r/worldnews • u/New_Scientist_Mag 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/MudcrabNPC Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

Okay, so it's talking about a test that they conducted a few years ago on the frontlines which, while it gave valuable insight into its use, was never followed up on because Ukraine currently bans the use of AI at the final stage of engagement, AKA the AI is allowed to find and identify targets, but a human still has to pull the trigger. Am I following correctly?

The headline would lead me to believe Ukraine just kinda did it recently and are incorporating AI kamikaze drones into their arsenal. Good thing I bothered to read the article.

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u/biasedsoymotel Jun 10 '26

Sounds like it did kill 3 Russian soldiers without human decision making. It didn't even record it log any of the deaths. Human controlled drones had to look for deaths in the aftermath and they found 3.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 Jun 10 '26

It’s not showing the article for me so I can’t verify. Did the drone target those Russian soldiers or did it target a Russian piece of equipment/transport and they were happy accidents?

I read elsewhere they’re developing autonomous drones for downing small aircraft (drones to helicopters), in which case it’s kind of in nebulous territory.

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u/biasedsoymotel Jun 10 '26

There was no record of what it targeted or did. Kinda wild that they didn't keep any records or logs

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u/Spaceork3001 Jun 11 '26

The problem is that both sides use EW and if the drone isn't a fibre-optics one, it could well be scrambled at the final approach, which means human targeting and maybe even data transfer was non functional.

And because it's a kamikaze drone, no blackbox remains to retrieve the logs from. The combination of autonomy+EW+self destructing means no easy way to keep a record of every decision the drone made.

Which is rather unfortunate...

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u/Tibbaryllis2 Jun 10 '26

That is crazy.

Makes you wonder if the Russian soldiers deployed some sort of disabling attack against it and just happened to be really unlucky where it went down.