[stefan_]

This is an odd article that tries to elevate some random grunt in the field painting their truck white stripes to grand battlefield strategy in the face of autonomous AI killer drones. Neither are the latter real nor is the former actually in widespread use, and it obviously is not effective, not least because the drones it's talking about barely have the resolution at altitude to resolve that detail.

[joezydeco]

The evidence seems to be coming out to support the latter.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-us...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o

[stefan_]

Yes, media see a snapdragon running a YOLO and go off writing "AI apocalypse autonomous killer drones" articles.

See it for yourselves: https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956

Some object detection and (human triggered) terminal guidance. It's essentially there to solve latency and control issues for a fixed wing platform with a spotty data link.

[joezydeco]

If it works, who cares how it's made?

[FridgeSeal]

Because how it’s made and functions is useful information for dealing with it when they’re trying to attack you?

[trhway]

>not least because the drones it's talking about barely have the resolution at altitude to resolve that detail.

the drones are used in groups. That is for example how we have a lot of footage of the drones hitting targets. The drone observers or especially the intelligence drone guiding the group would frequently carry much better camera than the actual kamikaze drones (especially when it comes to high-resolution IR cameras which are expensive). In the fully autonomous AI mode the drone is usually given small target area where to operate (in particular because they aren't yet smart enough to differentiate Ukranians from Russians, so you'd like to confine their operations to a limited area and not letting it into the totally free hunt) and regular 4K camera is sufficient there. Again, there is a lot of footage on YT an TG.

[stefan_]

You are mixing more things. There's lots of ISR drones flying around, from DJIs at 50-150m altitude to bigger fixed wing platforms at 1000-1500m. Their point is to find targets, do BDA and monitor, but not autonomously; it's guys sitting in Discord calls and entering data into BMS.

Most kamikaze drones are FPVs. They can not do anything autonomously because at $300 a pop in a totally GNSS denied environment, after 10 seconds past takeoff none of them have the faintest clue where they are. That's why you see all that footage, they just skip the part where for the first 20 minutes some guy with goggles is navigating them. The bigger fixed wing kamikaze drones like the Hornet above might have better onboard options like VO or triangulating radio beacons, but by all the evidence they are still guided by operators and triggered to dive manually. The biggest issue for all these systems is maintaining their video data link; if they were truly totally autonomous, nobody would bother.