Russia Is Making Explosive Drones Out Of Toy Hoverboards

It suddenly makes sense why Russian troops in Ukraine were observed with a substantial number of toy hoverboards. A video montage that circulated online on Friday depicts the explosive ground robots—a pair of the two-wheeled hoverboards attached to an anti-tank mine—blowing up purported Ukrainian fortifications presumably somewhere along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine.

Last summer, the Dva Mayora volunteer organization in Russia developed the hoverboard unmanned ground vehicles and began distributing copies to Russian units. Half a year later in February, Russians were seen loading a bunch of the $100 hoverboards into a truck somewhere at or near the front. It’s possible they’d received them as donations from supporters back home—or stolen them from Ukrainian homes in the occupied zone.

Regardless, it should be apparent now that most of the hoverboards along the front line aren’t for riding—they’re for making one-way explosive drones.

Flying robots already dominate the battleground in Ukraine. The hundreds of thousands of tiny first-person-view drones Russian and Ukrainian forces deploy every month account for the majority of battlefield casualties—70 percent, according to The New York Times.

By comparison, ground robots are less ubiquitous, and for obvious reasons. It’s easier for a remote-controlled vehicle to fly unobstructed through the air than it is to crawl over rough terrain.

Thanks to their internal gyroscopes, hoverboards are extremely stable compared to traditional wheeled vehicles. A hoverboard UGV can speed across the front-line terrain faster than other ground robots. And the low cost of the toys mean the mine-laden ‘bots are expendable. No need for a regiment to save them for only the most valuable targets.

That the Russians appear to be using their hoverboards to build exploding robots doesn’t mean they won’t eventually ride them into battle. It’s worth noting the growing prevalence of surplus civilian electric scooters in the inventories of Russian regiments. After losing 17,000 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment in Ukraine, the Kremlin is growing truly desperate for battlefield transportation—and has sent troops on assaults on e-scooters, Lada compact cars, aging GAZ-69 trucks and at least one bus.

If and when toy hoverboards become more valuable as assault vehicles than drone components, they too might join the war-scooters and compact cars. At least as an assault vehicle, a hoverboard stands some chance of surviving a battle. As an explosive drone, a hoverboard heads out exactly once.