Ukraine to field 25,000 ground robots in push to replace soldiers for frontline logistics

Wow! The war of the robots has come!

"Ukraine will contract 25,000 unmanned ground vehicles in the first half of 2026, more than double the 2025 total, as the Defense Ministry moves to shift all frontline logistics off soldiers and onto robots.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared the target after meeting with domestic UGV manufacturers last week, where he also announced that the ministry had already begun signing contracts for 2027 to stabilize long-term manufacturer pipelines. ..."

Ukraine to field 25,000 ground robots in push to replace soldiers for frontline logistics

Ukrainian servicemen fire an RPG-7 grenade launcher mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle during testing near the frontline on April 10, 2026.

San Francisco Military Robot Breaks Industry Taboo

What would the Peaceniks of the Summer of Love (1967) say today?

Are we coming closer to the time when robots instead of humans fight wars?

Apparently, this is not really news anymore as there are similar reports going back to early 2025.

"Foundation, a San Francisco startup, has openly defied Silicon Valley’s ethical norms by developing the first humanoid robot explicitly designed for warfare. The 5-foot-9, 175-pound robot, called the Phantom MK-1, can carry up to 44 pounds and is expected to be weaponized for battlefield deployment."

"... Sankaet Pathak, CEO and co-founder of Foundation, envisions the robots serving as a “first line of defense” on battlefields to reduce human casualties in ground warfare. The company is the only known humanoid robotics firm purposely building machines for military applications. ...

Pathak said human operators will maintain oversight, with AI assisting in flagging targets, charting paths and calculating trajectories. However, humans will make final decisions on weapon deployment. ..."

Thursday, October 23, 2025 - Join The Flyover

AI-powered soldiers: Are humanoid robots the future of warfare?

Martial looks

Drone swarms, space battles & hypersonic missiles | How Ukraine war changed the future of combat

Recommendable! He forgot to mention the Russian smart, retrofitted glide bombs hitting targets precisely.

Watch A Ukrainian Uncrewed Aerial Mothership Launch Kamikaze Drones

Let drones and robots carry out the war while we watch! Machine vs. machine! Is this the future of war?

Watch A Ukrainian Uncrewed Aerial Mothership Launch Kamikaze Drones

Credits: 12 britische „Storm Shadow“ zerstören Militär-Bunker in Russland | BILD-Lagezentrum (German language, excellent, almost daily reports on the Russo-Ukrainian War by Julian Röpke)

Inside Yemen: The Forgotten (Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy) War

A China mediated rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia just occurred about two weeks ago!

I don't know whether I can recommend this special documentary by Alex Crawford. I did not watch it to the end. Caution: Lot's of disturbing war imagery! E.g. a lot of child war victims are shown.

This is perhaps the first Western media report by journalists in years traveling inside the war torn Yemen. A war that has been going on since 2014 or so.

Israel Aerospace is selling dozens of its Drone Guard system to a South Asian country

The war of drones is on!

"Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) ELTA Systems group has announced that it is delivering dozens of Drone Guard (CUAS) systems to a South Asian country in a deal worth tens of millions of dollars. The multi-sensor multi-layer ELI-4030 Drone Guard system is one of the world's most battlefield proven systems with the ability to detect, classify, identify and defeat drone attacks. IAI develops and manufactures the Drone-Guard System including the advanced radar capabilities. 

The Drone Guard system handles hundreds of targets simultaneously and provides a solution to multiple evolving threats Worldwide. The system's advantage derives from the multi-layer implementation concept using a high-resolution 3D X-Band radar a key for drone-detection, an integrated COMIN ESM, multi-channel jamming and high resolution EO/IR with integrated AI capabilities. ...
With hundreds of units already operational across the world, the multi sensor, multi-layer Drone-Guard system provides an efficient solution for drone attack threat. ..."

IAI signs South Asian drone guard deal - Globes

Shield AI: Hivemind

Besides hacking and social influencing campaigns, is this going to be the future of warfare? If big tech companies like Google, Microsoft hesitate to get into this business, others will seize the opportunity! If U.S. businesses do not develop such defensive capabilities, the enemies of freedom will develop offensive capabilities! 

The arms race is not over, at least not until the last dictatorship on earth has vanished!

It seems that Shield AI also provides some blog posts of interest, but I did not have much time to check it out (see e.g. here)!

"... AI for Great Power Competition. Operate in highly contested and GPS-denied environments.  Remove the need for human operators, GPS, and RF links. ...
Hivemind uses reinforcement learning in synthetic training environments to enable unmanned systems to learn and train to execute new missions. Once Hivemind is fully trained for the new mission, push a software update to the physical platform - your platform becomes better over time. ..."

Organisations like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are rather naive about this or paid for or supported by Russia, China or you name it!

"... The U.S. military and tech industry have a long history of collaboration and cross-pollination. In recent years, however, large tech companies including Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce have faced protests by employees, investors, and the public over their work for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Google responded by canceling some defense contracts.

Some venture capital groups have refused to fund AI that can be weaponized. Others like Andreesen Horowitz, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst support defense-focused startups including Anduril.

Outside Silicon Valley, grassroots efforts like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are working for a global ban on autonomous weapons. ..."

Hivemind | Shield AI

Credits to: Andrew Ng The Batch 3/10/2021

Dangerous Complacency Towards Chemical Weapons

Posted: 4/15/2018

I observe a dangerous naivete or complacency by many contemporaries about the use of chemical weapons in our time. We further observe that the leaders of Russia, China, Iran, and still NATO member Turkey are obstructing or even aiding and abetting the dictator of Syria.

No civilized society can tolerate the use of chemical or biological or nuclear weapons against civilians. In Syria, we have now witnessed several large attacks on civilians in urban areas where chemical weapons were used. It was terrible enough that former war criminal and dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq used poisonous gas on the Kurdish minority in Iraq.

It appears that many people have forgotten the great civil society achievement in chemical arms control treaties when chemical weapons (in particular poisonous gas) were banned or controlled in several international treaties as early as 1675.  This diplomatic process culminated in the Hague Convention (1899), Geneva Protocol (1925), and more recently in the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993). All civil societies of the world are obliged to uphold these momentous achievements with force if necessary.

Thus, President Trump, Prime Minister May, and President Macron are justified to use surgical strikes against the war criminal, 2nd generation dictator in Syria to destroy facilities where research & development or production & storage of chemical weapons is occuring.

Banning Autonomous Weapons Is Foolish

Posted: 8/4/2015 Updated: 8/10/2015

Trigger

The debate over the pro and cons of autonomous weapons is picking up. Just read “We Should Not Ban ‘Killer Robots,’ and Here’s Why” (Article1) by Evan Ackerman. This article is concerned with this open letter (OL1).

Here is another, recent pro ban article by Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ban-killer-robots-before-they-become-weapons-of-mass-destruction/ (Article2). This article is based largely on another open letter (OL2) “The Future of Life Institute letter is significant for the same reason: It is signed by a large group of those who know the most about AI and robotics, with some 1,500 signatures at its release on July 28 and more than 17,000 today. Signatories include many current and former presidents, fellows and members of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, the Association of Computing Machinery and the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society; editors of leading AI and robotics journals; and key players in leading artificial-intelligence companies such as Google DeepMind, Facebook, and IBM’s Watson team.”

Definition Of Autonomous Weapons

If you want to ban something you need a feasible definition. This is particularly true for dual use technology. On the other hand, I suspect, it is much too early in the process to come up with a good definition. Autonomous technology in general is still at the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the author of the above article does not provide his own definition of autonomous weapons. Thus, for the purposes of this blog I will rely on the definition given in the open letter published on 7/28/2015 by opponents of offensive autonomous weapons cited by the above author:

“Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention.”

The Con Arguments

Here is a summary of the arguments provided by the advocates of a ban as excerpted from the above open letter (OL1) or Article2 (plus commentary):

1. Represents the third revolution in warfare
   [Yes, this is probably correct!]
2. Deployment of such systems would be feasible within years, not decades as previously thought
   [I agree]
3. These weapons would lower the threshold of going to battle
   [Possibly, but it applies to bad as well as good guys. So what is the point?]
4. They want to prevent the next arms race (Article1) or “The development of autonomous weapons could very quickly and easily lead to arms races between rivals.” (Article2)
   [There has always been an arms race since the beginning of life on this planet. This is not going to change very soon, I am afraid. Any new technology has triggered a new arms race in the past, why would it be different now?]
5. Autonomic weapons would become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. They will become ubiquitous and cheap to make
   [Autonomous technology is already ubiquitous and cheap and it is a dual use technology. So what is the point?]
6. These weapons will be abused in many ways e.g. by dictators to control the populace, by warlords to commit ethnic cleansing, by assassins etc.
   [Any new technology can be abused and has been abused for 10s of thousands of years. But autonomous technology also offers new ways of defensive technologies.]
7. AI researchers have no interest in building such weapons
   [How naive is that! Scientists have always willingly or not so voluntarily worked for the powers that be throughout history.]
8. “Autonomous weapons pose serious threats that, taken together, make a ban necessary. There are concerns whether AI algorithms could effectively distinguish civilians from combatants, especially in complex conflict environments.” (Article2)
   [Do today’s conventional weapons or weapons of the past accomplish such a distinction? This is a phony argument.]
9. “In a future where autonomous weapons fight autonomous weapons the results would be intrinsically unpredictable, and much more likely lead to the mass destruction of civilians and the environment than to the bloodless wars that some envision. Creating highly efficient automated violence is likely to lead to more violence, not less.” (Article2)
   [Wars have always been unpredictable! Anybody who envisions “bloodless wars” is a moron. The authors can’t be serious. More violence has not much to do with weapons but lot more with humans.]

Utopian Ban

How would such a ban be reliably implemented and verified as long as so many dictators are still ruling on this planet? As long as we have totalitarian countries like Russia, North Korea, China around it is rather impossible and wishful thinking.

The civilized and freedom loving  people living in open societies of this world only have a chance to survive by developing better offensive weapons or definitely better defensive weapons.

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

There is no doubt that someone with perhaps malicious intentions will try to take advantage of autonomous technology as much as and as fast as is possible. For the good guys it is their responsibility to develop at least effective counter technologies as fast as possible. This is the course of history until humans finally become more angel like beings in the future.

Warfare Among Animals

Posted: 9/20/2014

Trigger

Just read “Nature of war: Chimps inherently violent; Study disproves theory that 'chimpanzee wars' are sparked by human influence”. The study claims they were able to rule out human interaction or influence to explain why some Chimpanzees would coordinate attacks on fellow Chimpanzees.

Only Humans & Chimpanzees Wage War?

I was surprised to read this in the above article: “Of all of the world's species, humans and chimpanzees are some of the only species to coordinate attacks on their own members.”

I would believe we still do not know much about the animal world. Or more sinister that scientists have perhaps overlooked aggressive or fatal behavior in other animals, because it does not fit the narrative. We do know for sure that quite a few animal species commit infanticide.