The US military-industrial complex has reportedly begun literally embedding itself into Ukrainian-produced military hardware, with Virginia-based defense firm Auterion said to be preparing to deliver ‘tens of thousands’ of its small, cheap Skynode autopilot computers to Kiev to fuse with locally made UAVs to increase their lethality.
The minicomputers reportedly provide guidance, targeting and networking functions, are capable of stabilizing drones and maneuvering around obstacles to targets, and cost about $300 apiece.
Oleksiy Babenko, CEO of Ukrainian UAV startup Vyriy Drone, says his company will build several thousand of the new autopilot-equipped drones this month.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the development in a puff piece published Friday, with the story, titled ‘Killer Robots Are About to Fill Ukrainian Skies’, praising the fusion of US and Ukrainian military manufacturing capabilities, and suggesting the UAVs are the solution the Zelensky regime is looking for as Washington’s interest in fueling the Ukrainian crisis fades, undermining more conventional and expensive forms of military support.
WSJ specifically touts the new drones as a fix to Ukraine’s increasingly dire manpower shortfall, and low cost compared to missiles and artillery shells, which NATO hasn’t been able to supply in sufficient numbers after being outproduced by Russia’s defense sector.
Russian electronic warfare tools, and advances in its own drone programs, pose a challenge to Ukraine’s UAV ambitions, the newspaper admitted, pointing to Russian EW systems’ ability to “drown out” the signal between enemy drones and operators at a rate of 80-90%, and Russian defense engineers’ creation of a new series strike drones attached to long fiberoptic cables, which makes them impervious to enemy jamming.
Reading like a written version of the 2017 sci-fi short film ‘Slaughterbots’, WSJ’s story alarmed even its own readers - particularly its praise of systems that further ‘automate’ the conflict.
“The drone/EW/AI arms race we see in the Ukraine war is Skynet’s nursery and preschool,” one reader wrote, referring to the main antagonist from James Cameron’s Terminator movies, which warned of the dangers of AI being allowed to take control of military decision-making.
“Robot armies, impersonal killing, will become the new norm. What could go wrong?” another person sarcastically asked.
“So this is the latest magic bullet. Every day there are fewer Ukrainians able to fight…Do you really think these drones will change the tide of a war of attrition? They are gnats. Gnats can be really annoying. That does not change what they are. Continuing this is irresponsible and immoral,” another commentator wrote.