Russian forces have been using drones to hunt and attack civilians in Ukraine and continue to do so, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In a report released on Tuesday, HRW stated that the Russian military has repeatedly deployed unmanned drones to attack civilian targets in its more than three-year war with Ukraine. The NGO said that dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds injured in violation of the laws of war. Referencing video from Russian drones and witnesses and survivors, the rights watchdog alleges that Russia has "deliberately or recklessly" hunted civilians and civilian objects, particularly in the southern city of Kherson, using "commercially available quadcopter drones" made domestically and in China. "Russian drone operators are able to track their targets, with high-resolution video feeds, leaving little doubt that the intent is to kill, maim, and terrify civilians," Belkis Wille, a director on arms and conflict at HRW, said in a statement.

Small Uncrewed Aerial Systems (sUAS) are increasingly deployed as autonomous swarms in search-and-rescue and other disaster-response scenarios. In these settings, they use computer vision (CV) to detect objects of interest and autonomously adapt their missions. However, traditional CV systems often struggle to recognize unfamiliar objects in open-world environments or to infer their relevance for mission planning. To address this, we incorporate large language models (LLMs) to reason about detected objects and their implications. While LLMs can offer valuable insights, they are also prone to hallucinations and may produce incorrect, misleading, or unsafe recommendations. To ensure safe and sensible decision-making under uncertainty, high-level decisions must be governed by cognitive guardrails. This article presents the design, simulation, and real-world integration of these guardrails for sUAS swarms in search-and-rescue missions.

Ukraine's surprise Sunday attack on Russian offensive weapons caches may be a good time for the U.S. to reflect on its own weaknesses, should one of its adversaries attempt a similar strike. Col. Seth Krummrich, a retired Army Special Forces commander and vice president at the Virginia-based security firm Global Guardian, warned that the U.S. remains vulnerable to drone attacks. "Interestingly, it is not a technological gap, it is a policy/authority process to engage and deny drone attacks," Krummrich said. "I assess it will take a major drone strike in the U.S. to change policy." Even civilian operations have a tough time getting approval for drone-interception-authority protections, the NFL excepted, he said.

What message does Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web send to Russia and US? Ukraine carries out large-scale drone strikes on multiple Russian airbases.Read more Eighteen months in the making, Ukraine's Operation Spider's Web saw hundreds of AI-trained drones target military aircraft deep inside Russia's borders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Sunday's attacks will go down in history. He followed them up with a proposal for an unconditional ceasefire as the two sides met in Istanbul. The European Union is preparing its 18th package of sanctions on Russia, while US President Donald Trump has threatened to use "devastating" measures against Russia if he feels the time is right. So, is the time right now?

Ukrainian drones struck multiple military airbases deep inside Russia on Sunday in a major operation a day before the neighbours held peace talks in Istanbul. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions, causing several aircraft to catch fire. The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said. "In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire," the Defence Ministry said.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst explains the impact of the drone strike on Russian air bases. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have begun talks in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday, less than 24 hours after a massive Ukrainian drone attack struck Russian airfields. The two delegations entered Ciragan Palace in Istanbul alongside a group of senior Turkish officials. It is the second round of peace talks to take place in the three years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Images from the event show many of the Ukrainian delegation wearing military uniforms, while the Russian group exclusively wore suits.

Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy questions President Donald Trump about the Russia-Ukraine war. The brazen Ukrainian blitz of Russian warplanes Sunday was 18 months in the making and the Pentagon was kept in the dark until it was over, sources told Fox News. "Operation Spider's Web," a series of coordinated drone strikes penetrating deep into Russian territory, is believed to have taken out dozens of Russia's most powerful bomber jets and surveillance planes as they sat idle on five military airfields. The stunning operation was personally overseen by President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's security service (SBU) said. Ukraine used small FPV drones hidden inside wooden cabins mounted on trucks.

Crime is a critical problem -- which often takes place behind closed doors, posing additional difficulties for investigators. To bring hidden truths to light, evidence at indoor crime scenes must be documented before any contamination or degradation occurs. Here, we address this challenge from the perspective of artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, and robotics: Specifically, we explore the use of a blimp as a "floating camera" to drift over and record evidence with minimal disturbance. Adopting a rapid prototyping approach, we develop a proof-of-concept to investigate capabilities required for manual or semi-autonomous operation. Consequently, our results demonstrate the feasibility of equipping indoor blimps with various components (such as RGB and thermal cameras, LiDARs, and WiFi, with 20 minutes of battery life). Moreover, we confirm the core premise: that such blimps can be used to observe crime scene evidence while generating little airflow. We conclude by proposing some ideas related to detection (e.g., of bloodstains), mapping, and path planning, with the aim of stimulating further discussion and exploration.

Ukraine staged a dramatic series of strikes across Russia, deploying drones hidden in trucks deep inside the country to hit strategic airfields as far away as eastern Siberia. Around the same time, Moscow launched one of its longest drone and missile attacks against Kyiv, escalating tensions ahead of crucial peace talks this week. More than 40 Russian aircraft, including the Tu-95 and Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers capable of deploying conventional and nuclear weapons as well as the A-50, are reported to have been damaged in the operation on Sunday, an official in Ukraine's Security Service said on condition of anonymity as the details are not public. Ukraine's Security Service chief Vasyl Malyuk led the operation and losses are assessed to be at least 2 billion, the person said.

"No intelligence operation in the world has done anything like this before," defence analyst Serhii Kuzan told Ukrainian TV. "These strategic bombers are capable of launching long-range strikes against us," he said. "There are only 120 of them and we struck 40. It is hard to assess the damage, but Ukrainian military blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko says that even if the bombers, and command and control aircraft were not destroyed, the impact is enormous. "The extent of the damage is such that the Russian military-industrial complex, in its current state, is unlikely to be able to restore them in the near future," he wrote on his Telegram channel. The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are, he said, no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible. The loss of the supersonic Tu-160, he said, would be especially keenly felt. "Today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd," he wrote. Beyond the physical damage, which may or may not be as great as analysts here are assessing, Operation Spider's Web sends another critical message, not just to Russia but also to Ukraine's western allies. My colleague Svyatoslav Khomenko, writing for the BBC Ukrainian Service website, recalls a recent encounter with a government official in Kyiv. "The biggest problem," the official told Svyatoslav, "is that the Americans have convinced themselves we've already lost the war.