Lethal Autonomous Weapons & Combat Drones Watch Thread

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[wjfox]

Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time

10 June 2026

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.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/25 ... irst-time/

[firestar464]

Bluesky users going to cancel Ukraine in 3, 2, 1...

I mean, I'm fine as long as it's just as or more precise than human operators. The main concern here is that it would be difficult to ethically test that.

[weatheriscool]

The Pentagon moves towards mass-producing the future of aerial warfare
By David Szondy
June 20, 2026

The United States military is plunging into the robotic future of aerial warfare with both feet as awards are issued to General Atomics and Anduril for not just the development, but the mass production of hundreds of autonomous combat aircraft.

In a dramatic illustration of how fast things are changing in military circles, the Pentagon has made a major paradigm shift that will see the US Air Force using autonomous fighter planes to plug a very large gap caused by the changing geopolitical situation.

Without going into too much detail, current military planning sees the conventional reliance on manned combat aircraft as a major problem. Fighter aircraft with pilots sitting at the controls are far superior to autonomous combat aircraft and will be for the foreseeable future. The problem is that getting enough of these aircraft and the pilots to operate them is an extremely slow and expensive process.

Just look at the massive fleet of trainer aircraft the US Air Force must maintain just to keep the pilot pipeline flowing. The reason for so many is because fighter pilot is a profession for which many are called but few are chosen. Add into this the staggering complexity of aircraft like the F-35 Lightning II and the reasons why so few are fielded, relatively speaking, compared to the days of Spitfires and Mustangs is easy to understand.

https://newatlas.com/military/us-air-fo ... er-planes/

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