Ukraine’s one-time test used fully autonomous drones to kill Russian soldiers

乌克兰曾进行一次性测试，使用全自动无人机击杀俄军士兵

Fully autonomous drones killed Russian soldiers during a battlefield test two years ago, according to a Ukrainian drone manufacturer. If true, the incident would represent another milestone in a war that has spurred unprecedented developments in military drones, robots, and AI-guided weaponry. 据一家乌克兰无人机制造商称，两年前在一次战场测试中，全自动无人机曾击杀过俄罗斯士兵。如果属实，这一事件将成为战争中的又一个里程碑，这场战争已推动了军用无人机、机器人和人工智能制导武器的前所未有的发展。

The one-time test was revealed by Alexander Kokhanovskyy, CEO of the Ukrainian drone maker Aero Center, during an interview with New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy in London. Kokhanovskyy described the test—which did not involve his current company Aero Center—using quadcopter drones that were preprogrammed to fly to a front-line area before activating an AI-powered “Terminator mode” that would seek out and attack any target in the given area. 这一一次性测试由乌克兰无人机制造商 Aero Center 的首席执行官亚历山大·科哈诺夫斯基（Alexander Kokhanovskyy）在伦敦乌克兰大使馆举办的新闻发布会上接受《新科学家》（New Scientist）采访时透露。科哈诺夫斯基描述了这次测试（并未涉及他目前的公司 Aero Center），测试使用了四轴无人机，这些无人机被预先编程飞往前线区域，随后激活人工智能驱动的“终结者模式”，自动搜寻并攻击该区域内的任何目标。

There was apparently no video feed or anything else to show what the “Terminator” drones targeted and attacked. But Kokhanovskyy told New Scientist that human-piloted drones sent to check out the aftermath found “a couple” of dead Russian soldiers, which led to the conclusion that the fully autonomous drones had killed them. 显然，当时没有任何视频回传或其他证据来显示“终结者”无人机具体瞄准和攻击了什么。但科哈诺夫斯基告诉《新科学家》，随后派去查看现场的人控无人机发现了“几名”阵亡的俄罗斯士兵，这得出了全自动无人机已将其击杀的结论。

Defence company representatives at the Ukrainian embassy event said that the Ukrainian government bans the use of AI in the final stage of target interception, according to New Scientist. A Ukrainian military commander also told New Scientist that his drone pilots only use semi-autonomous systems that always have humans making crucial control decisions. He described Ukraine’s commitment to “international humanitarian law” while emphasizing that the military always exercises “great care in decision-making in order to prevent civilian casualties.” 据《新科学家》报道，在乌克兰大使馆活动上的国防公司代表表示，乌克兰政府禁止在目标拦截的最后阶段使用人工智能。一位乌克兰军事指挥官也告诉《新科学家》，他的无人机飞行员仅使用半自动系统，始终由人类做出关键的控制决策。他描述了乌克兰对“国际人道法”的承诺，并强调军方在决策时始终保持“极度谨慎，以防止平民伤亡”。

The one-time nature of this experiment makes sense when considering the practical limitations of this approach, along with considerations regarding international humanitarian law. Sending fully autonomous drones to attack anything and everything in a given area without any human operator intervention requires careful preplanning and carries the risk of so-called “friendly fire” incidents or attacks on civilian noncombatants. It is also unclear how effective these fully autonomous quadcopter drones were in selecting and attacking targets compared to human drone pilots. 考虑到这种方法在实践中的局限性以及对国际人道法的考量，这次实验的一次性性质是可以理解的。在没有任何人类操作员干预的情况下，派遣全自动无人机去攻击特定区域内的任何目标，需要极其精细的预先规划，且存在发生所谓“友军误伤”或攻击平民非战斗人员的风险。此外，与人类无人机飞行员相比，这些全自动四轴无人机在选择和攻击目标方面的有效性尚不明确。

There is currently no commonly agreed definition of what constitutes a lethal autonomous weapon system, according to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. But common characterizations describe weapon systems with the autonomy to “perform their functions in the absence of direction or input from a human actor.” US Department of Defense policy has defined lethal autonomous weapons as “weapon system[s] that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.” 根据联合国裁军事务厅的说法，目前对于什么是致命性自主武器系统尚无公认的定义。但常见的描述将其定义为具有“在没有人类参与者指导或输入的情况下执行其功能”自主性的武器系统。美国国防部政策将致命性自主武器定义为“一旦激活，无需人类操作员进一步干预即可选择并攻击目标的武器系统”。

The role of autonomous AI in drone arsenals

自主人工智能在无人机军火库中的作用

Fully autonomous weapons with the capability to “accomplish goals independently or with minimal supervision in complex and unpredictable environments” are not yet a battlefield reality in the war in Ukraine, according to Kateryna Bondar, a former advisor to the government of Ukraine, in her report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington, DC. But she highlighted a growing number of drones integrating certain autonomous capabilities for navigation and sometimes targeting, even if human operators maintain overall control. 华盛顿特区战略与国际研究中心（CSIS）智库的报告显示，乌克兰政府前顾问卡特琳娜·邦达尔（Kateryna Bondar）指出，具备“在复杂且不可预测的环境中独立或在极少监督下完成目标”能力的全自动武器，在乌克兰战场上尚未成为现实。但她强调，越来越多的无人机正在整合某些用于导航甚至目标定位的自主能力，尽管人类操作员仍保持着整体控制权。

Ukraine and Russia are fielding many FPV drones for scouting and striking vehicles and even individual soldiers. These are typically controlled by trained drone pilots who wear virtual-reality goggles to see from the drone’s point of view while aiming for enemy targets. There are also larger quadcopter or multirotor “bomber” drones that can carry heavier payloads for either supply runs or for dropping explosives on enemy targets at the front lines. Longer-range strike drones that resemble fixed-wing aircraft may incorporate more autonomous decision-making capabilities. 乌克兰和俄罗斯都在部署大量 FPV（第一人称视角）无人机，用于侦察和打击车辆甚至单兵。这些无人机通常由受过训练的飞行员控制，他们佩戴虚拟现实眼镜，从无人机的视角观察并瞄准敌方目标。此外，还有更大的四轴或多旋翼“轰炸机”无人机，可以携带更重的载荷，用于补给任务或在前线向敌方目标投掷爆炸物。类似于固定翼飞机的远程打击无人机可能集成了更多的自主决策能力。

In 2025, Russia launched hundreds of drones to attack Ukrainian cities each night, including Shahed drones originally provided by Iran and increasingly manufactured in Russia. Shahed drones are typically preprogrammed to fly automatically toward their targets with little autonomous decision-making capability. But some Shahed drone variants, such as the Geran-2, are equipped with smuggled Nvidia Jetson Orin microcomputers that provide onboard video processing and autonomous decision-making capabilities, including autonomous target recognition and retargeting. 2025年，俄罗斯每晚发射数百架无人机袭击乌克兰城市，其中包括最初由伊朗提供、现越来越多由俄罗斯本土制造的“见证者”（Shahed）无人机。“见证者”无人机通常被预先编程自动飞向目标，几乎没有自主决策能力。但一些“见证者”变体（如 Geran-2）配备了走私的英伟达 Jetson Orin 微型计算机，提供机载视频处理和自主决策能力，包括自主目标识别和重新定位。

To defend against those attacks by Russian Shahed drones, Ukraine has deployed low- and high-tech air defense systems that include homegrown, inexpensive interceptor drones. Some interceptor drone systems are designed to autonomously fly to the intercept point and lock onto targets—although a human operator is still required to perform initial target selection and initiate strike commands while always retaining the ability to cancel attacks, according to the Ukrainian government platform United 24. 为了防御俄罗斯“见证者”无人机的袭击，乌克兰部署了包括本土制造的廉价拦截无人机在内的低技术和高技术防空系统。据乌克兰政府平台 United 24 称，一些拦截无人机系统被设计为自动飞往拦截点并锁定目标——尽管仍需要人类操作员进行初始目标选择并启动打击指令，且始终保留取消攻击的能力。

Meanwhile, Ukraine has gained the technological and manufacturing capability to launch more than 5,000 drone strikes against Russian targets at ranges exceeding 20 kilometers every month, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. These mid- and long-range strike drones necessarily rely heavily on autonomous navigation capabilities because of Russian electronic warfare systems that can interfere with human operator communication links, along with GPS jamming that can throw off GPS-guided weapons. Such AI-driven navigation has boosted the success rate of Ukrainian drone strikes from around 10 to 20 percent to 70 to 80 percent, Bondar wrote in her CSIS report. Overall, Ukraine’s defense industry has focused on training small AI models on small datasets to run on the limited computing power of small and inexpensive chips, Bondar wrote. 与此同时，据乌克兰国防部称，乌克兰已获得技术和制造能力，每月可对 20 公里以外的俄罗斯目标发动 5,000 多次无人机打击。这些中远程打击无人机必须高度依赖自主导航能力，因为俄罗斯的电子战系统会干扰人类操作员的通信链路，且 GPS 干扰会使 GPS 制导武器失效。邦达尔在 CSIS 报告中写道，这种人工智能驱动的导航将乌克兰无人机打击的成功率从约 10% 至 20% 提高到了 70% 至 80%。邦达尔写道，总体而言，乌克兰国防工业已专注于在小型数据集上训练小型人工智能模型，以在小型廉价芯片有限的计算能力下运行。