November 14, 2024
991st day of Russian invasion
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Ukraine trains army of robot drones to identify Russian troops by movement and uniform

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Ukraine is training an army of robot drones, teaching them how to distinguish Russian soldiers on the battlefield by their uniforms and the way they move, a new report has said.

Ukraine has been called a ‘war lab for the future’ and nowhere more so than in the military use of drones, with Kyiv aiming to produce a million UAVs this year.

However, the report, written by US-Ukrainian journalist David Kirichenko, warned Nato that Western military ethics may hand Russia an advantage when it comes to the use of AI drones. 

Mr Kirichenko spent weeks on the frontline and researched how Ukraine is increasingly using robot drones to level the playing field against Russia’s superior might.

“Leveraging technology to counter Russia’s both superior numbers of people and systems and weapons,” he said.

“So Ukraine has really defied the narrative that a much bigger power will overwhelm a much smaller nation.

“So Ukraine, using technology, being very innovative, has been able to bring the fight back against Russia â€“ to counter Russia.”

One of the drones used by Ukraine is the SAKER scout drone, reportedly being used successfully against Russian targets.

It can independently identify lots of different targets, from armoured vehicles to troop formations, and feed that information back to a command post.

This then allows the human controller of the drone to decide the best action to take.

The Saker has a range of 10km and its own inertial guidance system, rather than relying on GPS, which makes it far less vulnerable to jamming.

As the war in Ukraine has progressed the strike rate of conventional FPVs has fallen, with both sides improving their jamming systems and other countermeasures.

The report said even good pilots have a hit rate of less than 50% and among newer recruits that drops to just 10%.

However, with the robot drones, that success rate is said to rise to 80%.

Palantir, a US software company, is one of the firms driving Ukraine’s push toward AI drones.

Described by Time Magazine as the “AI arms dealer of the 21st century”, nearly all of Ukraine’s artillery targeting is now reportedly carried out using this company’s AI systems.

The Palantir software collates data from a number of sources – human intelligence, drones, radar, and even thermal imaging that can detect troop movements or artillery fire.

It then uses AI modelling to process that information and give commanders a variety of targeting options.

The software even learns as it goes, becoming more accurate over time.

Ukraine’s AI drones are reportedly being fed videos of Russian troops, learning how to recognise them, how they behave and the uniforms they wear.

But the report also flags some dangers in the AI arms race, which includes pitfalls Nato needs to start thinking about, with one being the moral aspect of AI.

If these thinking drones can recognise Russian soldiers, what happens, it asks, if they change into civilian clothes to avoid being targeted.

That, the report says, would put civilians at risk â€“ a prospect that would worry Ukraine and the West, but not Russia.

And that moral dilemma would give Moscow an advantage.

The other danger, it says, is these robot drones being hacked, even commandeered, and turned against their operators.

Drones, even AI ones, can’t always assess nuances of the battlefield â€“ a blind spot that could lead to errors of judgment, says the report.

Nevertheless, this new technological frontier is only going to accelerate.

The war of the future – the report predicts – is likely to be as much about algorithms as armour.

Source: Forces News

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