From The AP:
Facing a huge manpower and arms supply disadvantage, the Ukrainian military is hoping hundreds of start-ups inside the country can provide machines to carry out battlefield tasks, from mine clearance and automated evacuations of the wounded to simply carrying a soldier’s equipment.
In May, a fourth branch of the Ukrainian military was created: Unmanned Systems Forces, to join the army, navy and air force.
In a cornfield in northern Ukraine, the Odyssey spins on its axis and kicks up a small dust cloud as it rumbles forward.
The car-sized vehicle with tracked wheels is controlled remotely by defence start-up CEO Andrii Denysenko, and watched by his head repairman with the intensity of a sports medic.
The 800 kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype is one of dozens awaiting military assessment as Ukraine accelerates toward further automating the battlefield to try and even the odds against Russia’s superior resources.
“We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives,” Denysenko said. “War is mathematics.”
Ukraine, facing manpower shortages and uneven international assistance, is struggling to halt Russia’s incremental but pounding advance in the east and is counting heavily on innovation at home.
Denysenko’s Odyssey drone features a fiberglass cargo-bed on the tracked wheels and is designed to act as a rescue and supply vehicle that can also be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or fire mine-clearing charges.
Its most important feature, however, is the price tag: $35,000, or roughly 10% of what an equivalent model imported from abroad would cost.
Denysenko’s company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier’s strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier’s equipment and even help them up an incline.
Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation.
Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts.
