, when the operators’ hearts ache with worry, they pray to all gods that enemy reconnaissance drones do not notice the creeping, turtle-like NRC. And how many times does that NRC fail to reach the wounded—their path is cut up by enemy FPV! And how many times along the way the NRC is hit, and only body fragments return? And how many times does the NRC explode on a remotely placed enemy mine? And how many times (perhaps the most) does the NRC fail to reach at all?
That is why the company commander jumped into his car, because he understood—chances with the NRC were already gone. Besides, being slow, it is usually unable to provide protection from FPV. There are theoretically armored capsules for the wounded, but they are a poor protection, more like a coffin for the wounded and, in fact, often being so. It hardly protects from mines or direct FPV strikes.
In the kil-zones there must be means that have good protection from FPV hits and/or protection from ground-based explosive devices, and high movement speed. The ideal evacuation vehicle or NRC is a well-armored MRAP-type vehicle, with remote or direct control, with protective screens against cumulatives, capable of carrying heavy and powerful EW (electronic warfare) equipment, and active anti-FPV measures. Which, under current conditions, if it returns as a field phenomena, can reduce losses of our infantry and drone operators on the first line.
I already wrote about this, but in the context of moving crews in the kil-zones. The same math applies now. One can estimate the order of costs of different solutions. We see that domestic armored vehicles equipped with corresponding screens against drone hits with cumulatives, such as "Kozak" or "Varta"—can protect from most of the listed damage factors. Let us compare their cost with the losses of the state budget in case of crew death. Let us make the following assumptions. Let the crew be 4 people; in case of a firestrike on the transport vehicle, on average 2 people die. The losses to the state budget amount to $720 thousand hryvnias. As we can see, the investment in such equipment is extremely advantageous, since in most cases it amounts to 30–50% of the expected losses to the budget due to the death of service members.
It should be noted that by declared characteristics, the "Varta" can provide protection of the crew from sufficiently powerful explosive devices. If we take foreign specialized armored vehicles that provide a high degree of protection from mines, then given their higher price, they are still very advantageous to buy. M-ATV – $600,000, Cougar – $700,000, RG-31 – $600,000, VAB – $600,000, RG-33 – $600,000. As can be seen, none of the high-class, mine-resistant armored vehicles exceed the expected budgetary losses for Ukraine from the deaths of crew members of UAVs. This is a very profitable investment of our limited resources, because even if the vehicle is lost, we incur losses of $600 thousand hryvnias, while under the current arrangement we have both losses and death.
War is mathematics, cynical statistics, but in this cynicism there is a chance for us. With numbers in hand, show how money should be spent. Maybe someone did not understand—we already pay these colossal payments for the deaths of infantry, tankers, UAV operators, artillerymen, because we do not invest enough funds in preventing losses to the budget due to the death of servicemen.
As for the current state of affairs, it is extremely bad. Very rarely do UAV crews receive new vehicles from the state to move in dangerous zones. Mostly my colleagues move in well-provisioned volunteer SUVs of the second freshness. And there is no talk of armor, mine protection. There is no talk even of minimal protection of vehicles against shrapnel ammunition, which would allow enduring a FPV strike with an appropriate warhead. Refit with such protection for a SUV costs less than $50 thousand hryvnias, which is an extremely small amount compared to what the state pays to the families of the dead. And at the same time it is a cosmic, unreachable sum for fighters who usually raise money themselves for transport.
This is one of a few examples. And there are many others where money is not counted. It should not be this way. Soldiers who conditionally "cost" 15 million should not have to ride in beat-up vehicles for $5–7 thousand, with only a pump protection against FPV for $500. There is no logic here, neither moral nor immoral.
I repeat—the money is in the budget by definition. But our system is built in such a way that officials bear immeasurably less responsibility for losses of people (including material losses related to this). Now we see that purchasing expensive machines in advance by Ukrainian officials is procedurally much harder than paying enormous sums to widows later, amounts equal to several of the most modern, most protected units of equipment.
Thanks to Maria Berlinski, I got to Syrsky with this problem, who at that time was the commander-in-chief. He supported the concept of large armored NRC/vehicles, but this initiative got lost in paper seas of agencies and departments. Obviously, armored ground means are not the only path; there are others as well. For example, there are already many models of powerful copters for air evacuation, including those produced in Ukraine. And in the grand scheme, the functions of close reconnaissance and strike can be performed by modern robotic systems, and the author of these lines has personally created and used some of them, so he knows what he is talking about. We have the opportunity to create such technical capabilities that there would be almost no personnel in the kil-zones. But for this we need a little more humanity among top managers. Or a louder voice of those who are currently face-to-face with death.
Source: Ihor Lutsenko / Facebook
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Поранений солдат в кіл-зоні приречений". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
