Drone successes in Ukraine have accelerated a long-awaited technological trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous combat robots to the battlefield, ushering in a new era of warfare, Defense News wrote.

According to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers, the longer the war lasts, the more likely it is that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without human assistance.

Ukraine already has semi-autonomous strike drones and drone countermeasures equipped with artificial intelligence. Russia also claims to possess weapons with artificial intelligence. But there are no confirmed cases of the nation introducing robots into combat that have killed while acting entirely on their own.

Experts say it may only be a matter of time before Russia or Ukraine or both deploy them.

The sense of inevitability extends to activists who have tried for years to ban killer drones.

Ukraine's Digital Transformation Minister Mikhail Fedorov agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are the "logical and inevitable next step" in weapons development.

Russia could get autonomous AI in Iran or elsewhere. Shahed-136 long-range kamikaze drones supplied by Iran have taken out Ukrainian power plants, but they are not particularly "smart." Iran has other drones in its arsenal that are equipped with AI.

According to Western manufacturers, Ukraine can make its semi-autonomous armed drones fully independent without much trouble to better withstand interference on the battlefield.

These drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which currently require a human to select targets by live video feed.

The drones can already recognize targets, such as armored vehicles, using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to keep the machines from making mistakes and killing civilians.

A U.N. report suggested that killer robots made their debut in the Libya conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones destroyed an unspecified number of combatants in fully automatic mode.
The number of drones with artificial intelligence continues to grow. Israel has been exporting them for decades.

Other examples include Beijing's Blowfish-3 unmanned attack helicopter. Russia is working on an underwater drone with a nuclear warhead called the Poseidon. The Dutch are currently testing a land-based robot with a .50-caliber machine gun.

Switching the drone from remote control to full autonomy can be invisible. According to Gregory S. Allen, former director of strategy and policy at the Pentagon's Joint Center for Artificial Intelligence, to date, drones capable of operating in both modes have performed better when piloted by humans.

Attempts to establish international ground rules for military drones have so far failed. Major powers, including the United States and Russia, have opposed the ban.

Washington politicians say they will not agree to a ban because competitors developing drones cannot be trusted to use them ethically.

Toby Walsh, an Australian scientist who, like Russell, is campaigning against killer robots, hopes to reach consensus on some restrictions, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.

To date, the Pentagon has not clearly defined "autonomous weapons with artificial intelligence" and has not authorized any such weapons for use by U.S. troops. This has not prevented the development of weapons in the United States. Projects are underway at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, military laboratories, academic institutions and in the private sector.

The Pentagon has emphasized the use of AI to augment human fighters. The Air Force is exploring ways to pair pilots with guided drones.