Ukraine will receive 33,000 AI-powered strike drones from an American company

Ukraine will receive 33,000 AI-powered strike drones from an American company

Ukraine will receive swarms of drones – by the end of the year, the western company Auterion will supply 33,000 AI-powered strike drones capable of delivering synchronized attacks, reports the Financial Times.

The delivery will be carried out under a contract with the Pentagon. This will be the first use of this system in combat conditions.

Although Ukrainian companies have been experimenting with drone swarms since the very beginning of the full-scale war, the Kyiv-based company Swarmer claims its technologies have been used in 82,000 combat operations.

In one experimental combat operation last year, Ukrainian military forces used Swarmer software to control a drone swarm, which approached Russian positions and independently identified the right moment to begin the attack. 

Russia has also learned to group its "Shaheds," attacking Ukrainian cities. However, modern software can make the swarm tactic more lethal by allowing attacking drones to learn. With a large archive of drone footage useful for training AI models, Ukrainian defence-tech companies believe they have a significant advantage over foreign competitors. Only Ukrainian companies have access to a secret combat drone database known as the Universal Military Dataset.  

«Drone swarming has long been considered an ambitious goal», — stated Evelina Buchatska, managing partner of D3, a venture capital company from Kyiv that invests in military technologies.

According to her, «the unprecedented volume of Ukraine’s combat data available for training autonomy models» has become «the main building blocks for swarming».