Aleksandar Vučić promised on August 29: armed robots of Chinese design would be in service with the army "within 15 days" of the factory in Šabac opening. The promise, at least in front of the cameras, has been kept. At the large military exercise "Viktor 2026" in south-western Serbia, on September 13, the Serbian Army showed armed four-legged robots operating alongside soldiers.

And they are not toys. According to reports from the exercise, the robots carried Yugoslav-designed "Osa" anti-tank rockets, automatic rifles and 40-millimetre grenade launchers. In the footage they fire automatic weapons and enter a mock-up building, with soldiers following them. They look almost identical to the industrial D1 Max Pro model by the Chinese company AgiBot, which is a partner in the Šabac factory. Whether they were assembled in Serbia, nobody says: the Serbian Army did not answer the question of where they were produced.

The Šabac factory plans to produce 3,000 humanoid and four-legged robots a year. It sounds like the start of a Balkan army of "killer robots". Analysts, however, are cooling the excitement. American military technology expert Jared Keller believes Serbia will probably face the same problems that made other armies rethink robot dogs.

Ukraine has already tried them

In August 2024 the Ukrainian army released footage of soldiers with robot dogs and drew enormous attention. Two years later, they are rarely seen on the battlefield. Instead, front-line units have switched en masse to wheeled ground drones. Ukraine's "Spider" ground drone weighs 50 kilograms and carries a load of 100. An advanced four-legged robot of the same weight carries barely 10 kilograms. Belgrade, for its part, claims its "dog" carries up to 50.

Each such dog requires around 12 separate motors and a whole array of sensors. The batteries drain quickly, the risk of breakdown grows, and the advanced models cost tens of thousands of dollars. And all of it is an easy target for a cheap FPV drone.

The real message is geopolitical

Almost 60 percent of Serbia's arms imports between 2020 and 2024 came from China. Missile systems, unmanned aircraft, and now robots. Beijing and Belgrade call it an "ironclad friendship". Washington and Brussels don't hide their unease: the State Department said Serbia's future economic opportunities "will depend to a large extent on the investments, political decisions and partnerships it chooses today" and urged Belgrade to choose trusted partners, "like the United States of America".

Keller is blunt: "Leaders of middle-ranking powers often show off advanced weapons to send a message of technological power, even when those systems are not backed by clear tactics and doctrine." Translated into Balkan: the robot isn't for the enemy, it's for the camera. The question remains who the message is actually meant for - Brussels, Washington, or the neighbours?