The scene It took place a few weeks ago and was an unprecedented fact in military history. The Ukrainian forces announced that they had managed to capture Russian soldiers Without using infantry human Indeed, that was not a lantern. For the first time in history, they had used exclusively air drones and terrestrial robotic platforms, machines that were the immediate receptors of the surrender, an event that until now belonged to the science fiction. In fact, machines practically do not need the soldier.
AI becomes strong. In the Ukrainian front has confirmed The routine use of dwellings of coordinated drones through artificial intelligence, a technological leap that for years was seen as prophecy and that today becomes In fact. Under software developed by the Swarmer local companysmall UAV groups are able to communicate with each other, assign functions, decide which one first attacks or adapt if one fails, all from a goal marked by the human operator.
This ability to “Shared autonomy” It reduces from nine to three the number of people necessary for a mission and allows a single pilot to handle several devices, which helps Ukraine compensate for the inferiority of personnel against Russia. Although still far from a swarm of hundreds of drones, as some theorists anticipated, it is the first constant use of this technology in combat.
From theory to practice. The Ukrainian army has used the system more than a hundred times, According to military sourcesusually in combinations of three drones (one of recognition and two bombers) To attack trenches, artillery positions or Russian equipment. The exploration drone traces the route and detects the target, while the other two distribute the attack autonomously.
The proximity between devices reduces vulnerability to the Jamming Russiannot depending so much on easily interferible remote links. Swarmer has already tried swarms from Up to 25 drones And he prepares to experiment with more than 100, in line with parallel developments from the United States, China, France or South Korea. Unlike previous exercises (such as swarms launched by US fighters in 2016 or specific tests of Israel in Gaza), the novelty is persistence: Ukraine integrates these operations as routine In a high intensity conflict.
Technical challenges and cost. The Wall Street Journal counted that the road has not been free of problems. In early stages, the drones exchanged too much information and saturated the network, forcing the refine the communication protocols. In addition, the incorporation of Ia makes each device more expensive in a country that already produces More than 1.5 million of drones a year and assumes that many will be consumables on the battlefield.
Data management, link reliability and scalability to larger swarms They are still challenges. However, even with small groups, the advantage is palpable: speed in execution, savings of personnel and ability to attack simultaneously and flexible in multiple points.
The new paradigm. Entry on stage of autonomous swarms Raises strategic and ethical issues of global scope. On the military, the possibility of launch dozens or hundreds Coordinated drones could saturate aerial defenses and transform the logic of deterrence: a single white, from a war ship to a critical infrastructure, can be overwhelmed by a volume of threats impossible to intercept one by one. It already happened With Spiderwebin fact.
On the political level, software proliferation like Swarmer’s It marks a before and after: a company that works in a suburban garage, financed with US capital, produces a war capacity with international implications.
The ethical dimension. Plus: the growing autonomy From weapons it generates a deep debate: to what extent does the decision to attack and kill? Swarmer He affirmed to the WSJ that a human continues to authorize The final shotbut the intermediate process (location, allocation of objectives and coordination) is already in the hands of machines.
In fact, the United Nations He has asked for regulation On lethal autonomous weapons, while Washington and its allies maintain the requirement that there is a human operator in the “death chain.” Even so, the Ukrainian precedent accelerates the dilemma: the more effective these systems are shown, the greater the temptation to reduce human supervision to maximize speed and surprise.
A border to redefine. In short, the conjunction of drones and algorithms It opens a land in which the quantity and artificial intelligence weigh more than individual sophistication. Ukraine, forced to innovate by necessity, is placed at the forefront of A historical change In the art of war, with implications that reach the great powers and the ethics of future conflicts.
If you want also, the “swarm” has ceased to be a laboratory concept to become a real combat tool, transforming not only the tactic into the front, but also the worldwide reflection on how far the autonomy of machines should reach the machines in life or death decisions.
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