US company’s AI lets Ukraine’s cheap kamikaze drones track targets on their own
US company’s AI lets Ukraine’s cheap kamikaze drones track targets on their own
美国公司的人工智能技术让乌克兰的廉价自杀式无人机能够自主追踪目标
Ukrainian drone operators have destroyed many Russian armored vehicles on the ground and even military helicopters in midair using $400 Shrike drones with explosive payloads. Now thousands of such drones are getting upgraded with an AI system capable of autonomously tracking and homing in on moving targets. 乌克兰的无人机操作员利用价值 400 美元、携带爆炸载荷的“伯劳”（Shrike）无人机，摧毁了地面上许多俄罗斯装甲车辆，甚至在空中击落了军用直升机。如今，数以千计的此类无人机正在进行升级，配备能够自主追踪并锁定移动目标的人工智能系统。
In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by the Ukrainian company SkyFall equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software developed by the US company Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones equipped with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months. 7 月中旬，乌克兰军方开始接收由乌克兰 SkyFall 公司制造的“伯劳”无人机，这些无人机配备了由美国 Auterion 公司开发的人工智能自主硬件和软件。两家公司计划在未来几个月内交付 5 万架配备 Auterion 公司 Skynode S 攻击套件的无人机。
That allows human operators to manually fly the Shrike first-person view (FPV) drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then “flip the switch to turn it into fire-and-forget terminal guidance mode,” Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion, told Ars. Auterion 的联合创始人兼首席执行官洛伦兹·迈耶（Lorenz Meier）告诉 Ars 技术网站，这使得操作员能够手动将“伯劳”第一人称视角（FPV）无人机飞入战场区域，指定半英里内的目标，然后“拨动开关，将其转为‘发射后不管’的末端制导模式”。
The operator can abort a strike or choose a different target as long as they have a radio signal connection with the drone, Meier explained. But the drone can still automatically track and fly into targets without any human guidance, even if it loses its connection with the operator due to buildings or terrain blocking the signal or because of enemy jamming on the same radio frequencies. 迈耶解释说，只要操作员与无人机保持无线电信号连接，就可以中止打击或选择不同的目标。但即使由于建筑物、地形遮挡信号或敌方在相同无线电频率上的干扰导致与操作员失去连接，无人机仍然可以在没有任何人工引导的情况下自动追踪并飞向目标。
To home in on targets, Auterion’s software relies solely on the visual information available from the Shrike drone’s main onboard camera. That means the Shrike drones can track and strike moving targets without any reliance on GPS—a crucial advantage on modern battlefields, where GPS jamming has also become common. 为了锁定目标，Auterion 的软件完全依赖于“伯劳”无人机主板载摄像头提供的视觉信息。这意味着“伯劳”无人机可以在不依赖 GPS 的情况下追踪并打击移动目标——这在现代战场上是一项至关重要的优势，因为 GPS 干扰在战场上已变得司空见惯。
That could further enhance the success rate of remotely piloted Shrike drones that have already struck many vehicle-size targets since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including armored tanks, electronic warfare systems, artillery guns, and rocket launchers. Shrike drones have reportedly taken down two Russian Mi-28 helicopters, each worth as much as $19 million, according to the Kyiv Independent. 这可能会进一步提高远程操控的“伯劳”无人机的成功率。自 2022 年俄罗斯对乌克兰发动全面入侵以来，这些无人机已经打击了许多车辆大小的目标，包括装甲坦克、电子战系统、火炮和火箭发射器。据《基辅独立报》报道，据称“伯劳”无人机已经击落了两架俄罗斯米-28 直升机，每架价值高达 1900 万美元。
Cost-effective AI for battlefield drones
用于战场无人机的经济型人工智能
Until now, the Ukrainian military has mainly relied on human operators to manually guide drones toward their targets, with the exception of mid- or long-range strike drones such as the $5,000 AI-powered “Hornet” drones developed by the California-based company Perennial Autonomy, founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Those drones often fly far beyond the frontlines to target Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure, factories and warehouses, or even ships in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. 到目前为止，乌克兰军方主要依靠操作员手动引导无人机飞向目标，但也有例外，例如由前谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）创立的加州公司 Perennial Autonomy 开发的价值 5000 美元的人工智能“大黄蜂”（Hornet）中远程打击无人机。这些无人机通常飞越前线，打击俄罗斯的炼油厂、能源基础设施、工厂、仓库，甚至是亚速海和黑海中的船只。
But Auterion focused on creating AI-powered capabilities for the cheaper, shorter-range FPV drones that have become the most common weapons responsible for killing or wounding soldiers on the frontlines in Ukraine. The company developed a tightly integrated flight control system and terminal guidance system optimized to run on a Western-made Arm system-on-a-chip costing just $18. 但 Auterion 专注于为更廉价、短程的 FPV 无人机开发人工智能功能，这些无人机已成为乌克兰前线造成士兵伤亡最常见的武器。该公司开发了一种高度集成的飞行控制系统和末端制导系统，并针对仅需 18 美元的西方制造的 Arm 片上系统（SoC）进行了优化。
“What we are doing is replacing the existing flight controller—which has no computer, no AI—with avionics that has a microprocessor unit, has AI on board, and can track into the target fully autonomously,” Meier told Ars. “我们所做的是更换现有的飞行控制器——它没有计算机，也没有人工智能——换成一套拥有微处理器单元、内置人工智能，并且能够完全自主追踪目标的航空电子设备，”迈耶告诉 Ars。
Each of SkyFall’s Shrike drones equipped with such capability costs about $2,000, compared to the $400 Ukrainian drones that rely only on manual piloting, Meier wrote in a blog post. By comparison, he described Western militaries as still purchasing “precision munitions at six or seven figures per shot (30–60 times this price), drones procured in batches of dozens, priced like exquisite aircraft, delivered on timelines measured in years.” 迈耶在一篇博客文章中写道，每架配备这种能力的 SkyFall“伯劳”无人机成本约为 2000 美元，而仅依赖手动驾驶的乌克兰无人机成本为 400 美元。相比之下，他形容西方军队仍在购买“每发价格高达六七位数的精确弹药（是该价格的 30 到 60 倍），以几十架为一批采购无人机，价格堪比精密的飞机，交付周期长达数年。”
The 50,000 Shrike drones equipped with Auterion’s strike kit were funded by a $100 million contract backed by an officially unnamed European country. Reuters reported that Germany is the country funding the order, and Meier also disclosed that Auterion’s team based in Munich, Germany, is fulfilling the order. This is the largest delivery order to date for Auterion. But the company also previously committed to delivering 33,000 drone strike kits to Ukraine in July 2025, with backing from a $50 million Pentagon contract. 这 5 万架配备 Auterion 攻击套件的“伯劳”无人机由一份 1 亿美元的合同资助，该合同由一个未正式公开名称的欧洲国家支持。路透社报道称，德国是资助该订单的国家，迈耶也透露，Auterion 位于德国慕尼黑的团队正在执行该订单。这是 Auterion 迄今为止最大的交付订单。但该公司此前还承诺在 2025 年 7 月向乌克兰交付 3.3 万套无人机攻击套件，并获得了五角大楼 5000 万美元合同的支持。
Human control and drone swarms
人工控制与无人机蜂群
The drone strike kits would also enable SkyFall’s Shrike drones to receive future software updates that could enable a single human operator to command an autonomous swarm of drones to attack targets. Auterion did not provide a timeframe for when this might happen. But the company has already demonstrated such drone swarming capability during a live-fire combat exercise at a US military range at Camp Blanding in Florida. The demonstration involved a drone pilot commanding three autonomous strike drones to take out three separate targets. 这些无人机攻击套件还将使 SkyFall 的“伯劳”无人机能够接收未来的软件更新，从而使一名操作员能够指挥一个自主无人机蜂群攻击目标。Auterion 没有提供这可能实现的时间表。但该公司已经在佛罗里达州布兰丁营（Camp Blanding）的美国军事靶场进行实弹演习时，演示了这种无人机蜂群能力。演示中，一名无人机飞行员指挥三架自主攻击无人机摧毁了三个独立的目标。
Such swarm capability provided by Auterion’s Nemyx system means that drones can autonomously work together to prioritize higher-value targets and adjust on the fly as targets are destroyed, so multiple drones aren’t wasted on the same target, Meier explained. That can all happen without any human input after the operator first directs the drone swarm toward a given objective. 迈耶解释说，Auterion 的 Nemyx 系统提供的这种蜂群能力意味着无人机可以自主协作，优先打击高价值目标，并随着目标的摧毁实时调整，从而避免多架无人机浪费在同一个目标上。在操作员最初将无人机蜂群引向特定目标后，这一切都可以在无需任何人工干预的情况下完成。
“It basically means that you can point one of our swarms at an objective, and you can either decide to point all the munitions at a single target point, or you can actually spread them out from the get-go, and they will reprioritize,” Meier told Ars. “If you kick the swarm into strike mode, the whole thing strikes. If you let it abort, the whole thing aborts.” “这基本上意味着你可以将我们的蜂群指向一个目标，你可以决定将所有弹药指向一个目标点，或者从一开始就将它们分散开，它们会重新确定优先级，”迈耶告诉 Ars。“如果你让蜂群进入打击模式，整个蜂群就会发起攻击。如果你让它中止，整个蜂群就会中止。”