The SAKER AI-powered reconnaissance drone. Photo: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense In a recent article for the Henry Jackson Society, an extract of which was published by Kyiv Post on Sunday Oct. 13, David Kirichenko drew attention to the increasingly significant role Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing on the battlefield in the war in Ukraine particularly in enhancing the ability of drones to target the enemy.
According to articles in TIME magazine and the UK’s Forces News military issues website the leap forward that AI has provided Ukrainian drones has increased their hit rate from below 50 percent in 2023 to nearer 80 percent this year. Much of this is put down to the impact of AI software provided by the US based company, Palantir – who TIME has dubbed the “AI arms dealer of the 21st century.”
An example of the technology’s success is the SAKER reconnaissance drone, in which Palantir’s AI software is embedded. The drone is said to be able to independently identify personnel, tanks, armored vehicles among other targets and feed that information to its command post to select when to hit the enemy and with which weapons.
However, the critical edge comes from the ability of the AI to “learn” and for Ukrainian operators to “train” the software further it is said that SAKER can now distinguish Russian soldiers simply by their uniforms, their weapons and equipment and even by the way they move after being “fed” countless videos of Russian operational forces.
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The SAKER has a range of 10km and an inertial guidance system which doesn’t rely on GPS for navigation, making it far less susceptible to jamming. Over the last 12 months the increase in electronic warfare (EW) countermeasures on the battlefield has heavily impacted the successful strike rate by drones.
Field reports said that for newly qualified UAV pilots the hit rate became as low as 10 percent while even […]
Artificial Intelligence Raises Ukrainian Drone Kill Rates to 80%
