Using pictures out of Ukraine showing a crumpled metallic airframe, open-source analysts of the conflict there say they have identified images of a new sort of Russian-made drone, one that the manufacturer says can select and strike targets through inputted coordinates or autonomously. When soldiers give the Kalashnikov ZALA Aero KUB-BLA loitering munition an uploaded image, the system is capable of “real-time recognition and classification of detected objects” using artificial intelligence (AI), according to the Netherlands-based organization Pax for Peace (citing Jane’s International Defence Review). In other words, analysts appear to have spotted a killer robot on the battlefield.
The images of the weapon, apparently taken in the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv and uploaded to Telegram on March 12, do not indicate whether the KUB-BLA, manufactured by Kalashnikov Group of AK-47 fame, was used in its autonomous mode. The drone appears intact enough that digital forensics might be possible, but the challenges of verifying autonomous weapons use mean we may never know whether it was operating entirely autonomously. Likewise, whether this is Russia’s first use of AI-based autonomous weapons in conflict is also unclear: Some published analyses suggests the remains of a mystery drone found in 2019 Syria was from a KUB-BLA (though, again, the drone may not have used the autonomous function).
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