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Trump grants Kyiv Patriots licences: What's next in the Russia-Ukraine war?

Al Jazeera

Is the war entering a new phase? Patriot missile interceptors are the most coveted Western-made weapon Ukraine needs - right now and every night when Russia attacks. Frequent Russian strikes depleted Ukraine's stock of the pricey United States-made interceptors - and US President Donald Trump has now offered hope, giving Kyiv a licence to make them. We'll show them how to do it, it's very complex actually. But it's - you'll figure out the complexity quickly," Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a NATO summit in Turkiye on Wednesday. "This way, you can't complain that we're not giving them enough." Trump has not specified when the production might start - and said that Washington would hold on to its own stash. Ukraine said it will attempt to master domestic production as soon as possible. In the short-term perspective, Ukraine "perhaps, gets nothing," according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University.


Russian generals' assassinations expose growing rift inside Putin's security apparatus

FOX News

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Meet the Gods of AI Warfare

WIRED

In its early days, the AI initiative known as Project Maven had its fair share of skeptics at the Pentagon. Today, many of them are true believers. The rise of AI warfare speaks to the biggest moral and practical question there is: Who--or what--gets to decide to take a human life? And who bears that cost? In 2018, more than 3,000 Google workers protested the company's involvement in "the business of war" after finding out the company was part of Project Maven, then a nascent Pentagon effort to use computer vision to rifle through copious video footage taken in America's overseas drone wars. They feared Project Maven's AI could one day be used for lethal targeting. In my yearslong effort to uncover the full story of Project Maven for my book,, I learned that is exactly what happened, and that the undertaking was just as controversial inside the Pentagon. Today, the tool known as Maven Smart System is being used in US operations against Iran . How the US military's top brass moved from skepticism about the use of AI in war to true believers has a lot to do with a Marine colonel named Drew Cukor. In early September 2024, during the cocktail hour at a private retreat for tech investors and defense leaders, Vice Admiral Frank "Trey" Whitworth found his way to Drew Cukor. Now Project Maven's founding leader and his skeptical successor were standing face-to-face. Three years earlier, Whitworth had been the Pentagon's top military official for intelligence, advising the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and running one of the most sensitive and potentially lethal parts of any military process: targeting.


The Download: AI-powered warfare, and how embryo care is changing

MIT Technology Review

Plus: Why other industries are keeping such a close eye on Big Tech's job cuts It is July 2027, and China is on the brink of invading Taiwan. Autonomous drones with AI targeting capabilities are primed to overpower the island's air defenses as a series of crippling AI-generated cyberattacks cut off energy supplies and key communications. In the meantime, a vast disinformation campaign enacted by an AI-powered pro-Chinese meme farm spreads across global social media, deadening the outcry at Beijing's act of aggression. Scenarios such as this have brought dystopian horror to the debate about the use of AI in warfare. Military commanders hope for a digitally enhanced force that is faster and more accurate than human-directed combat. But there are fears that as AI assumes an increasingly central role, these same commanders will lose control of a conflict that escalates too quickly and lacks ethical or legal oversight.


The State of AI: How war will be changed forever

MIT Technology Review

In this conversation, Helen Warrell, FT investigations reporter and former defense and security editor, and James O'Donnell, MIT Technology Review's senior AI reporter, consider the ethical quandaries and financial incentives around AI's use by the military. Welcome back to, a new collaboration between the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. In this conversation, Helen Warrell, investigations reporter and former defense and security editor, and James O'Donnell, 's senior AI reporter, consider the ethical quandaries and financial incentives around AI's use by the military. It is July 2027, and China is on the brink of invading Taiwan. Autonomous drones with AI targeting capabilities are primed to overpower the island's air defenses as a series of crippling AI-generated cyberattacks cut off energy supplies and key communications. In the meantime, a vast disinformation campaign enacted by an AI-powered pro-Chinese meme farm spreads across global social media, deadening the outcry at Beijing's act of aggression.


ARGUS: A Framework for Risk-Aware Path Planning in Tactical UGV Operations

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This thesis presents the development of ARGUS, a framework for mission planning for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) in tactical environments. The system is designed to translate battlefield complexity and the commander's intent into executable action plans. To this end, ARGUS employs a processing pipeline that takes as input geospatial terrain data, military intelligence on existing threats and their probable locations, and mission priorities defined by the commander. Through a set of integrated modules, the framework processes this information to generate optimized trajectories that balance mission objectives against the risks posed by threats and terrain characteristics. A fundamental capability of ARGUS is its dynamic nature, which allows it to adapt plans in real-time in response to unforeseen events, reflecting the fluid nature of the modern battlefield. The system's interoperability were validated in a practical exercise with the Portuguese Army, where it was successfully demonstrated that the routes generated by the model can be integrated and utilized by UGV control systems. The result is a decision support tool that not only produces an optimal trajectory but also provides the necessary insights for its execution, thereby contributing to greater effectiveness and safety in the employment of autonomous ground systems.


Meet the history-making Nasa astronauts headed for the Moon next year

BBC News

The commander of Nasa's next mission to the Moon said that he and his crew would see things that no human has ever seen. Reid Wiseman told a news conference that it was likely that his spacecraft would fly over large areas of the Moon that previous Apollo missions had never mapped. Yesterday, Nasa announced it hoped it would be able to launch the first crewed Moon mission in 50 years as early as February 2026 . Mission specialist Christina Koch explained that the astronauts would be able to study the lunar surface in exquisite detail for a full three hours. Believe it or not, human eyes are one of the best scientific instruments that we have, she said.


How Ukraine Gamified Drone Warfare

TIME - Tech

Ukrainian soldiers carry a Vampire drone after a training flight on Feb. 8, 2025. Ukrainian soldiers carry a Vampire drone after a training flight on Feb. 8, 2025. One afternoon this spring, Mykhailo Fedorov, a minister in the wartime government of Ukraine, turned up the volume on his laptop and played a video to illustrate his latest innovation. Its purpose, he explained, was to make the experience of combat feel more like a video game to Ukrainian troops--or as he put it, "to gamify" the war. The clip showed a series of aerial strikes, each filmed from the vantage of a combat drone. One of them, apparently flying by night, had used its thermal-imaging camera to detect an enemy soldier in what looked like a field or forest.


Ukraine proves America's secret weapon works -- now we must double down on it

FOX News

Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume explains why President Donald Trump should not remove himself from the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and more on'Special Report.' When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many experts predicted Kyiv's quick fall. When Ukraine pushed back overextended Russian forces, the same experts confidently said that Russia's mass -- a population almost four times larger than Ukraine -- would certainly grind Ukraine down. Triumph for Putin was inevitable. But, an odd thing happened on the way to Russia's victory parade: Ukraine is outfighting Russia.


'It is a war of drones now': the ever-evolving tech dominating the frontline in Ukraine

The Guardian

"It's more exhausting," says Afer, a deputy commander of the "Da Vinci Wolves", describing how one of the best-known battalions in Ukraine has to defend against constant Russian attacks. Where once the invaders might have tried small group assaults with armoured vehicles, now the tactic is to try and sneak through on foot one by one, evading frontline Ukrainian drones, and find somewhere to hide. Under what little cover remains, survivors then try to gather a group of 10 or so and attack Ukrainian positions. It is costly – "in the last 24 hours we killed 11," Afer says – but the assaults that previously might have happened once or twice a day are now relentless. To the Da Vinci commander it seems that the Russians are terrified of their own officers, which is why they follow near suicidal orders.