Drone rescues Ukrainian soldier stranded for 33 days behind enemy lines

One of the more legendary (and true) stories within the Navy SEAL teams is the April 1972 rescue mission of downed U.S. Air Force EB-66 navigator Lt. Col. Iceal “Gene” Hambleton in Vietnam.

The rescue was carried out by then-Navy SEAL Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris and a lone Vietnamese SEAL, Nguyen Van Kiet. Dressed up as local fishermen, the two men took a small sampan two miles up-river into enemy territory to pluck Hambleton – the sole-surviving crewman – off a river bank, and to return him to their forward operating base. Along the way, they successfully dodged enemy patrols and machine gun fire, all the while hiding Hambleton in the bottom of the sampan under equipment and vegetation.

Up until about three years ago, the rescue of a stranded servicemember behind enemy lines, like Hambleton’s in Vietnam, might have looked almost exactly the same as Norris’ rescue mission, with the exception that more sophisticated weapons, communications equipment, and geolocating devises would have been involved. The basics, though, of sending in ground or air rescue forces – humans – to rescue someone in enemy territory would look the same.z

But we may be entering a very different world as today’s rescue missions are starting to look markedly different, with unmanned vehicles (drones) that can traverse enemy territory and safely transport stranded combatants back to friendly-controlled territory.

Just such an operation took place in Ukraine this month.

According to CBS News, on November 4, Ukrainian forces successfully rescued one of their own wounded soldiers who had been stranded behind Russian lines for 33 days. Ukraine’s 1st Medical Battalion sent in an unmanned MAUL ground drone to extract the soldier.

The MAUL is a Ukrainian-built, human-controlled, armored drone on airless metal wheels that is designed for personnel recovery. It has an armored capsule on its top in which rescued personnel enter for the return journey. It has an off-road range of 100 kms and can carry up to 200 kilos.

Frontal camera view of the MAUL drone during its rescue mission. An explosion can be seen in front of the drone. (CBS via Ukrainian Ground Forces 1st Medical Battalion)

The MAUL robot traveled 64 kms (approximately 40 miles) through minefields and territory peppered with Russian attack drones and survived an anti-personnel mine explosion while en route. It finally reached the Ukrainian solider, who then closed himself into MAUL’s armored human cargo space on its arrival at his position. The MAUL then successfully made it the roughly 20 miles back to Ukrainian-held territory.

This revolutionary combat rescue is incredible to those of us who have worked in the past in the combat search-and-rescue arena. It also speaks to the leaps and bounds being made in battlefield technology – especially in unmanned drones – on the ground, sea, and air around Ukraine.

Russia’s war in Ukraine war will go down in military history as one of the turning point in the nature of modern warfare, much like the American Civil War and World War I before it. Both of those wars also saw the introduction of game-changing tactics, technologies, and weapons to the battlefield.

While Tom Norris’ actions in Vietnam underscored his personal heroism and the lengths to which American forces will go to in order to rescue one of their own, modern forces look like they will now have the option of using unmanned drones instead to effect those same daring rescues. Currently, the headquarters of the Navy SEALs’ Naval Special Warfare Group Two building in eastern Virginia bears the name “The LT Thomas R Norris Building.” But in the future, commanders looking to bestow names on military buildings, may no longer have any heroic human rescuers to choose from.

Feature Image: The MAUL unmanned ground vehicle on the IT Arena 2025 exposition. (Photo courtesy of DevDroid)

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