Russia's uncrewed robot tank fails during debut military display in front of President Putin

What happened

Russia's uncrewed robot tank fails during debut military display in front of President Putin, according to Tom's Hardware. Russia’s new Shturm uncrewed tank failed during its debut display at Tsentr-2026, a Russia-led strategic military exercise held from September 28 to October 3, 2026, losing its command-and-control (C2) link and eventually getting stuck in the mud. According to an October 3 Defense Blog post , the tank repeatedly lost its C2 radio link with its separate command vehicle, forcing organizers to abandon remote operations and switch to a human driver-mechanic for a demonstration in front of President Vladimir Putin.

Despite manual human control, the vehicle eventually got stuck in a muddy ditch beside a dirt track, with its tracks and front hull buried in the soil. Its defining feature — and the primary source of failure during its debut demonstration — is its control system, which allows the tank to be remotely operated from a separate crewed command vehicle within a radio link range of roughly 3 kilometers. It also has provision for a manual, on-board human driver.