Recent military exercises near Kaliningrad saw the introduction of the Platform-M combat robot. The sophisticated new fighting platform is to be used for gathering intelligence, discovering and eliminating stationary and mobile targets, providing firepower support and guarding important sites.
For the first time, Russia’s armed forces have conducted war games with the participation of new Platform-M combat robots. In the course of the exercises by the Baltic Fleet, which took place in mid-June near Kaliningrad, the robotic combat platforms, armed with grenade launchers and Kalashnikov rifles, saw their first action, executing their military missions alongside their live colleagues. The dry runs coincided with the multinational Saber Strike 2014 and Baltops 2014 exercises being carried out by NATO in the same area.
Unfamiliar weaponry
According to the exercise plan, paratroopers and coastal troops had to liquidate a group of militants with the support of a SU-34 destroyer-bomber, SU-24 naval aviation frontline bombers and MI-24 military transportation helicopters.
While many are familiar with this technology, as well as with the BPM, BTR and even the BPLA tanks, the appearance of robots in the Russian armed forces is a new phenomenon. Previously this kind of Russian technology could only be seen at various exhibitions.
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According to the press office of the Western Military District, during the Platform-M exercises “the military robots were assigned to eliminate provisional illegal armed formations in urban conditions and striking stationary and mobile targets.” It was also mentioned that the Platforms carried out their tasks alongside the little Grusha BPLA reconnaissance drones. The units were also used to gather intelligence and create a passage through minefields that, according to the exercise plan, had been laid by terrorists.
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According to some data provided by the Russian military, the Platform-M unit is supplied with “a differentiated defensive chassis and a firing platform and can carry out combative tasks during the night without unmasking instruments.”
The robot is armed with the famous Kalashnikov rifle made in Izhevsk and four grenade launchers.
At the Progress Scientific Research Technological Institute of Izhevsk, where it was made, the “crawling creation” was given the following assessment: “Platform-M is a universal combat platform. It is used for gathering intelligence, for discovering and eliminating stationary and mobile targets, for firepower support, for patrolling and for guarding important sites. The unit’s weapons can be guided, it can carry out supportive tasks and it can destroy targets in automatic or semiautomatic control systems; it is supplied with optical-electronic and radio reconnaissance locators.”
Full article: New combat robot is Russian army’s very own deadly WALL-E (Russia Beyond the Headlines)
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