AI drones in series production: Ukrainian makers and Helsing bring autonomous strike drones to the front

Drones that need no manual control thanks to “machine vision” have been in intensive development for some time. Ukrainian manufacturers are now going a step further, the renowned Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports in an exclusive: they are scaling up production of AI drones – strike drones with built-in AI modules – to industrial levels.

Ukraine’s drone suppliers are ramping up production of computer-guided drones that are cheap and can’t be electronically jammed https://t.co/639ENAPCt0— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 16, 2024

Crypto-code protection is decisive: it is meant to make it practically impossible for the enemy to access the drones' valuable software. If Russian forces capture drones, they will try everything to crack their secrets – but that is unlikely to be easy. The Ukrainian side is convinced that it now costs the Russians far fewer resources to develop their own codes than to break those of Ukrainian AI drones.

How AI drones are going into mass production

Ukraine has become a kind of global centre of excellence for drones and drone warfare – driven by people such as Mykhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Digital Transformation, and Maria Berlinska, co-founder of the Dignitas foundation and head of the Victory Drones project, which aims to upgrade the country's security and defence forces technologically, as well as by manufacturers such as “Wild Hornets” or “Vyriy Drone”.

The goal is clear: in future, fewer people and more robots are to fight the huge Russian army.

According to the WSJ, Ukrainian drone manufacturers have recently succeeded in rapidly expanding production of low-cost strike drones controlled by AI modules.

This is made possible by small compact computers such as Auterion's Skynode S module. How many of these miniature computers Kyiv has ordered is unknown; there is talk of “tens of thousands”. They are to be deployed en masse from early next year. Auterion has created a reference design for Ukrainian developers showing how to integrate the AI module into a fully digital drone. This reference AI drone is called Dragon 10.

Swarm control, fully autonomous flight control and obstacle avoidance are among the Skynode-S computer's functions. Once the operator has selected the target, the module guides the drone there automatically. A small series has been tested at the front for some time and has apparently reached the desired maturity. The hit rate is said to be up to 90 per cent.

The hardware is supplied by the US-Swiss company Auterion, while large parts of the software were probably written by Ukrainian specialists. The basis was the countless first-person view (FPV) videos recorded over the past two years of war – plenty of material to train and perfect artificial intelligence (AI).

Incidentally, jamming the video link does not throw the automatically guided FPV drone off its target.

Helsing supplies 4,000 strike drones from Germany

Julian Röpcke followed up with an exclusive report in Bild. The paper's senior editor for security policy and conflicts is always very well informed about developments in Ukraine. In his report, he offers insights into Germany's new “super weapon” for Ukraine – the “AI killer drones against Putin”. Accordingly, 4,000 strike drones from the German AI company Helsing are initially going to Ukraine.

The drone is referred to as the “Mini-Taurus”. Visually, it resembles the notorious Russian Lancet, which is itself a licensed copy of an Israeli design. It does not need a radio link and is said to achieve a high hit rate.

#Exklusiv
Deutschland liefert der Ukraine 4.000 KI-gesteuerte Strike-Drohnen.
Ihren Spitznamen „Mini-Taurus“ verdienen sich die Waffensysteme durch ihr störfestes Navigationssystem, das ganz ähnlich wie das des Taurus funktioniert (kein Pilot, kein GPS).https://t.co/0WbSF9EJ7x pic.twitter.com/CjLD23rlxp— Julian Röpcke???????? (@JulianRoepcke) November 18, 2024

The drone detects its target completely autonomously and navigates just as autonomously using an optical geo-referencing system. This means it does not depend on signals from a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), which can also be jammed. The drones target high-value military objectives such as command posts or logistics facilities. Their range is not known; however, the basic concept and intended targets suggest several tens of kilometres.

A race against time and against Russia

Experts such as Colonel Markus Reisner have repeatedly stressed that the situation at the front has recently developed unfavourably for Ukraine. He assesses the country's situation as serious and critical at every level. How US President-elect Donald Trump will handle the traumatic conflict, now entering its fourth year, from 2025 is essentially unknown – possibly even to Trump himself. Whether the bold campaign rhetoric survives “first contact with the enemy” remains to be seen.

Should US support collapse in a “worst case”, Ukraine's probably only chance of offsetting this at least partially lies in small, low-cost computers in highly developed, compact systems.

The country is not putting all its eggs in one basket. As in drone warfare as a whole, many companies are involved in this multi-track development – many of them Ukrainian and, above all, many small start-ups. Almost all have brought comparable autopilot systems from the lab to the front and tested them on the battlefield, at the “insane speed” typical of this war.

The guided weapon as such is not new, but it differs fundamentally from those of the established defence giants. Where six-figure unit prices and delivery times of years are otherwise the norm, companies such as Donaustahl deliver this entirely new generation of “guided weapons” for a few hundred euros within a few weeks. The Ghost-X drone from Anduril Industries is also in service in Ukraine.

For Ukraine, this development also offers one of the best chances of retaining Western support. All countries are working on these technologies, certainly including Russia and China. Macabre as it sounds, Western militaries and defence industries are gaining many insights from the war in Ukraine. Whether air defence system or small drone – battlefield testing of weapon systems cannot in practice be replaced by live-fire exercises or laboratory tests.