[YeGoblynQueenne]

Just to add to this, radio-controlled drones are also still used, it's just that those are relatively easy to jam while the fiber-optic ones aren't and that makes them very difficult to defend against.

Also, to my understanding, jamming works best against smaller, First Person View quadcopter-style drones that have a limited range and carry only limited firepower (e.g. one grenade basically) and are often used against personnel and armor.

Longer-range and better armed drones, like the US's Predators that can launch missiles, or Iran's Sahel drones that attack targets thousands of Kms away, fly at much greater heights and are -again, AFAICT- harder to jam, although I am saying this with some uncertainty.

In any case, I believe hkpack's comment above that Ukrainians have private tech that the world doesn't know about doesn't stand to reason. If any party had such tech, it would be the US, China, or possibly Israel, with Russia a distant second possibility. Ukrainians are not known for their AI output, to say the least. And we're talking here about major breakthroughs needed to endow drones with true autonomy, breakthroughs that require scientific advances and not just technological tweaks and R&D.

Also, if there was really useful drone autonomy, it would have now spread like wildfire in every possible theater. Despite a few announcements that this or that party (e.g. Turkey, last year) has used autonomous drones in a real combat situation, there is no shortage of real combat situations and yet there are no autonomous drones to be seen on any battlefield.

Finally, any side with autonomous killer robots would advertise their existence to high heaven. Half of the effect is the ability of such a weapon to cause terror to the enemy. Why keep quiet about it? The enemy already has samples of your tech, that's the only thing certain in modern warfare; you're not keeping any secrets that way.

[johncearls]

My understanding of the Shahed's is that they are relatively simple. They can be programmed with a certain destination and then have some basic image recognition that allows them to "choose" exactly their target based on computer vision, e.g. the shape of a building or radar station. So in that sense, they are autonomous. To my mind, they are more cheap precision missiles (more like a tomahawk) than an autonomous drone.

Predators are a whole different beast. They are semi-autonomous airplanes, that can be controlled by satellite or AWAC or whatever. Almost certainly with the ability to loiter or escape if they lose contact with their controllers

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Shaheds (some models) have loitering ability, and other "autonomy" features. Tbh the term is as fuzzy as "AGI" or "self-driving" these days because there are a bunch of automatisms that a drone can have that are often labelled so. However, an autonomous system should do much more than go to a designated location and fire at a target that looks like it might be the designated target. I mean to say, pathfinding and image recognition do not autonomy make; or they shouldn't be said to anyway.

As I like to say of course, self-guided missiles are arguably autonomous; but that's just because their whole job is to reach a target while causing maximum damage on hit. That removes many of the requirements of other "autonomous" systems (e.g. self-driving cars).

P.S. I honestly don't know much about Predators but I expect they're going to have the most advanced features available.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Oops. Iran's Shahed drones, not "Sahel" (which is a region in Africa).