A computer game-style drone attack system has gone “viral” among Ukrainian military units and is being extended to reconnaissance, artillery and logistics operations, the nation’s first deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has told the Guardian.
Drone teams competing for points under the “Army of Drones Bonus System” killed or wounded 18,000 Russian soldiers in September, with 400 drone units now taking part in the competition, up from 95 in August, Ukrainian officials said.
The system, which launched more than a year ago, rewards soldiers who achieve strikes with points that can be exchanged to buy more weapons in an “Amazon-for-war” online store called Brave1 filled with more than 100 different drones, autonomous vehicles and other drone war material. It has a leaderboard topped by teams with names such as Achilles and Phoenix.
Obviously it’s hard to complain when this stuff is being used to protect Ukrainian independence, but man this shit is terrifying. I am not looking forward to Americans or Chinese getting their hands on this tech.
I could almost guarantee that countries like the US and China have drone warfare programs that would do literal circles around everything and anything deployed in Ukraine/Russia right now.
Set aside all the ethical dubiousness of making killing humans a game with points, since that is basically what war is, the proliferation and rapid evolution of all of this tech alongside the landslide of AI development should be what actually terrifies us. The trend going forward in all “politics by lethal force” is going to involve more and more smaller and smaller vehicles designed to kill specific targets, ideally without having to worry about signals that can be jammed or wires trailing behind it, so intelligent enough to operate on it’s own and make decisions and be able to operate independently for long periods of time. That should be spine-chilling to every human alive.
The game America’s Army was supposed to be pretty good and a solid recruiting tool. I played just a bit, seemed great, didn’t get into it. Very surprised the West, particularly America, hasn’t gone nuts on gaming war.
So yeah, we’ll have teenagers flying drones against one another soon enough. Better than charging Maxim machine guns by a long shot.