There has been speculation about this for several years now, when we'd get reports of fully autonomous drones on the battlefield in Ukraine. Now it's been revealed that Ukraine has already done that.
Brave new world, indeed.
Source: New Scientist
Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare.
The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.
“We tried it,” says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].”
The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.
“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”
? Ukrainian-developed AI has made history by independently deciding to kill Russian soldiers
Source: New ScientistFully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare.
The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled “Terminator” drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. Russian soldiers were killed.
“We tried it,” says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. “It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].”
The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage “Terminator mode”, in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets.
“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”
👀 Ukrainian-developed AI has made history by independently deciding to kill Russian soldiers
During a battlefield test, 10 AI-powered "Terminator" drones detected, identified, and engaged Russian troops without any human intervention. pic.twitter.com/dF8tEj14tO— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) June 17, 2026
