On 1 June, Ukraine stunned the world with an audacious attack against Russian airbases. Using cheap, small drones concealed inside trucks that had penetrated deep into Russian territory, Ukraine was able to hit dozens of nuclear-capable strategic bombers, taking out 7 billion of military hardware. The drone-smuggling attack, codenamed Operation Spiderweb, was an incredible feat of military planning – but it also highlighted a vulnerability that has defence chiefs around the world concerned that their assets could be hit next. "The risk potentials of small drone attacks to US or UK air bases right now are 100 per cent," says Robert Bunker at US consultancy firm C/O Futures. "You simply need a group with the intent and capability, which is a very low bar to overcome."

The United States launched an initiative Thursday promoting international cooperation on the responsible use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons by militaries, seeking to impose order on an emerging technology that has the potential to change the way war is waged. "As a rapidly changing technology, we have an obligation to create strong norms of responsible behavior concerning military uses of AI and in a way that keeps in mind that applications of AI by militaries will undoubtedly change in the coming years," Bonnie Jenkins, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, said. She said the U.S. political declaration, which contains non-legally binding guidelines outlining best practices for responsible military use of AI, "can be a focal point for international cooperation." Jenkins launched the declaration at the end of a two-day conference in The Hague that took on additional urgency as advances in drone technology amid the Russia's war in Ukraine have accelerated a trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield. The U.S. declaration has 12 points, including that military uses of AI are consistent with international law, and that states "maintain human control and involvement for all actions critical to informing and executing sovereign decisions concerning nuclear weapons employment."

The US Pentagon is planning a new'weapon of mass destruction' that involves thousands of drones that strike by air, land and water to destroy enemy defenses - but experts fear humans could lose control of the'swarms.' The top-secret project, dubbed AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), would represent automated warfare on an unprecedented scale. AMASS is still in the planning stages, but DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has been collecting bids from suppliers for the $78 million contract. Small drones would be equipped with weapons and tools for navigation and communication, along with abilities ranging from radar jamming to launching lethal attacks. While the technology would change how the US goes to war, experts in the industry raise concerns.

Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers. That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven.

Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers. That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven.

Ukraine has developed drones that are capable of finding targets autonomously, a Ukrainian military leader has claimed, raising the prospect that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war could see the first confirmed use of'killer robots' in armed conflict. Ukrainian Lieutenant Colonel Yaroslav Honchar gave details in an interview with Ukrainian news agency UNIAN on 13th October. Honchar is co-founder of Aerorozvidka ("Aerial Intelligence"), a team of around a thousand volunteer drone enthusiasts and technologists set up in 2014 to develop and use drones and other technology. Honchar says their drones already fly scout missions autonomously and mentions the possibility of automated strikes, but did not say such strikes had been carried out. Aerorozvidka declined to comment on the issue when asked by New Scientist.

A Russian "suicide drone" that boasts the ability to identify targets using artificial intelligence has been spotted in images of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Photographs showing what appears to be the KUB-BLA, a type of lethal drone known as a "loitering munition" sold by ZALA Aero, a subsidiary of the Russian arms company Kalashnikov, have appeared on Telegram and Twitter in recent days. The pictures show damaged drones that appear to have either crashed or been shot down. With a wingspan of 1.2 meters, the sleek white drone resembles a small pilotless fighter jet. It is fired from a portable launch, can travel up to 130 kilometers per hour for 30 minutes, and deliberately crashes into a target, detonating a 3-kilo explosive.

A modified consumer drone was used in an attack on an electrical substation in the US last year, according to a report from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center. The report, which is being circulated to law enforcement agencies in the US, highlights the incident at a substation in Pennsylvania last year as the first known use of a drone to target energy infrastructure in the US. The location isn't specifically identified, but the drone crashed without causing damage. The drone was modified with a trailing tether supporting a length of copper wire. If the wire had come into contact with high-voltage equipment it could have caused a short circuit, equipment failures and possibly fires.

AI drone may have'hunted down' and killed soldiers in Libya without human input By Charles Q. Choi - Live Science Contributor - June 3, 2021 KARGU a Rotary Wing Attack Drone Loitering Munition System A UN report suggests that at least one autonomous drone operated by artificial intelligence (AI) may have killed people for the first time last year in Libya, without any humans consulted prior to the attack, according to a U.N. report. According to a March report from the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya, lethal autonomous aircraft may have "hunted down and remotely engaged" soldiers and convoys fighting for Libyan general Khalifa Haftar. It's not clear who exactly deployed these killer robots, though remnants of one such machine found in Libya came from the Kargu-2 drone, which is made by Turkish military contractor STM. Landmines are essentially simple autonomous weapons -- you step on them and they blow up," Zachary Kallenborn, a research affiliate with the National Consortium for the ...

It's the sort of thing that can almost pass for background noise these days: over the past week, a number of publications tentatively declared, based on a UN report from the Libyan civil war, that killer robots may have hunted down humans autonomously for the first time. As one headline put it: "The Age of Autonomous Killer Robots May Already Be Here." As you might guess, it's a hard question to answer. The new coverage has sparked a debate among experts that goes to the heart of our problems confronting the rise of autonomous robots in war. Some said the stories were wrongheaded and sensational, while others suggested there was a nugget of truth to the discussion.