In a recent article for the Henry Jackson Society, an excerpt of which was published on Sunday (October 13) by the Kyiv Post, David Kirichenko drew attention to the increasingly important role that artificial intelligence (AI) plays in the battlefield in the war in Ukraine, particularly by improving the ability of drones to target the enemy.

According to articles in TIME magazine and the British military news website Forces News, the leap provided by AI to Ukrainian drones has increased their success rate from less than 50% in 2023 to almost 80% this year. . This is largely due to the impact of AI software provided by US company Palantir – which TIME has dubbed the “AI arms dealer of the 21st century”.

An example of the success of this technology is the SAKER reconnaissance drone, in which Palantir’s AI software is integrated. The drone would be able to independently identify personnel, tanks, armored vehicles, among other targets, and transmit this information to its command post to select when to strike the enemy and with what weapons.

However, the critical advantage comes from the AI’s ability to “learn” and for Ukrainian operators to further “train” the software, it is said that SAKER can now distinguish Russian soldiers simply by their uniforms, 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 10 km and an inertial guidance system that does not rely on GPS for navigation, making it much less susceptible to jamming. Over the past 12 months, the increase in electronic warfare (EW) countermeasures on the battlefield has had a significant impact on the success rate of drone strikes.

Field reports indicated that for newly qualified UAV pilots, the success rate had fallen to 10 percent, while even the most experienced operators struggled to achieve a 50 percent success rate. However, with the advent of Palantir’s AI, which, according to the Forces News report, is used to power almost all Ukrainian drones used for artillery targeting, this figure can be increased to almost 80%.

Palantir software is designed to bring together data collected from a number of sources, including human intelligence, drones, radar, thermal imaging, etc., which can detect battlefield movements and sources of artillery fire.

Palantir’s AI modeling then processes the data and will provide a variety of targeting options for commanders to exploit.

Kirichenko, says AI-equipped drones “harness technology to counter both Russia’s numerical superiority and greater quantities of systems and weapons.”

He believes that by doing so, “Ukraine has truly defied the narrative that a much larger power would overwhelm a much smaller nation.”

However, he warns about certain moral aspects associated with the explosion in the use of AI. He wonders if the AI ​​was able to recognize Russian military personnel simply by their movements, even when they are not wearing uniforms, and could it then distinguish between Russian civilians?

He says Ukrainian and Western forces would probably take heed and hold their fire, but the Russians, given how they have acted so far, probably would not.

He says it’s also dangerous to give too much autonomy to AI-equipped drones and other battlefield systems because he believes AI isn’t always capable of assessing nuances on the battlefield as a human operator can – a potentially dangerous blind spot that could lead to errors in judgment, particularly considering the similarities between much of the equipment and weapons deployed by both parts.

Nevertheless, he asserts that the AI ​​revolution will only continue and accelerate and that Ukraine must therefore ensure that it stays ahead in the development of this new technological frontier. As Forces News writes: “Future warfare will likely be as much about algorithms as it is about armor. »