By: Matthew Sparkes | New Scientist
A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties.
Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare.
The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.
“We tried it,” says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].”
The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.
“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”
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