Ukraine Drone developments in Ukraine have sped up a long-expected technological trend that might soon usher in a new era of warfare by deploying the first completely autonomous fighting robots.
According to military experts, combatants, and artificial intelligence specialists, the likelihood that drones will be used to detect, choose, and attack targets without human assistance increases as the length of the battle increases.
Ukraine’s Military Technology Advancement
That would represent a military technology breakthrough on par with the invention of the machine gun. Ukraine already possesses AI-enhanced counter-drone weapons and semi-autonomous attack drones.
Although the accusations are unsubstantiated, Russia asserts that it has AI weapons. However, there are no documented cases of a country using combat robots that can kill fully on its own.
In addition, scientists are concerned about terrorists recreating AI-based weapons. In one terrifying possibility, the US military invests hundreds of millions of dollars in creating the programming that runs killer drones. Then it is taken and copied, giving terrorists essentially the same weapon.
The Pentagon has not authorized the employment of even a single AI-enabled autonomous weapon by US forces, claims Allen, the former Defense Department official. Any proposed system requires the approval of two undersecretaries and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The United States has continued to develop these weapons despite this fact. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military research facilities, university institutions, and the business sector are all currently engaged in project activity.
The Pentagon has put a lot of emphasis on employing AI to support human soldiers. The Air Force is looking at how to combine drones with pilots as wingmen.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary and proponent Robert O. Work stated in a report published last month that once AI-enabled systems surpass human performance, it would be crazy not to go to an autonomous system; he claimed that this threshold was reached in 2015 when computer vision performance surpassed that of humans.
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Ukraine Takes Down Russian Drones
Exploding drones are bulky, loud, and relatively easy to shoot down from the air; according to Ukraine, its military shot down all 80 or so exploding drones that Russia allegedly launched into the country over the New Year’s weekend.
Although Ukraine is becoming more adept at bringing down drones, there remains a developing imbalance, Much more expensive than the drones are several of its defensive armaments, including surface-to-air missiles. And that could ultimately work in Moscow’s favor, according to some military analysts.
According to Artem Starosiek, the CEO of Molfar, a Ukrainian consultant that aids in the nation’s military operations, shooting down a drone with a missile can cost up to seven times as much as launching one. Some observers speculate that the Kremlin may be relying on that calculation.
The Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones that Moscow has been depending on more and more since October are simple and reasonably priced, but experts say the variety of armaments used to shoot them out of the sky can be much more expensive.
Self-destructive drones can be produced for as little as $20,000, but shooting a surface-to-air missile can cost anything from $140,000 for a Soviet-era S-300 to $500,000 for an American NASAMS missile.
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