\u00a0There is growing evidence that Ukraine is making large-scale use of artificial intelligence to help drone pilots find and destroy Vladimir Putin’s forces in unprecedented numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Russia invaded in 2022 there were seven drone companies in Ukraine. There are now 500.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The horrific Russian casualties are a case in point, with 35,000 Russians being killed or severely wounded each month by drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ukraine wants that figure to almost double, planning to increase it to 60,000 a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The terminal phase\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n AI and autonomous systems have shaped the battlefield in Ukraine, from intelligence gathering to targeting, human involvement is minimised in the terminal phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n The terminal phase is the last 500 metres before an AI-controlled drone hits a human or another target, such as a moving vehicle.<\/p>\n These drones use machine vision and machine-learned algorithms to identify their target and stick a ‘lock box’ on them, and then when the time is right, they strike in exactly the right spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n Data suggests that letting AI take control of the deciding last meters can make even the most rookie pilot four times as effective.\u00a0<\/p>\n Letting the drone pilot itself also minimises the risk of jamming.\u00a0<\/p>\n Who is ahead in the AI arms race?<\/strong><\/p>\n While the Russians have made great use of fibre-optic drones, when it comes to this AI tech, they’re playing catch-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n They are developing it, using Western components smuggled through third countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ukraine has Western backing, with the UK funding an AI centre of excellence inside the Ukrainian MOD.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to David Hambling, an author and drone expert, training machine vision AI systems requires vast amounts of data and here Ukraine has a clear advantage. \u00a0<\/p>\n Russia simply doesn’t have the same vast Cloud storage system that its enemy has.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ukraine has millions of hours of drone footage. In 2024 it amounted to 228 years worth of video, so it could well be double that now \u2013 and this is data that Ukraine uses to feed its machine learning systems and teach its drones what to hunt for.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ukraine is offering to share all this data with allies like Britain to help them develop their own AI drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0There is growing evidence that Ukraine is making large-scale use of artificial intelligence to help drone pilots find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-941520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116527655129662109","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}