The advancement of drones in Ukraine has accelerated a long-awaited technological trend that could soon usher in a new era of warfare by bringing the world’s first fully autonomous combat robots to the battlefield. According to military analysts, combatants and AI researchers, the longer the war lasts, the more likely drones are to be used to identify, select and attack targets without human assistance.

This would mean as profound a revolution in military technology as the introduction of machine guns. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack aircraft and anti-drone weapons equipped with artificial intelligence. Russia also claims to have artificial intelligence, although these claims have not been proven. But there are no confirmed cases of a nation using robots in war and killing completely on their own. Experts say it may be a matter of time before Russia or Ukraine or both deploy them.

“Many states are developing this technology,” said Zachary Cullenborn, a weapons innovation analyst at George Mason University. — Of course, everything is not so complicated.

The sense of inevitability extends to activists who have tried for years to ban lethal drones but now believe they should be content with trying to limit the offensive use of the weapon.

Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous lethal drones are the “logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. According to him, Ukraine is carrying out “a lot of research and development in this direction”.

“I think there’s a lot of potential for that in the next six months,” Fedorov said in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

Ukrainian Lieutenant Colonel Yaroslav Gonchar, co-founder of the nonprofit fighter innovation organization Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the frontline that human fighters cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines. Ukraine’s military leadership currently prohibits the use of fully independent deadly weapons, but that could change, he said.

“We haven’t crossed that line yet and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what the future will bring.” Gonchar, whose group has pioneered innovation in the drone industry in Ukraine, turning low-cost commercial drones into deadly weapons, said.

Russia can buy autonomous AI from Iran. Iran-supplied Shahed-136 long-range explosive drones have damaged Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians, but they are not very smart. Iran has other drones in its developing arsenal that it says are equipped with artificial intelligence.

Western manufacturers say Ukraine can, without too much trouble, make semi-autonomous armed drones fully independent so that they can better withstand obstacles on the battlefield. These drones include the US Switchblade 600 and Poland’s Warmate, both currently requiring a human to select targets via live video. AI gets the job done. Technically known as “unmanned munitions,” drones can hover over a target for minutes for a clean shot.

“The technology for performing a fully autonomous task with a switchblade almost exists today,” said Waheed Nawabi, CEO of its manufacturer AeroVironment. This will require policy changes to remove people from the decision-making process, which it estimates will take three years.

Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement as to whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that machines don’t make mistakes and don’t take the lives of non-combatants.

The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia whether they used autonomous weapons for offensive purposes and whether they would agree not to use them if the other party agreed to do the same. None of them answered. It may not even be the first time if one side attacks with full AI. An imprecise UN report claims that the killer robots first appeared in 2020 during the internal conflict in Libya, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones killed an unspecified number of militants in fully automatic mode.

A spokesperson for manufacturer STM said the report was based on “speculative, unconfirmed” information and “should not be taken seriously”. He told the AP that the Kargu-2 could not attack a target until the operator told him to.

Fully autonomous AI is already helping to protect Ukraine. Utah-based Fortem Technologies has supplied the Ukrainian military with drone hunting systems that combine small radars and drones, both powered by AI. Radars are designed to detect enemy drones, which UAVs then neutralize by firing nets at them – moreover, without human assistance.

The number of drones with artificial intelligence continues to increase. Israel has been exporting them for decades. The radar lethal harpy can hover over an anti-aircraft radar for up to nine hours and wait for it to activate.

Other examples include Beijing’s Blowfish-3 unmanned gun helicopter. Russia is working on a nuclear-armed artificial intelligence underwater drone called Poseidon. Now the Dutch are testing a ground robot with a 50-caliber machine gun.

Gonchar believes that Russia, which has little regard for international law in its attacks on the peaceful Ukrainian people, would already be using autonomous lethal drones if they were left to the Kremlin.

“I don’t think they would have any doubts,” said Adam Bartosevich, vice president of WB Group, which makes Warmate. Source