Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's former Defense Minister and the architect of the country's 2022 Army of Drones program, has announced a new initiative called the Army of Robots, aimed at pushing robotic technology onto the battlefield. Fedorov points to the success of the drone push as his model: unmanned aircraft now account for over 95 percent of battlefield strikes, and Ukraine has grown more than 700 UAV manufacturers since the program began. He argues the next technological leap has to be the robotization of warfare itself, with machines taking over the war's most dangerous jobs so soldiers do not have to. Under his vision, robots would evacuate wounded troops, deliver ammunition, lay and clear mines, conduct reconnaissance, hold defensive positions, and engage targets directly.

Fedorov describes the Army of Robots not as a single company but as a broader ecosystem, one that will invest in Ukrainian defense tech firms, launch its own in-house projects, run research and development, test prototypes alongside the military, and rapidly scale whatever proves effective in combat. The announcement was accompanied by a video showing quadruped, wheeled, and humanoid robots in simulated command, intercept, strike, and formation scenarios, though the machines depicted are AI-generated concept renderings rather than existing hardware. Fedorov, who left his ministerial post in July 2026, is now recruiting defense tech companies, robotics engineers, and a chief technology officer to lead the effort, and has said he wants a humanoid robot involved in a real battlefield engagement within six months. Whether the initiative can translate that ambition into deployed hardware as quickly as the drone program once did remains to be seen.