Fully autonomous drones without human supervision killed soldiers

Fully autonomous drones without human supervision have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This, according to a senior Ukrainian defense industry official, marks a critical moment in the war. The unique test involved 10 artificial intelligence-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. Russian soldiers were killed.

“We tested it,” says drone manufacturer Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It was a test. We didn’t apply it more widely.”

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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 kilometers for about 10 minutes, and then activate “Terminator mode,” in which an artificial intelligence model seeks out and intercepts targets.

“We just launch it and we know that everything will die – everything that is there in that particular area will die,” Kokhanovskyy says. “There is no connection to the drone, you can’t see video, nothing… Everything that the drone sees will die.”

With no way to determine what the automated drones had seen or targeted, other drones with human pilots were sent to the area after the test to manually check the results.

Among the casualties were “a few soldiers, and a truck,” Kokhanovskyy said. While there is no record of the automated drones attacking these targets, they concluded that the drones killed them.

Kokhanovskyy says he was not personally present at the test, but that it was carried out by an unnamed military unit near the towns of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar, as part of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not respond to questions about the test or the current legal position on the use of fully autonomous weapons.

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