The success of drones in Ukraine has accelerated a long-awaited technological trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous combat killer robots to the battlefield and usher in a new era of warfare. This is reported by the American news agency Associated Press.
According to military analysts and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, the longer armed conflicts last, the greater the possibility that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without human assistance.
This would mean a profound revolution in military technology. However, at the moment there are no confirmed cases when any of the countries used robots in battles that would kill “completely by themselves.” Experts say it can only be a matter of time.
Experts are sure that many states are already creating a similar technology. They call fully autonomous killer drones “the logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. One of the reasons for the implementation of this idea is that people simply cannot process data and make decisions as quickly as machines.
So, it is already known about the existence of technology for achieving a fully autonomous mission by drones. It is estimated that it will take about three years to exclude a person from the decision-making process.
It is noted that drones are already capable of recognizing targets, such as armored vehicles, through cataloged images. However, there is controversy over whether such technology is reliable enough so that drones do not make mistakes and take the lives of civilians.
According to unofficial data, killer robots were allegedly first used in the internecine conflict in Libya in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full automatic mode allegedly eliminated an unspecified number of combatants. But this information is considered based on “speculative, unverified” information that “should not be taken seriously.” The Kargu-2 itself is not capable of attacking a target without specifying an operator.
The material also mentions that switching a drone from remote control to full autonomy cannot go unnoticed. Experts believe that for now, drones that operate in both modes function better when they are controlled by a human.
Attempts to establish international ground rules for the military have still not been successful. Thus, nine years of informal UN negotiations in Geneva led nowhere. The United States is not going to agree with the ban either. In Washington, they refer to the fact that they are allegedly not sure about the ethics of competitors who also create drones.
Experts are also concerned about the use of AI weapons by terrorists.
