Main points
- Russia is upgrading its attack drones using artificial intelligence, posing a major threat.
- New Russian drones are equipped with cameras, AI modules, and can hit civilian targets.
Russia continues to modernize attack drones, including using artificial intelligence to control them. Ukrainian defenders were aware of such enemy developments, but after the attack on June 18, such a drone was discovered for the first time.
The improved Russian “Shaheds” have a built-in camera, an artificial intelligence module with machine vision and a direct radio control system. Journalist and analyst for the BILD publication Julian Röpke told 24 Kanal what the danger of Russian drones with AI is.
Russia doesn't really care about this
The journalist noted that he had seen such drones in action when the Ukrainian military shot down some of them.
Drones with artificial intelligence are terrible because they have no understanding, he stressed.
For example, Germany is providing Ukraine with AI drones – HF1 – from Helsing. They are still controlled by an operator who, as Röpke noted, selects a military target to eliminate.
The Russians do it differently. They simply give information to “Shahed” or another drone to fly 200 kilometers and hit everything that comes its way. We saw this in Sumy, when drones hit buses. This is how they test drones, and this is really dangerous, – the analyst of the BILD publication emphasized.
The Russians, in his opinion, have it easier in this sense, because they say that they have no connection with these drones, no matter where they end up. These drones cannot distinguish an SUV with soldiers from an SUV with a family.
In addition, the drones travel far beyond the front lines, meaning that the further they are from the front, the more certain they are that they will find a civilian vehicle rather than a military one.
Russia doesn't really care about that, so it's very bad to give an attack drone artificial intelligence without understanding. There is no operator, no one to contact to make sure whether it is a good or bad target, he emphasized.
Also dangerous, according to him, are Russian drones with new engines “Geran-3”. These are new generation drones – they are even faster and therefore even more difficult to stop.
Many Ukrainian mobile groups are trying to shoot them down with Browning machine guns. This is much more difficult to do when the drone is moving at 600 kilometers per hour than 200, – Julian Röpke emphasized.
He added that Russia is developing quite innovatively when it comes to the liquidation of Ukrainian civilians and their terror. Unfortunately, this process continues.
Let us recall that after the attack on June 18, a Russian “Shahed” was recorded with a camera, a direct radio control system and an artificial intelligence module. The radio modem allows the “Shahed” to be controlled at a distance of up to 150 kilometers from the Russian borders or the front line. In the case of the use of air repeaters in Ukrainian airspace, the distance at which such a drone is allowed to be controlled may be increased.
