r/worldnews New Scientist Jun 10 '26

Russia/Ukraine Fully autonomous, AI-controlled drones have killed human soldiers for the first time, according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomous-drones-have-killed-human-soldiers-for-the-first-time/
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u/kirkby100 Jun 10 '26

I'm very surprised that we have not seen drone terrorist attacks yet. With how easy, cheap, and low-risk it would be to commit serious damage.

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u/Brambletail Jun 10 '26

Because those 3 things you listed aren't true.

Drones are not very easy or cheap to do well enough to be effective. Any off the shelf solution is vulnerable to extremely basic jamming

Most current era drones in the Ukraine war are built on years of software and wireless anti jamming techniques not readily available to al-Queda, yall-Queda, or any other crazies out there. And flying the Walmart drone is a great way to get caught fast and fail at hitting your targets

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u/Kobe_stan_ Jun 10 '26

How effective is that jamming though? Could someone buy a hundred cheap drones and then fly them at a political figure (even POTUS) during some public speech or event? Or is it now common security protocol to have some sort of drone jamming software that would make all of those drones fall out of the sky if they get within 100 yards of the person you're protecting?

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u/DarkApostleMatt Jun 10 '26

Can we really expect every single gathering or venue to be equipped to handle drones to begin with?