Ukraine Advances Killer Robot Drones

"LVIV, Ukraine -- It was the year of the explosive drone: speedy, agile craft the size of dinner plates that in 2024 became Ukraine's main defensive weapon against massive Russian ground assaults.

The new year will see the rise of killer robots, as computers take over more functions from human pilots, including flying to the battlefield and striking targets.

But humans will remain in control. Next-generation drones won't be swarms of fully automated, computer-controlled slaughterbots. Instead, Ukrainian companies are seeking incremental advances that boost a strike drone's chances of reaching and hitting its target.

"We have been trying to make autonomous cars for years, but still have drivers," said Andriy Zvirko, chief strategy officer for Sine.Engineering, a Ukrainian drone-technology developer.

Rather than replace drone pilots, Sine aims to help them by lowering the skill level needed to operate a drone, Zvirko said.

Ukraine produced well over one million small, explosive aerial craft in 2024, and they are now responsible for most front-line strikes, officials say. Most are first-person view drones, or FPVs, controlled by a pilot who wears goggles that stream a live feed from a camera on the machine. Generally less than 10 inches across, they can carry about 9 pounds of explosives over roughly 12 miles and detonate when the drone hits a target.

With artillery shells in short supply for much of 2024, in part because of political delays in fresh U.S. supplies, Ukraine has relied on drones to stop column after column of armored vehicles. But Russia has still advanced, and the Kremlin says its goal of taking effective control of Ukraine remains unchanged.

Automating drones can help Ukraine deploy them more effectively. Efficiency is the main problem, because of the skill and labor needed to deploy drones, and Russian countermeasures, mainly electronic warfare. The result is that, depending on the skill level of pilots, strike rates can be as low as one in 10 craft hitting their target.

Instead of seeking one cure-all, Sine is among those companies taking on the challenges piece by piece -- seeking the quickest, simplest and most cost-effective solutions to lighten the load on pilots. The ethos runs counter to the approach of most Western military planners, who generally seek game-changing advances that leapfrog adversaries' technologies.

Ukraine's wartime approach aims to keep development time and budgets at minimum for maximum results.

"You can create the best thing in the world, but it can cost a lot and you can't produce a lot in a short period of time," said Andriy Chulyk, co-founder and chief executive of Sine. "But we are fighting now."

Russian electronic-warfare equipment is the main impediment to successful strikes. Russian jammers seek to overload the frequencies used to send signals to the drone from the pilot's controller, causing it to crash. Ukrainian drones also need to avoid friendly jammers used to stop Russian craft.

Sine was founded in 2022 and got its start providing its own jammers that counter Russian surveillance drones. After realizing that most drone manufacturers used cheap commercial communications units on their craft, Sine created a command-and-control module that works across many bandwidths simultaneously, allowing it to avoid jammers focused on specific frequencies.

"Usually a pilot has to find a way to reach the battlefield and avoid all that jamming. Our module does this automatically," Chulyk said.

No device is unjammable, Chulyk acknowledged, but the aim is to create an affordable solution that can't be reasonably countered in a front-line trench system, given the cost and power demands of fielding many jammers.

Sine produces thousands of the modules a month and sells them at an affordable price, to make a thin profit to reinvest into further research and production. It is one of dozens of startups in Ukraine tackling various aspects of drone warfare and automation.

Next up, Sine sought to address the lack of GPS on the front lines. Russian electronic-warfare equipment knocks out GPS signals or sends false readings. Ukrainian pilots must rely on instructions from a navigator comparing the feed from a camera with a map to direct the drone to the target.

By adding software to the module, which is smaller than a playing card, and deploying a ground station and two beacons, Sine allows the pilot to pinpoint the location of a drone down to as little as 20 yards. Zvirko said it is similar to technology used to track planes before GPS was deployed.

Using the positioning system, Sine is close to delivering a solution that enables the drones to fly themselves to the battlefield.

"Everything we are doing here, we are trying to lower the expertise of the guys who will use it," Chulyk said. "For them, it will be like a computer game."

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More Industries Augment Human Work

Augmenting human work with automation is increasingly common across industries. Boeing and Airbus for decades have offered pilots a growing list of options to let onboard computers handle tasks. Companies in sectors from car making to e-commerce, from Toyota to Amazon.com, have found a mix of human labor and automation is often most effective.

Industrial robots usually are assigned the tasks they perform better or faster than humans. The same is happening with Ukraine's drones.

Ukrainian defense planners plot their progression toward full automation on a 10-level ladder of advancement, with fully independent drone swarms near the top. 

 Drones are already in use employing computer-vision for autonomous targeting, said Max Makarchuk, head of artificial intelligence at Brave1, a Ukrainian government platform for defense-tech coordination.

"We move gradually, depending on the readiness and effectiveness of each type of development, and adapt them for serial or mass production only when they demonstrate practical benefits for the military," he said." [1]

If they are really so good, why are they losing?

A country that uses Terminator type autonomous killer robots should be completely disarmed. Its leaders should be sued as enemies of all humanity.

1. World News: Ukraine Advances Killer Robot Drones --- Private companies use automation, efficiency to boost front-line capabilities. Marson, James; Michaels, Daniel. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 Jan 2025: A7.