Autonomous Killer Robots

"[Ukraine has] made the logic brutally clear of why autonomous weapons have advantages."

"There will be weapons of mass destruction that are cheap, scalable and easily available in arms markets all over the world."

"[When soldiers are hunted by autonomous killer drones they effectively have no exit route] There's nowhere for them to go, so they just wait around to die."

Stuart Russell, A.I. scientist, University of California, Berkeley

"We need maximum automation. These technologies are fundamental to our victory."

"We already have systems which can be mass-produced and now they're extensively tested on the front lines which means they're already actively used."

"We need to win first. To do that, we will do everything we can to introduce automation to its maximum to save the lives of our soldiers."

Mykhailo Federov, Ukraine Minister of Digital Transformation

Drones are Transforming the Battlefield in Ukraine But in an Evolutionary Fashion

Ukraine is fighting a conflict of survival of itself as a nation against a larger, well-equipped military whose leadership is engrossed in a scheme to destroy the country's sovereign status, the better to absorb it into Greater Russia, claiming that there is no Ukrainian identity, culture or history outside of its historical Russian connections. Ukraine, like other Eastern European countries that were drawn into the USSR's net of control and occupation, has no wish to return to that era, and its vigorous response to Moscow's claims has been exceptionally courageous.

Entrepreneurs in Ukraine, engineers and military units all are part of a near future of self-guided drones capable of coordinating attacks, along with machine guns equipped with computer vision that can automatically shoot down soldiers. In development is an unmanned copter with machine guns. To the present the weapons under development are not as developed as science fiction depicts, further from the advanced systems produced by the United States, China and Russia.

In their crude state, however, they are inexpensive to produce and Ukraine authorities place their trust in the technologies that could give Ukraine a military edge over Russia, an implacable enemy that is also developing autonomous killer weaponry. These initiatives in the development of AI-generated autonomous robots concern rights groups for their potential to begin another arms race. Even Ukrainian soldiers have raised concerns of the potential for malfunctioning autonomous drones hitting their own forces.

 

Factories and labs have appeared across Ukraine with the determined intention of building remote-controlled machines -- from long-range aircraft and attack boats to inexpensive kamikaze drones. Drones guided by a pilot wearing virtual-reality-like goggles capturing views from the drone; precursors to more sophisticated machines able to act on their own eventually.

 

Ukrainian drone maker Saker produces 1,000 circuit boards monthly loaded with software attachable to F.P.V. drones, enabling them to auto-lock onto a target. Plans are to expand to 9,000 boards monthly by summer's end. Some Ukraine military units have used Saker's technology to hit Russian front line targets. "Once we reach the point when we don't have enough people, the only solution is to substitute them with robots", explained a Saker founder. 

 

Russia's advancing weaponry program has had the effect of spurring Ukraine's innovations in the hopes of countering Russia's weaponry. International officials have debated rules on the use of autonomous weapons for over a decade, yet few expect an agreement by the international community to set new regulations in face of the fact that the United States, China, Israel, Russia and others are racing to develop more advanced weapons.

A soldier in northeastern Ukraine uses zip ties to attach explosives to a drone for a strike mission on a Russian target. (Finbarr O’Reilly/The New York Times)

"These weapons will be used, and they'll be used in the military arsenal of pretty much everybody."

"[Nobody expects countries to accept a ban of such weapons] but they should be regulated in a way that we don't end up with an absolutely nightmare scenario."

Alexander Kmentt, Austria's top negotiator on autonomous weapons at the U.N.