Kamikaze drones, robots and AI: In Ukraine, the technological war is accelerating… and saving lives

The war in Ukraine « touche à sa fin ». This statement from Vladimir Putin is puzzling, given that the truce on the occasion of the commemorations of May 8, 1945 was not respected this weekend. On the front, positions are getting bogged down but the technological war is in full swing and the fighting is opening a new era. Dive into the robot war in Ukraine.

 

The one who calls himself Snow is French. He is enlisted in the 426th Unmanned Systems Regiment of the Ukrainian Marine Corps.

“I am a kamikaze fixed-wing drone pilot. You have to imagine remote-controlled planes. Mine are a little bigger than a man and they allow me to send a bomb, an explosive, on infrastructure targets, logistical lines or personnel, with a range which can go from 20 km up to 150 km.

There is a strong economic side to this solution. We are in an extremely dynamic technological war. Every week there are new drones released. Every week, we have new techniques, new interventions.”

And each camp tries to copy the technological advances of the other, confides this drone pilot.

“There are so many drones, there is such a strong flow around our positions that inevitably they end up falling. I’ll take the example of the Russian Molniya, a fixed-wing kamikaze plane that they have been using for two years now. The Ukrainians recovered them, they created the Bliskovka, an almost identical copy of this drone, and we, as a result, reproduce them, use them and send them back to them. HAS”

Drones to deliver food, water and medical supplies

In the kill zone — the destruction zone closest to the front line – it is too dangerous to still risk human lives for logistical reasons. So these are robots that are sent, explains Sergeant Serhii, who fights in Donbass.

“A drone pilot was recently injured in a very dangerous position, with swarms of drones in the sky. We were able to evacuate him using an unmanned vehicle, controlled remotely. In our brigade, we also use large drones to deliver food, water or even medical supplies. Last year, one of our soldiers needed a blood transfusion. The blood bag was delivered to him by drone. HAS”

The Russian army also uses robots, says Oleksandr Tartachnyi, analyst at the State Watch Ukraine think tank.

“The manufacturing price of the ground robots is one million rubles. It’s almost 12,000 euros, not much for the military industry. These are multifunctional platforms. They can be used as logistics robots, but it is also possible to add a machine gun and make a combat robot. They are then used mainly to control a territory or support soldiers. Shot accuracy is a big problem for these combat robots, although there is progress.

The biggest weakness of Russian robots is connection, because they do not have access to the Starlink satellite. They can use a radio connection, but we can jam the signal. Researchers in Russia are working on making ground robots autonomous with artificial intelligence, but for now it is still not feasible. HAS”

Ukrainians test humanoid robots

Even if technologies evolve very quickly, the most basic and least expensive robots are favored on a front which is getting bogged down, explains engineer Alain Filipowicz, associate researcher at IRIS and specialist in robotics and artificial intelligence.

“The Ukrainians are testing a few humanoid robots, coming from the United States, from an American company. There, we really get into things that resemble Star Wars. I’m not sure it’s that interesting. The humanoid robot is something expensive and fragile compared to much simpler and much cheaper robots which can do the job just as effectively. On the other hand, the psychological effect can be terrifying.

The return to a system of positional warfare in the style of trench warfare 14-18, we know that it is extremely costly in terms of men, that certain nations can afford it given their lack of ethics and their way of doing things – I am thinking in particular of the way the Russians lead the operations. The Ukrainians cannot afford it, which means that every life that can be saved by the use of robots, and robots which are not necessarily very sophisticated and very expensive, deserves it.

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From January to March, 22,000 Ukrainian army missions used robots. “That’s the equivalent of lives saved 22,000 times.”s’est félicité le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelensky.

Laurie-Anne Toulemont