Tech Surge of the SMO: AI, Drones, EW, Countermeasures, and More of the Latest Advancements
The following is a premium article of a hefty ~4800 words in size, covering the latest technological developments on the frontline in the area of drones and AI tech in particular. The report is packed chock-full of exclusive videos and hard-to-find details that you won’t see anywhere else, which I’ve collated through tirelessly poring over obscure sources and channels. So if you’re interested in the technological aspect of the Ukrainian war in particular, this is another segment you don’t want to miss.
We haven’t had an update on the state of the war’s technological progression in a while and the new year brings the perfect time to do so. One of the reasons for that is because there have been a lot of predictions on the sweeping changes said to take root on the frontline by 2025, and so it’s appropriate to discuss how close these projections have been.
One of the notoriously contrarian predictions from many months ago was that 2025 would actually see not the supremacy of drones and FPVs, but rather their negation and decline. A French army chief made this curious claim in June of last year:
From the article:
The advantage now enjoyed by small aerial drones on battlefields including in Ukraine is but “a moment in history,” French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill said at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris.
While anti-drone systems are lagging and “leave the sky open to things that are cobbled together but which are extremely fragile,” countermeasures are being developed, Schill told reporters during a tour of the French Army stand at the show June 19. Already today, 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, the general said.
One must wonder if the French army chief knows what he’s talking about; the article further points to upcoming French vehicles which may include anti-drone ‘missiles’ and ‘40mm airburst grenades’. But these will prove useless against FPVs which are much too quick, ubiquitous, and undetectable in the frenzy of combat to really be reliably destroyed by such expensive countermeasures.
To prove his point, the French army chief compares FPVs to the Bayraktar drone, saying they will disappear just as unceremoniously from the field:
First-person view drones currently carry out about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine, when eight months ago those systems weren’t present, according to Schill. The general said that situation won’t exist 10 years from now, and the question could be asked whether that might already end in one or two years. Schill cited the example of the Bayraktar drone, “the king of the war” at the start of the conflict in Ukraine but no longer being used because it’s too easy to scramble.
But the article does make one powerful point: that Western armies are essentially paralyzed from committing too directionally in one weapons program because the possibility is too high that the albatross program can be obsoleted by a new development very quickly:
The pace of military drone development means that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.
Everyone is now focusing on one magic silver-bullet system to take on drones. But the real answer lies in a total, holistic approach with the understanding that losses from drones will simply become an inescapable reality of modern war. This is how Russia has now chosen to approach the situation, simply mitigating drone advancements as much as possible not with any one particular system aimed directly at combating them, but rather through the total synergistic strategic realignment of the armed forces as a whole. This includes everything from surveillance, EW systems, the tightening of the entire operational decision tree and OODA loop, direct personnel training, anti-drone prophylactic systems for vehicles, but also the actual combat tactics and strategies employed, like Russia’s now-famous ‘dispersion’ approach, better known as the ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
In an interview last month, a Ukrainian soldier had remarked how it has become very difficult to hit Russian troops with drones on his front due to the ‘slow trickle’ method they’ve begun to utilize in accumulating at a forward position. When there are only tiny groups of two or three men at a time weaving into the position from a variety of random directions, the AFU drone teams become dispersed and paralyzed from lack of concentrated targets.
Ukraine’s famed drone king “Magyar” had quite the opposite prediction in September of last year, stating that by March 2025 drone pilots would already be old news:
"Currently, hundreds of artificial intelligence systems are being developed simultaneously, and they are being tested in experimental modes. After six months, the pilots will no longer be required. You will need people who will simply lift the drone a meter above the ground. And then the drone itself, depending on its development, will decide what to attack, how to distinguish a Zhiguli from a tank, and will definitely not confuse the Ukrainian with the enemy, "Magyar said.
This seems a bit premature, after all we’re already nearing his six-month limit and the battlefield is not overrun with artificial intelligence systems. But there has been more and more noise in this direction.
For instance, top Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhiy Flash found an uptick in Russian forces using AI targeting drones in the Kursk region, even showcasing pictures of the recovered electronic boards:
Russian drone with target acquisition and auto-following from the Kursk bridgehead.
Recently, there have been more and more such drones. Holding a moving target is far from ideal, but it works.
I remind you that a drone with auto-target acquisition completely neutralizes trench electronic warfare.
In the case of mass production, the auto-capture module increases the price of the drone by 100-200 dollars
Meanwhile, Russian forces on the other hand recovered some of the Ukrainians’ own parallel efforts, likewise showcasing a special Google AI CPU.
Report:
Ukraine and Google artificial intelligence!
Recently, the wreckage of a Ukrainian quadcopter (FPV) found on the battlefield uses an artificial intelligence (AI) control system. After opening the quadcopter, it was found that the Ukrainian uses the Edge TPU development board developed by Google.
The Edge TPU board is the computing core unit of Google's Coral platform, which can be purchased publicly at a price of about $130, and Coral is a platform that provides complete hardware and software solutions for artificial intelligence. Unlike GPU boards, TPU boards are much more optimized for large-scale parallel computing required by networks.
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, previously said that because of the war in Ukraine, he is now a licensed arms dealer! which aims to help Ukraine achieve artificial intelligence technology. He also believes that the US military should eliminate useless tanks and replace them with drones equipped with artificial intelligence.
Ukraine hopes to use artificial intelligence-equipped drones on the front lines to help the country overcome Russian jamming systems that have become effective and enable drones to operate in larger groups. Since both sides of the Ukrainian war are using electronic warfare systems that can disrupt communication between the operator and the drone, the hit rate of FPVs has decreased.
At present, most FPVs have a hit rate of 30-50%, and the hit rate of novice operators may even reach 10%, but it is said that the hit rate of AI-controlled FPVs in the future could be as high as 80%.
Here are two such tests from Ukrainian units of auto-tracking FPVs:
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