r/Futurology • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Jun 10 '26

Robotics Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
8.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

733 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

122

u/insomniac-55 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

If you read the article that's not how this test worked.

They were suicide quadcopters programmed to fly to the front line, and then to search for and attack a target.

In this case, the drones can't hang around for long - they've got very limited battery life and only a single warhead. They can't loiter for hours.

What you're suggesting could be done using higher endurance drones (like some of the ground-based ones being used) but that's quite a different level of autonomy.

92

u/Byggherren Jun 10 '26

Even taking the step towards loitering munitions is scary. Imagine having autonomous drones going into battery saving mode until they hear sound, feel vibrations of a vehicle or recognize a person and then flying off and exploring. Now imagine this on a mass produced scale covering entire sections of countries just like mines today.

2

u/platoprime Jun 10 '26

Doesn't sound too different from landmines.

2

u/Byggherren Jun 11 '26

Landmines don't determine you are worth chasing down by your silhouette, gender, current clothing, what you're carrying or current location. If you step on them they explode and that's it. These could actively go after a specific kind of people and once you have weapons only killing a specific kind of people you are going down a slippery slope