[ExI] Autonomous killer drones will soon be here

[Kelly Anderson]

I've been following the Ukraine drone thing pretty closely, and if it
isn't propaganda, they already have drones that recognize a set of
predefined pieces of military kit, and automatically engage those it
is programmed to go after. Be it a tank, armoured personnel carrier or
an oil tank. They have to in order to get around the electronic
interference that keeps them from talking directly to the drone in the
last few seconds as it closes in on its target. I'm unaware of any
autonomous drones that go after individuals, other than the last few
seconds after the target has already been chosen by a human.

On June 6, a Ukrainian drone swarm struck the Russian oil depot in
Saratov which supplies Russia’s strategic bomber fleet located at the
nearby Engels-2 airbase. These 17 drones were completely autonomous
for the last 25 km of their attack vector and chose between them which
one would hit which tank. One drone was shot down, and the rest just
sorted it out and carried on the attack. The fuel burned is pretty
rare and means that certain airplanes are grounded until they can
refine more, and figure out how to store it. All for less than the
price of a nice Moscow apartment.

-Kelly

On Tue, Jul 1, 2025 at 3:32 AM BillK via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 at 21:20, spike jones via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > Now of course AI is going to be used for defense.  I will make the case, later today perhaps but more likely in the next few days, that we can imagine a case where AI will guide weapons to destroy other weapons.
> >
> > spike
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> The Ukraine and Russian techies are developing drone warfare at a
> fantastic pace.
> Every enhancement becomes obsolete within three months.
> They want drones to have the intelligence to select and destroy their
> targets autonomously..
> It won't take long for this to be achieved.
>
> <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/ukraine-russia-autonomous-drones-ai>
> Quotes:
> Killing machines: how Russia and Ukraine’s race to perfect deadly
> pilotless drones could harm us all.
> Cheap, scaleable and highly autonomous, these weapons are developing
> quickly – and experts say they should prompt a global rethink about
> security.
> Daniel Boffey in Kyiv     Wed 25 Jun 2025
>
> The targets are not merely tanks, planes, railway hubs and critical
> infrastructure. The top priority is to kill people.
>
> “There will be cheaper autonomous systems which can target infantry at
> a smaller scale because this is a key target, because the doctrine of
> war has changed, heavy equipment is used less and less,” Fedorov says.
> ---------------------
>
> (And I guess that civilian forces and terrorists will also love these cheap
> selective kill devices).
> BillK
>
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