Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

The problem of dismounted operation support with Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) often called robots is widely discussed and many solutions were tested to verify theory and find technological gaps and limitation for such application. In this paper the initial demand and requirements and their evolution is described on an example of US Army. Described changes concerns demanded level of autonomy, fire support possibility, possibility of performing combat engineer tasks, using UGV for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition, longitudinal and lateral stability, obstacle negotiation and overall terrain mobility and efficiency of make use of the “mule”.

Military operation in rough terrain are very often conducted as dismounted operation. In this condition the logistic support is very problematic because all equipment is carried by soldier. It reduces the mobility and agility of troops. In the paper the demand for supporting dismounted operation UGV are described and concept of robot’s solutions are presented.