The average life expectancy for a Russian soldier in Ukraine is between 20-30 minutes, CIA director John Ratcliffe said. Speaking at a defense summit in Pennsylvania, he attributed the deadly conditions for Vladimir Putin’s forces to Ukraine’s combat drones equipped with AI. “What I would say is, our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine,” Ratcliffe said. “So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit, right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.” “And that’s because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. And it’s why we’re now four and a half years into that conflict,” Ratcliffe added. Ukraine said this month that Russia has lost about 1.4 million soldiers since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with over 1,000 of the Kremlin’s troops killed or wounded almost every day. In May, Ukraine’s defense ministry said it was killing roughly 200 Russian soldiers for every kilometer of territory that Moscow claimed.
This is good news for Ukraine
This is godawful news for humanity. I fucking guarantee you that drones like these will later be used against citizens and innocent people
I’m pretty surprised we haven’t seen any assassinations of public figures using quadcopters yet.
These things are almost as easy to obtain and weaponize as a rifle.
It’s a lot easier to sight a drone one a clear day when a vip is giving a speech then it is to sight a drone 24/7 during active conflict.
It’s a lot easier to jam a single drone that a nobody can buy then it is to jam a swam of drones you need a defense budget to buy.
You can spot anti-drone personal carrying HERF(high energy radio frequency) guns at major public events nowadays if you know what to look for. The simplest concept just throws enough RF static in the air to make the drone loose connection to the operator.
Will that stop offline drones with its own sensing, though?
Yes, I know the definition for that is “missile,” but I think we’re getting close to the point where one could reprogram an off-the-shelf machine vision enabled drone to do this, and cover it in foil or something.
Low power herf won’t stop autonomous drones, but high powered one are microwave beams. The fines traces of semiconductors act as antennas and fry if enough amperage is drawn in.
I don’t know when off the shelf equipment will be able to do what you’re describing. Your best bet is when someone’s at a podium so there’s landmarks to reference. Face identification will still be difficult at range. At a certain point, vips will be giving their speeches in glass boxes, like the pipemobile.
I’m thinking of “action drones” that can follow around their users on skis or whatever. To film them from the air.
This is already a consumer product. Some have telephoto lenses (though face identification still wouldn’t be reliable, no).
Machine vision on a cheap ASIC is capable of doing this, too.
I’m not saying the whole package is there, but all the pieces are, so it’s not that far away. And I’m thinking one could cover a drone in metal foil to mitigate against microwave devices.
Fiber optic drones are the norm now in the Ukraine war, no?
I haven’t been keeping up, but they probably use all kinds. The drones that attacked the oil refineries where probably using visual sighting navigation where their systems spot landmarks or road and river crossing. No need for remote control or satellite navigation that could get jammed.
Fiberoptic is good for short range, but that’s not something that a consumer could get off the shelf.
Not sure how accurate but it was an interesting read that tour comment lead me to.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/fiber-optics-drones-have-emerged-as-critical-kit-for-both-russia-and-ukraine/
If you’re attempting to assassinate someone, you don’t want a physical trail going straight back to your location.
I think fiber optics would only see niche applications, when done by either a lunatic or a professional agent aware they’d sacrifice themselves for the target.
But if you’re at the point of having professional agents, willing to sacrifice themselves. It’s more likely you’d sneak a drone onto a civilian vehicle like a truck, with a preprogrammed path able to scan for a specific face (or a handful of them) which acts offline once it sets off
I think (mighty me with 0 drone or RF experience) that it would be possible to combine the fiber optic with radio, by having a control relay be physically attached with fiber optics, but then you control that relay with RF. If your fiber optics range is sufficient, then RF jamming won’t be an issue
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that does not mean the connection to the operator is happening through a fiber optic cable. I also doubt it doesn’t have electrically conductive traces anywhere. what is the cpu and memory is made of?
Here’s one following Trump around.
Yeah fiberoptic is definitely going to be used in an assassination attempt of someone publically in the near future it would seem.
But would that be off the shelf type stuff?
Fibre optic is old tech. now they have drones that will match your vehicle/face/enemy vehicle and blow you up without needing any comms at all. the instructions are programmed in before flight. the tech is advancing fast.
Not that many public figures are gonna have future weapon dude at their side though.
Not that many public figures are interesting enough to target. Honestly, I’m surprised how there were no attempts on conservatives during the Bush II years by the Taliban. Judging by how easy it was for the nutjob to go after Paul Pelosi, most of these people are very easy targets.
We have. They were used in the middle eest to take out leaders in hotels.
The US does, but this tech is now bypassing the bloated Military Industrial Complex middleman that made the tech too expensive. price gets cheaper everyday
Where’d you hear that?
Also, I wasn’t talking about military operations, really.
I didn’t hear it, i saw the video. They flew the drone right into how window and killed one of the top leaders of the Taliban, but no i haven’t seen them used by normal people to attemp an assassin that i know of
I can’t overemphasize how much I wish we didn’t have to do this. I hope the history records we aren’t making murder drones for shits and giggles, but rather because it’s the only way to not be overwhelmed by the meat wave.
We always have an excuse. The usual one is we’re just trying to do it before the other guy does.
What history records is we like to kill each other for land, resources, and power. That’s not going to change, it seems.
Also, why won’t China leave Taiwan alone? Why won’t Russia leave Ukraine alone? Why is Trump threatening Greenland, and Canada? Good reasons, or bad?
Years ago Google employees quit to avoid making killer drone AI.
In an evil world, the elite would hold back weapon deliveries at the start of the war to prevent the war from being over early on. Then enough developers would be motivated to help the good side to win.
IDF troops have been killed by FPV drones. Incredible sums of money will be spent to find countermeasures that Ukraine and Russia havent been able to make work yet. Hopefully the shield will become cheaper and more effective than the sword again.
It’s looking like lasers will be the countermeasure to drones
that could solve them on the battlefield, but not anywhere else.
War often accelerates the development and adoption of technology. Russia is learning a lot too in this war and are focusing on developing and producing better killer drones as well. As much as people here want to believe so, Russians are not stupid.
Once we can fully mass produce killer drones automatically, they basically become a weapon of mass destruction. But unlike a nuke, they could depopulate a whole country without much fuss. At least theoretically. With solar panels they could even enter a kind of “lurker” mode to wait out any stragglers.
which is why Ukraine is trying to eliminate the oil funding. harder to invest when the country is bled dry financially.
Yeah a complete collapse of Russia is pretty much the only win condition for Ukraine. I don’t think a coup is possible since the Russian military knows how dangerous Ukraine has become. Hardliners on all sides. A total collapse of Russia would be very dangerous too.
It’s also possible the AI bubble will pop and the US and then global economy will collapse, and then EU backing for Ukraine could fail too. That would be the worst case scenario lol. Can you imagine how easy it would be to stoke resentment among Ukrainians against Europe for “betraying” them? And then millions more of refugees fleeing and pushing into a Europe in an economic crisis.
Yeah that’s the part I super hate, we’re creating hell and it’s going to come to us