The combat version of the Russian robotic vehicle Marker will be able to automatically detect and destroy enemy equipment, Dmitry Rogozin, former chief of Roscosmos said. Rogozin currently serves as the head of the special squad of military advisers Tsar's Wolves.
The Marker will be able to destroy Western tanks, including American Abrams and German Leopards.
"The combat version of the Marker robot has an electronic catalog in the control system that contains images of targets both in the visible and in the infrared range,” Rogozin said.
According to him, the robot will also be able to independently select a target by priority and hit it with appropriate artillery means.
Four Marker robots will be delivered to the Donbass in February. They will be tested at a training ground before going into combat action, he said.
The Marker is a product of Research and Production Association Android Technology. According to Rogozin, the robot had been tested as a security system for the Vostochny cosmodrome.
The developer claims that the Marker can also become the carrier of kamikaze quadrocopters. One Marker robot can house up to 16 drones in boxes — four drones per box. These drones can be used to shoot down enemy drones. The Marker can also be equipped with laser weapons capable of striking drones at long distances.
The combat version of the robot can be equipped with anti-tank missile systems paired with a heavy machine gun or other weapons.
The Marker robots are equipped with an artificial intelligence system and the machine learning technology, director of the Air Defense Museum, retired colonel Yuri Knutov said.
Russia used robotic equipment in Syria, but the Syrian landscape of the battlefield was significantly different from that of Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is sending only four of such robotic machines to study their behaviour in urban areas and make possible improvements.
“Outwardly, they look like small tanks. They can be armed with a machine gun and an anti-tank missile with a range of up to about six kilometers. They can be operated either remotely or directly from a computer with elements of artificial intelligence. The Marker also has the machine vision technology, which contains images of enemy tanks. The robot can thus identify NATO-made tanks. This excludes attacks on its own tanks," Knutov told lenta.ru publication.
The Marker is also capable of establishing the priority of an attack based on the principle of which threat on the battlefield poses the greatest danger.
“Thanks to machine learning, the robot will improve its own performance in the course of hostilities. Its artificial intelligence will develop. Such robots were designed for urban environments in the first place. They often operate with the support of drones. The second option is flat terrain, such as in the Zaporizhzhia region, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine intend to use their Western tanks, ” the expert concluded.