• Ukraine's soldiers have been fighting Russia with M2 Browning machine guns, an iconic American weapon.
• Now, ground robot makers are adding them to their AI-enabled fighting weapons.
• One maker told BI that the gun's wide employment and reliability make it a weapon of choice.

An iconic, century-old American machine gun is being put to work on the battlefields of Ukraine, including on AI-enabled robots designed to fight Russian forces.

John Browning conceived of the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun in 1918 toward the end of World War I, though it didn't enter service with the US military until closer to World War II. Known as "Ma Deuce," this powerful gun is among the most famous and enduring weapons.

It's received a number of upgrades, and it is still used by US forces and other militaries. In fact, it's one of the most widely used heavy machine guns in the world today.

And now it's part of the robotic age. It's being mounted on Ukraine's advanced autonomous robots that use AI to drive to Russian positions and attack.

Battle bots with M2

Ukrainian forces are using robots equipped with machine guns, grenade launchers, and explosives to fire on the Russians and blow up beside Russian targets. Many of the Ukrainian defense firms working in this space have chosen the M2 machine gun as an armament for these robots.

Ukraine's FRDM group, for instance, is a drone and ground robot manufacture that makes its D-21-12 remotely controlled ground battle vehicle with the .50 caliber gun attached.

The robot, designed for firefights and surveillance, weighs 1,289 pounds with its ammunition included and can travel more than six miles an hour. It was approved for use by the military in April.

Ihor Kulakevych, a product manager at FRDM group, told Business Insider last month that the M2 was chosen because the heavy machine gun is readily available in many arsenals in the West. This weapon and the ammunition are easily obtained.

The same cannot be said for Ukraine's supply of Soviet-made machine guns. The stocks are running low, and they can't exactly get more, aside from capturing them in battle.

Kulakevych said his company also sees the M2 as a particularly reliable weapon.

Vadym Yunyk, the CEO of FRDM Group, told BI that the company developed its robot "in response to the urgent need to reduce risks to personnel while performing logistical tasks on the front lines." He said that it can be used for tasks including evacuating wounded soldiers and serving as "a platform for mounting weapons." He said that it has "proven its effectiveness on the battlefield."

Other robot makers are also using the M2. Ukrainian company DevDroid, for example, has developed a new combat module for its Droid TW 12.7 ground robotic complex that can carry the M2 Browning.

The vehicle was originally developed as a logistics platform, but the addition of the machine gun made it into a combat robot, the company said this month. It is on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the company said that it uses AI, describing it as having "high-precision target recognition using artificial intelligence."

The M2 is also being used in an AI-powered turret called the Sky Sentinel that Ukraine said has been able to shoot down some of Russia's large and devastating Shahed drones and can stop cruise missiles.

The Sky Sentinel system is designed to require almost no human involvement, which is important for Ukraine as it faces big manpower shortages compared to the much larger Russia. The system uses AI to find and track targets and determine firing solutions, which is valuable for the Ukrainians as they face relentless Russian air attacks while grappling with shortages of air defenses.

High- and low-tech solutions

The M2 has seen combat in a range of conflicts, from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.

In Ukraine, they are being used by real soldiers, not just robots. Ukraine's air defense soldiers are also using the M2s mounted on the back of trucks to shoot down Russian drones. (A BI reporter actually tried out a simulator for this weapon in Kyiv).

The war in Ukraine is one that features both high- and low-tech solutions, like more drones than any other conflict in history, new types of electronic warfare, and other emerging technologies alongside simple combat options, like shotguns for shooting down fiber-optic drones and hastily welded cages on tanks.

There's trench warfare like something straight out of World War I and ground robots with machine guns.

Ground robots are a technology that has been used by Western militaries before, but Ukraine is developing them at a new speed and scale, and it's getting constant feedback about how they work on an intense battlefield so makers can refine them.

• After college, I moved from Nashville to a remote island in Washington.
• There's no grocery store or gas station here, and most residents are at least 30 years my senior.
• Living here full-time requires careful planning, but it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Last summer, I was a year out of college and living in Nashville, with no idea where to go next.

Most of my friends were headed to New York City, with a few straying from the norm by going to other big cities, like Denver or Dallas. I, however, veered entirely off the norm — practically skidding on two wheels — by moving to a tiny, remote spot in Washington's San Juan Islands where I spent summers as a kid in my family's cabin.

The small island wasn't on my short list of places to move postgrad. In fact, it wasn't on any of my lists. However, the appeal of a slower pace of life, coupled with the quintessential feelings of being lost in my 20s, compelled me to try living there.

Living here is unlike anything I've experienced before

My family's 40-year-old cabin was built in just two weeks and was never meant to be lived in full-time. It has single-pane glass windows that creak with every gust of wind, and the rotting deck grows even more rotted with each rainy season that passes.

It's a far cry from my high-rise existence in Nashville, but it has its benefits.

The beaches, scattered with sun-worn driftwood, stretch on for miles, with scarcely another person in sight. While sitting at my kitchen table, I watch seals bobbing in the waves, shorebirds diving for their dinner, eagles scanning the land down below, and geese flapping their strong wings as they take off.

Almost every morning, I walk the rocky expanse of beach that lies outside my front door.

However, life on the island has its quirks. Gone are the days of my convenient city existence, where everything I needed was within a few-mile radius. In fact, my new home has no grocery store, no gas station, and only one point of public access.

Trips to the mainland can only be made via a small water taxi, which operates a handful of times throughout the week. Thankfully, modernity has started to catch up, with the frequency of the island taxi runs increasing and even enabling local grocery delivery through Instacart.

Living here full-time requires meticulous planning, thorough lists and a sprinkle of resourcefulness.

I've even formed unlikely friendships with my older neighbors

In Nashville, I was surrounded by neighbors on the 15th floor of an apartment building — yet I never met a single one of them. Here, however, it didn't take long for me to form close bonds with the locals.

They're a hearty, salty, rugged bunch, and I quickly learned that I would do best to avoid getting on their bad side. They're the kind of people who can catch, kill, and fix anything, and most of them are at least 30 years my senior.

I, on the other hand — young, bright-eyed, and with little to no hard skills — definitely did not fit the mold of an island resident. Despite this, I was welcomed into the community with open arms.

On the eve of the first bad winter storm, my 75-year-old neighbor came barreling down the dirt road in his mandarin-orange 1970s pick-up. He wanted to ensure I was prepared for the storm and even offered his place up the hill in case of a power outage.

He, along with our 92-year-old neighbor — another gruff but gentle gentleman — would become my most dutiful, watchful caretakers. We exchange chocolate chip cookies for backyard apples, compare foraged beach treasures, and grab groceries for each other in town.

On the island, looking out for others in your community is the most valuable form of currency.

I couldn't be happier with my decision to embrace island life

Here, I've found a sense of community that I never knew before. I've discovered a lifestyle that is filled with adventure, joy, and the kind of self-confidence that only comes from learning resourcefulness.

Every day, I'm lucky to experience a connection with — and reverence for — the natural world that surrounds me.

I know my life looks different than that of my peers. There are no coffee shops to frequent every morning, no going to restaurants with friends on a Friday night, and don't even get me started on the dating scene. It's the last place anyone would expect a 23-year-old to choose to live, let alone love.

Although it took some time to adjust — I'm a sucker for buying an expensive specialty latte at a coffee shop — I eventually found my groove, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.

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The feud between Trump and Musk has reignited over the bill.

President Trump said Tuesday that DOGE could investigate Elon Musk, the latest indicator that his patience with the Tesla CEO is running thin.

The big picture: The two men have engaged in a war of words in the past 24 hours, with Musk taking to X to vent his objections to the president's "big, beautiful bill" and the estimated $3.3 trillion it would add to the national debt.

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• Trump posted to Truth Social overnight that DOGE may need to take a "good, hard look" at Musk's companies, and he doubled down on the notion when he spoke to reporters Tuesday.
• "We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon," he said before boarding Marine One.

Zoom out: When asked if he would consider deporting Musk, Trump said he didn't know.

• "We'll have to take a look," he said.

Worth noting: Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen. While the Justice Department has recently directed attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases where naturalized citizens commit crimes, Trump did not suggest that Musk had committed any crime.

Editor's note: This is a breaking news story and will be updated with more information.

• AI voice agent startup Cekura has raised $2.4 million in seed funding, led by Y Combinator.
• Cekura fine-tunes AI agents in highly regulated spaces like health and finance.
• It sees a vast opportunity as call centers increasingly bend to AI.

Eight-month-old Cekura has raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Y Combinator to fine-tune AI voice agents.

Flex Capital, Hike Ventures, Pioneer Fund, and Decacorn participated in the round, as did angel investors Kulveer Taggar, Chris Smoak, Ooshma Garg, Richard Aberman, and JJ Fliegelman.

Cekura — a riff on the word secure, rebranded from Vocera in March — was founded by a trio of IIT Bombay grads in their twenties: Sidhant Kabra, Tarush Agarwal, and Shashij Gupta. The company has seven employees and expects to onboard three others next month.

Kabra told Business Insider the longtime friends were working on AI agents in the healthcare space and struggling with quality assurance (QA) amid manual fixes that could take hours.

Cekura uses AI to simulate conversations and generate thousands of edge-case scenarios to put AI agents through their paces before going live.

"The customers will interrupt you, the customers will be toxic, the customers will try to jailbreak you, the customers will operate out of bias," Kabra said. "You need to really stress test your agents before you go live."

After that, Cekura works to detect issues and can add new features so agents can assume more responsibilities.

As call centers shift to AI, Cekura sees vast opportunity. The company monetizes via a subscription model for startup clients, beginning at $1,000 per month. It also has custom enterprise offerings. While roughly 90% of its business is focused on voice agents, it also builds chat agents, Kabra said.

Competitors include fellow Y Combinator grads like Coval and Hamming. (Most recently, the famed accelerator's spring 2025 batch featured 70 startups focused on agentic AI — each of which received a $500,000 investment.)

Cekura has roughly 70 customers across industries — including in highly regulated spaces like healthcare and financial services, where "the threshold of reliability is pretty high," Kabra said.

Some of its clients include AI mortgage servicing startup Kastle and Sandra — an AI receptionist for car dealerships.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Cekura used to raise $2.4 million in seed funding. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.

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• Hank Faber has been a trucker for over 35 years.
• He turned to trucking after a series of bad weather forced him to sell his farms in the '80s.
• He still works part-time because he can't afford to retire and regrets selling the farms.

Hank Faber grips the handle of his 2009 Volvo with the practiced ease of a trucker who's maybe spent more time on the road than off it. He adjusts the seat, checks the mirrors, and starts the engine. For Faber, this truck isn't just transportation — it's the reason he can keep paying the bills.

Faber and his wife live paycheck-to-paycheck on his trucking income, their Social Security, and his wife's IRAs.

"I should be retired at my age," said Faber, who was 77 at the time of his interview with Business Insider in late 2024.

However, being self-employed most of his career, Faber never had a 401(k) and spent all his retirement savings years ago on a vacation spot in Kentucky.

"There were weeks when I drove a little less and my wife said, 'Hey, we're running short,'" Faber said, adding, "I've had to hit the road and go pick up two, three extra loads to finish out the month to raise my income."

At the time of his interview, Faber said his Volvo semi-truck, which he bought in 2009, had 999,740 miles on it. During his more than 35-year trucking career, Faber said he's driven over 4 million miles accident-free, earning him the Landstar Roadstar award for safety and professionalism.

He'll probably keep driving for as long as his health allows. "If my health would not allow me to truck, that would change our income drastically," he said.

Faber's situation is not uncommon. According to a BofA survey last year, an increasing number of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The survey found that 25% of households spend over 95% of their monthly incomes, leaving little left for savings.

Faber's big regret

Faber and his wife have about $6,000 in expenses each month. They haven't taken any big vacations in years, only go out to eat a couple of times a month, and their medical bills are largely covered by insurance, Faber said. Much of their expenses are paying back loans.

"I had to refinance my house when we got in financial trouble back about 15 years ago," Faber said, adding that "in 2020, we managed to refinance at an interest rate under 3%. If we don't miss a payment, the house would be paid off when we're 99 years old."

In addition to home payments, Faber said he has land and car payments. He's also paying back a $18,000 loan on his truck he had to take out when it broke down about three years ago. He said he was nearly finished paying it off at the time of the interview.

"If I could change things, I would have just stayed on the farm," he said.

Faber's farm

Before trucking, Faber said he owned a couple of farms in Indiana with 208 acres. He and his wife grew corn, soybeans, and wheat and raised sheep. In the mid-80s, though, misfortune struck two years in a row.

The first year, drought robbed them of their crops. "We had to take out federal crop insurance to protect us," Faber said. The Farmer's Home Administration gave him a loan with 13.75% interest, he said.

In the second year, a major hailstorm damaged their crops again. Unable to pay down the loan, it kept growing.

"It became $147,000. We could not keep going," Faber said. "So the farm was sold for $50,000. It was such a small amount, it didn't cover the mortgage. We lost money on that and still had to pay off the property tax," he said.

Looking back, Faber said they should have tried harder to stay because the farmland would be worth a lot more today. "If we could have managed to keep it, I would've been probably retired years ago."

After they left the farm, Faber began trucking.

Faber never had a 401(k)

Faber said he used to make well over $100,000 a year gross when he was driving a semi full-time, but after expenses like taxes, permits, and meals, he only had about a third of that left. "It's quite expensive," he said.

Being self-employed, Faber never had a 401(k) with any employee matching to help him grow a nest egg for retirement. However, "I did have a program where I put a small amount away a month for about 10 years," he said.

He cashed in all of that money, though, to buy a vacation spot in Kentucky. "We bought this lot with a trailer house, screened-in porch, and a boat," he said, adding, "Because I spent it all, I don't have any retirement funds put away at all."

So, Faber plans to keep driving for as long as his health allows. Hank has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, CLL, but it hasn't required treatment in the nine years he's had it, he said.

One day, he hopes to be financially stable enough that he can sell the truck and take a river cruise through Europe. "I would like to go to Portugal and the Czech Republic and stuff and take a cruise like the Viking cruise or something for my retirement."

This story was adapted from Hank Faber's interview for Business Insider's series "Life Lessons." Learn more about Swanagan's story and others' in the video below: