A tech boss has revealed that fully autonomous AI ‘Terminator’ drones with no human control have killed frontline soldiers for the first time in Ukraine
Bloodthirsty AI “Terminator” drones with no human control have wiped out troops on the battlefield for the first time, a tech insider has claimed. In a chilling watershed moment for modern warfare, ten fully autonomous killer quadcopters were reportedly unleashed on the front line of the Ukraine war.
The robotic hunting pack is said to have been sent into enemy territory, killing Russian soldiers without a single human pulling a trigger. The terrifying experiment is understood to have taken place during a Ukrainian counteroffensive near Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar.
Programmed to hunt completely solo, the drones flew up to five kilometres over the trenches before activating a deadly “Terminator mode” to seek and destroy anything in their path.
Drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the tech, lifted the lid on the horrifying one-off experiment.
Speaking to the New Scientist, he said: “We tried it. It’s a test. We never implemented it [more widely].”
Because the drones completely severed ties with their handlers, commanders back at base had no idea what the rogue machines were doing.
Human-piloted spy drones had to be flown into the aftermath to count the bodies, discovering a mangled truck and dead troops.
Kokhanovskyy said: “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead. There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing. Everything it sees will be killed.”
While militaries worldwide use AI to crunch data and track targets, a human operator is almost always required to confirm a lethal strike.
The jaw-dropping admission is the most categorical evidence in history that human beings have been hunted down and killed solely by an algorithm.
The United Nations has previously sounded the alarm over rogue tech, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying: “There is no place for lethal autonomous weapon systems in our world.”
Experts fear removing human judgment from the battlefield could lead to catastrophic errors, including AI slaughtering civilians or turning on its own side.
Mariarosaria Taddeo from the University of Oxford slammed the rise of independent AI weapons, branding the concept of machine-led executions a moral nightmare.
She said: “It’s not just problematic, it’s horrendous. Do we want to be the society who kills other people, who allows their government to kill other people, without humans being involved?”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has remained tight-lipped about the secret test and official state rules currently ban AI from making the final, lethal decision to attack.
Major Danylo Polozhukhno, from Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps, insisted his troops stick strictly to the rules. He explained that while their systems track targets automatically, “we do not use fully autonomous drone systems that independently select and engage targets without any operator involvement.”
For now, the terrifying “Terminator” project has been put on ice due to government restrictions. However, Kokhanovskyy, who is now developing a rapid-fire drone battery capable of launching 64 interceptors at 450km/h, admitted he is lobbying to unleash the AI’s full, unrestricted potential.
When asked if he wants the rules changed to allow machines to kill autonomously, the tech boss said: “I would love to.”