Ukraine’s army is facing an acute need for unmanned ground vehicles, a class of robotic systems increasingly used for a wide range of frontline missions, according to the U.S. outlet TWZ.

The publication says demand for these platforms is rising as they are used for logistics, evacuation, rescue operations and combat tasks.

Andrei Gritsenyuk, head of Ukraine’s Brave1 defense cluster, told TWZ that Ukrainian forces are expected to receive 50,000 unmanned ground systems this year. He said the Ukrainian army relies almost entirely on domestically produced platforms on the front line, while foreign-made models remain present only in limited numbers.

Gritsenyuk said Ukraine has made locally produced unmanned battlefield systems a priority over the past two years. According to him, 280 private companies in Ukraine are now producing 550 different unmanned ground vehicles.

Most of these systems are used for logistics at distances of 10 to 15 kilometers from the front line, as well as for evacuating wounded soldiers and delivering fire.

Gritsenyuk also said Ukrainian combat ground vehicles are being fitted with machine-vision systems. Fiber-optic communications, however, are not used in these platforms.

The integration of such systems into the wider combined-arms structure is being carried out through the DELTA command-and-control system, the Brave1 chief added.