Head to the UK for DSEI 2025 to get a look at the latest in robotics tech

The battlefield of tomorrow won't just feature human soldiers

Autonomous systems are transforming how wars are fought, from unmanned ground vehicles to precision missile systems that can operate independently

Leading the charge of these game-changing technologies is Milram Robotics. What are we standing in front of telling me all about the Havoc

Yeah, so this is the first time she's ever been out in public. We have electric axles, and so we have instant torque, like a Tesla

So when you press the gas, there's no lag. And so we've designed this vehicle to be able to go approximately 70 kilometers an hour

both in forward and in reverse, because we have eight-wheel steering and we have an autonomy kit

on both ends. I've never seen anything like that in my life. The idea being is she can come up out

of a hide site, engage a target, and then quickly get back to hide from FPV threats

anti-tank missiles, anything like that. Who are some of the other crucial partnerships

either on software or the hardware side, that are required to make something like the Havoc a reality

Open architecture. So that's the reason we did it that way. So if our customer wants to use Starlink, hey, here you go. We'll plug it in. Open architecture on the inside. Open architecture with our cost communication systems and situational awareness. One C2 system in UAE is not the same C2 system in the Netherlands. So we have to have that open architecture that allows us to be more flexible to our customers' requirements

Today, if you look at operations in Ukraine, there are no tanks

There are no APCs. All of these capital assets full of people are unable to go and operate on the front lines

It's because they have no protection. So you take a vehicle like Havoc here today, you take the turret off

We put a counter UAS system on top of this vehicle. And then with the autonomy kit that Milram has developed over the course of the last 10 years of existence

you say, hey, here's five vehicles. Stay in the middle and protect them from threats above

And so with something like a 30-millimeter cannon, we can project force out to 15, 20 kilometers and protect those capital assets from the FPV threat at a really low cost-per-kill ratio

But the Havoc is just one part of Milram's broader strategy. The company has also developed the Themis, a smaller but equally capable platform that's already being deployed in combat

What we demonstrating here is the ability and the flexibility of Themis to integrate any system As long as it weighs 1 kilos or less we able to integrate local products we able to bring local industry into our baseline

and then we're going to take this system and we're going to offer it to Ukraine. In fact, there's a 100,000 euro bounty by the Russians on capturing one of our systems

with the base station and with the controller. Some of the tech specs that most stand out to you are personal favorites on this particular piece of machine

Yeah, so Silent Watch. So we've been in Ukraine under our own investment for the last 18 months

and we've been working all the time with them trying to figure out what the best mix of gas versus electrical power is

And so we've tuned Themis to have enough silent watch mobility that we can turn the engine off

we operate at night, there's no thermal signature, and she can go up, pick people up

she can come back and as soon as she's out of the threat environment, turn the engine on, and continue on her way

We just did that mission a few weeks ago where the gentleman who got struck by an anti-personnel line, he was stuck in a field

It was nighttime. It was too dangerous because of the FPV threats. So they turned the motor off. They sent her in. The guy crawled up into the basket

We brought him home. The guy survived. Kept both of his legs. You know, like these are things that we see every day and these are missions we're doing all the time

From land to sea, autonomous systems are reshaping military operations. L3 Harris is pioneering new tech that removes human operators from dangerous situations

So I think this ship is a very good example of like L3 Harris as a whole. We've got a maritime ship that has an autonomous capability

Autonomy is a thing that we do at L3 Harris. We can build autonomous systems

This boat is kind of an example of that. And that little green mushroom is actually a sensor

It's called the Muse. And Muse is a comm sensor. So it senses communication, radio frequency, emissions

then we use that sensor to identify the location that's transmitting and perhaps even who it is or what it is that's transmitting

This for us is new because previously we've worked in radar, our radio frequency

Think radar, think anti-surface to air missile or another airplane. Now what we're demonstrating is we can take the entire electromagnetic spectrum from RF comms to RF radar

take all of that and look at it real time So various segments of our company coming together to produce actually an entire defense article with modern capability

While L3 Harris may dominate the surface, BAE Systems is pushing autonomous technology beneath the waves

What are we standing in front of? So we're standing in front of a representation of our extra large autonomous underwater vehicle

So it's 12 meters long, about eight tons, so a bit of a beast

this is a machine a tool used to autonomously navigate the deep oceans and fulfill a range of

jobs use cases from hunting submarines to firing torpedoes to conducting spying missions it's got a

super long range so you can either fit lithium-ion battery solution in it or hydrogen fuel cell

it will give it a range of up to 5 000 kilometers 45 days so huge endurance you know you can get to

most parts of the world to do various missions with that. And the other key thing is advanced

autonomy. Ultimately, the robots are there to get the user out of harm's way so they can operate

them from quite a distance. Traditionally, we'll be in a car bomb, those kind of areas. Let's start

right here. What are we looking at? So T-7 is a large one. So despite the size of it, you can

actually use and go very intricate in its controls in the deactivation of the bombs, in fact

actually, but typically allows you to drag even cars out of areas of operation. So for instance

if you're in an urban context, you could potentially drag the car away before you actually go in and

start deactivating the bomb that may be in there. In fact, the other things that we've really done

and we think are real differentiators, we've got a thing called a haptic fingers in there

which are really intricate fingers, which almost emulate your hands in its operation. So when I

I talk about unzipping, cutting wires, for instance, that's what we can actually do in

this capability. So whilst it's quite capable in its operation, it's actually quite intricate

in how it operates at times as well. Precision missile technology represents another frontier

in autonomous warfare. German defense contractor Diehl is developing systems that can protect

entire regions from aerial threats. The system is already in operations in Ukraine. So the task

or the mission of the system is to protect larger areas against aerial threats Those threats are mainly jets or fighter aircraft or air ammunition or especially like we see in Ukraine on a daily basis

it's cruise missiles or even drones that we need to intercept to protect civil infrastructure or critical assets on the ground

Let's talk about the mid-range missile. What are we looking at? And if I'm not mistaken, this is essentially one-to-one

This is the actual size that we're talking about. What should we know? This is a 40-kilometer range, 20-kilometer altitude interceptor

We have a direct hit capability in this interceptor that means we hit the target structure directly

This is done with the imaging infrared seeker. We have under the nose cone, you see on top of the missile

So with pinpoint accuracy, we are capable to hit the target. And this reduces, let's say, the impact on the ground and fratricize we might cause with the debris coming down

so a very precise and interceptor that has a very high single shot kill probability

Yeah, the construction of the missile is one thing. The full stack and the delivery is something altogether

Tell me about what we got. This is essentially the launcher, the Iris CSLM launcher, built on a 24 ISO container frames

So we launch the interceptor vertical, and from the vertical start it can go into any direction

to protect against threats coming in from 360 degrees. Normally, they are remotely controlled from the second element we see down here from the tactical operations center

So this is the only manned element during operations. We have three operators sitting there doing all the air defense

How important is it for you and the team at Deal to stay agile, to stay mobile

to be able to use and embrace new technologies on top of your core existing products

I think we learn this on a daily basis right now in the conflicts like in Ukraine

where the system is involved, that you need to continuously improve the capabilities of the systems

You need to embrace new technologies, find ways how to harvest new capabilities

that might come up through new technologies and figure out what makes sense and what doesn't

and really improve the systems and stay ahead of the threat