By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 30, 2021 at 12:01 PM Russian Uran-9 armed unmanned ground vehicle WASHINGTON: Russia has created a new robotic combat unit of Uran-9 unmanned ground vehicles, which have been battle-tested in Syria, though with mixed results. It’s also developing an experimental unmanned version of its T-14 Armata tank, unmanned derivatives of the Cold War T-72 and BMP-3, and new long-range drones called Okhotnik and Altius. But Russia’s quest for battle robots faces many of the same technical and policy problems as the US, said CNA and CNAS scholar Samuel Bendett, and Vladimir Putin is on a much tighter budget. Russia isn’t manufacturing useless Potemkin robots for propaganda purposes, but they’re not building the Terminator, either.