Mykhailo Fedorov, the official who built Ukraine's "Army of Drones" program, has a new project and a new deadline. On Sept. 26, at the IT Arena conference in Lviv, the former defense minister launched an "Army of Robots," a pooled ecosystem of engineers, startups and capital. Its first target, per Defense News and C4ISRNET, is a confirmed battlefield result from a humanoid-like robot within six months. Its second is an assault within a year in which robots take the most dangerous parts of the fight with no infantry alongside them.
Fedorov was removed as defense minister by President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 15, 2026, after six months in the job, according to DroneXL. The launch was made through a post on X and a presentation in Lviv. C4ISRNET reports that Fedorov framed the effort as a "new Manhattan Project." His stated aim was blunt: "We want to eventually substitute our infantry with these robots."
What Was Announced
The initiative is not a single product. According to a press statement cited by C4ISRNET, it includes a venture fund, its own defense-tech companies and an R&D arm. The project's website carries the line "We are here to replace people with robots on the battlefield and save lives," DroneXL reports. The group is recruiting robotics firms, engineers, a chief technology officer and co-investors.
Fedorov told Defense News that the company will begin with a corporate fund and may later launch its own venture fund. Defense News places that remark after its mention of the defense company he announced weeks earlier with Palantir CEO Alex Karp as first investor, so it is unclear which entity the fund belongs to. The plan is to start by investing in companies whose weapons have already been tested in combat. C4ISRNET reports that "two or three companies" are already partners, though none were named.
Three focus areas were laid out:
- Sensors and robots.
- Cheaper missiles to counter jet-powered Shahed drones.
- AI-enabled strike drones and missiles.
Only the first of these is about ground robots in the narrow sense. The other two extend the effort into air defense and strike systems, a reminder that the project is better read as a defense-tech investment vehicle with a robotics headline than as a single humanoid program.
The Humanoid in the Video
The launch material included an AI-generated video showing humanoid and crab-like ground robots, per C4ISRNET. DroneXL reports that the humanoid, labeled "0427," and the other designs are AI-generated concept art. C4ISRNET adds that most of the designs in the video have not been used in combat.
The first humanoid tasks are expected to be modest. DroneXL, citing dev.ua, reports that they are mechanical jobs: reloading machine guns, swapping batteries and placing sensors. That is a long way from the image of a robot infantryman, and it fits the six-month goal, which asks for a "confirmed battlefield result" rather than a fielded combat unit.
What Ukraine Already Fields
Ukraine does operate ground robots at scale, but they look very different from the concept art. C4ISRNET, citing Ukraine's Defense Ministry, reports that ground robots carried out more than 25,000 logistics and evacuation missions in August, about 3.3 times the January figure. DroneXL reports that the ministry also logged more than 9,000 armed ground-robot missions in a single month this spring.
Those fielded machines are almost always operated by a human over Starlink, according to C4ISRNET. The gap between a remotely driven tracked vehicle hauling supplies and an autonomous humanoid that changes the outcome of a fight is the real technical question behind the announcement.
Why It Matters
The announcement matters for three reasons. First, it shows where Ukraine's most prominent drone-program architect thinks the next gains are. Fedorov's record with the Army of Drones gives the new pitch weight, although his claims of more than 95 percent of strikes being carried out by drones and more than 700 UAV manufacturers are his own and have not been independently published, DroneXL notes.
Second, the timelines are unusually short and public. A six-month window for a humanoid-like battlefield result will be easy to check, and a year for a no-infantry assault is a demanding bar for machines that today depend on a human operator and a satellite link.
Third, Fedorov's own explanation for the urgency is the pace of the war. He told Defense News that the biggest challenge is the speed of innovation: "We don't have enough time." He also said Russia has learned to copy Ukrainian battlefield innovations and scale them. Defense News notes that over the weekend of the announcement Russian drones struck Kyiv kindergartens, university buildings and a hospital.
What to Watch
The project has a financial backstory too. On Sept. 1, Fedorov announced a defense-tech company with Palantir CEO Alex Karp as its first lead investor, DroneXL reports. DroneXL says Saturday's announcement named no company and leaves open which vehicle owns the Army of Robots, so the link between the two should not be assumed.
Open questions remain: who the partner companies are, how large the corporate fund is, and what counts as a "confirmed battlefield result." Until those are answered, the launch is best understood as a statement of intent backed by a credible name, a stated investment approach and a clock that is now running.
