https://www.onet.pl/infor(...)czy/pkzrk0z,79cfc278====================================================
War in Ukraine. How artificial intelligence kills Russians====================================================
The shortage of ammunition, the lack of precision of artillery strikes, high costs and poor reconnaissance from the air – these are the problems of the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian software engineers decided to solve all these problems in one fell swoop. Their idea turned out to be deadly for the Russians.
• Ukraine is a world power in the field of software. 20% of companies from the Top 500 list of Forbes magazine use Ukrainian software
• A community of about a thousand people of prominent Ukrainian programmers got involved in helping the Ukrainian army.
• Ukrainian software engineers have drastically reduced the cost of drones and their ammunition, as well as harnessed artificial intelligence to operate.
• The homes of many programmers were destroyed by Russian troops. "They want revenge," my interlocutors say, pointing to additional motivation.
• One or two bombs at $1,000 each can destroy a $1 million tank.
• The Russians have been preparing for drone operations for years. According to intelligence data, they equipped themselves with about 20,000 electric motors for drones.
• The advantage of the Ukrainians is that they have many independent systems supporting drones, as opposed to one Russian system.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the staff of a unit coordinating the work of drones and artillery. Drone operators in the field located targets and handed over coordinates to the headquarters, and the latter to the artillery. That's when the most frustrating part of the whole process began.
Although the tanks were targeted, the shells missed the target – sometimes by 100 m, sometimes by 300.
Why? There are several reasons:
• First, Ukrainians have imprecise howitzers that remember the times of the Soviet Union. High-end howitzers, such as the British M777, French Caesars or Polish Crabs are still a scarce commodity on the front
• Secondly, Ukrainians lack even ordinary ammunition, so they shoot less often, reducing the chances of being hit
• Third, the cost of high-precision Western ammunition reaches hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit – this affects the frequency of shooting.
• In addition to all this, the human eye of the drone operator is not able to pick out all the hidden under the trees and masking nets of Russian machines, even with a large close-up from the camera
On Saturday morning, in one of the Ukrainian cities, I meet with two young people who solved all these problems in one fell swoop. Their system is already operating in several Ukrainian units, including special ones, and is achieving stunning successes. The queue of soldiers for this system is longer than their production capacity.
The First War of Artificial Intelligence
They come from the environment of software engineers, i.e. software. Ukraine is a world power in this field. According to Daxx, a software services outsourcing company, in 2020 there were 200,000 software engineers living in Ukraine, and specialists from this country worked for every fifth company from the Top 500 of Forbes magazine. Software sales account for about five percent of Ukraine's budget revenues.
My interlocutors are members of a small community of about a thousand people throughout Ukraine. They are professionals with a narrow scope of specialization. These two are experts in artificial intelligence. Their faces and names cannot be revealed. Recently, this was done by their colleagues from Dnipro, who ostentatiously helped the Ukrainian army. A Russian rocket hit their office. Let's say that my interlocutors are Mykhailo and Oleksandr.
The problem of the Ukrainian army's incompetence for the proper use of drones was recognized at the very beginning of the war in 2014. At that time, Mykhailo was working on scanning objects for commercial purposes. Together with Oleksandr, they began to profile their system for military needs so that it scans the space from the drone's camera in search of specific objects on the ground. "Since then, we have been preparing for the Russian invasion," Mykhailo said.
None of the thousand-strong community of software engineers is military. Everyone supports the army as part of civic volunteering.
They are connected to the military system "Delta", which is dedicated to the creation of technological solutions to fight the Russians.
"This is the first war in which software plays such a big role, and artificial intelligence is used on a large scale," says Mykhailo.
As part of the "Delta" system, specialists from several IT industries respond to the tasks set by the military, whether it is the creation of a cellular application for driving drones or the creation of secure connections. Mykhailo and Oleksandr responded to a much more complicated demand.
They want revenge
It started with the fact that their relatives and acquaintances, who went to the front to fight with weapons in their hands, called, reporting problems that could only be solved through technology. Very quickly, they signaled that the basic need is to search for enemy machines masked under treetops or masking nets.
Mykhailo and Oleksandr decided to get more involved. On a daily basis, they run thriving companies in Ukraine and Poland. Their team of a dozen or so people switched to the mode: 10 percent. paid work and 90 percent. work for the army. "Like many people in our industry, we realize that now the most important thing is not money, but winning the war. Because if Russia wins, there will be no businesses, and we ourselves will be refugees or dead – says Mykhailo.
"We are a group of specialists who together create a new technological space for the army. Similar companies operate in the US, only for money. At the beginning of the year, the U.S. government paid one of the companies $250 million to annotate the data. We did the same thing, only for free – laughs Oleksandr. "If Silicon Valley in the USA was a sequel to the software ecosystem, then in Ukraine we are experiencing a prequel to this story.
Some people in the team have a special motivation. – They come from Bucza and Irpienia. Their homes were destroyed by Russian bombs. They want revenge," oleksandr says.
They have created a comprehensive platform that, in terms of drone operation, will solve several problems of the Ukrainian army in one fell swoop: problems with searching for enemy objects, low precision and high prices of missiles.
A thousand dollar bauble destroys a tank for a million
They show me a video on my phone. It begins with a shot of an ordinary drone and a box with small baubles, which at first glance make the impression of plastic toys.
In a moment, however, I see a drone that takes off with one of these "toys" suspended under the structure. In the next shot, the drone flies over the forest and marks enemy tanks hidden under the trees with red squares.
– The geographical coordinates of these machines are automatically sent to the headquarters. Direct data transmission from the drone to the operator in the field and the command staff in another place is something that we did not have at the beginning of the Russian invasion – explains Mykhailo on an ongoing basis. "The eye of the drone operator is also not able to capture everything. Artificial intelligence will not miss any point, whether it is hiding under trees or under masking nets. At most, it can show too many of them. Then it is up to the commander in the headquarters to decide which point to attack.
When he says this, the video shows a "toy" bauble detaching from under the drone and falling centrally onto the tank. Above the exploding machine you can see a flash of fire, and then clouds of smoke. In a moment, another bauble falls on another tank – with the same result.
"One drone can take four bombs with it," Oleksandr said. "The bomb falls from a height of about 100 m, so the first one is often a test bomb. Depending on where the first payload explodes, the drone clarifies its position and drops the second. The latter completes the work.
We are watching another film in which exactly what Oleksandr has just told is happening. On the shore of a body of water, a drone shows in color a group of military vehicles barely visible under the masking branches. After a while, the drone switches to night vision – now the vehicles can be seen very clearly. The first test bomb explodes a meter or two from the vehicles. The drone corrects the position and 10 seconds later drops another one, which explodes centrally between the vehicles. The drone again switches to a color image, which shows the fire on the vehicles.
When armies pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for one precision strike, Mykhailo and Oleksandr's drones, depending on the configuration, cost between $15,000 and $20,000. Even cheaper are the bombs themselves: tails with a stabilizer are made on 3D printers, the rest factory, but the price per piece closes in the amount of $ 1,000.
"So if you can destroy a tank worth a million dollars for such an amount, then even if they hit one of our drones, we will send 10 more, and it will still pay off," Oleksandr calculates.
However, the drones of Mykhailo and Oleksandr rarely fall victim to Russian shelling, thanks to their proprietary navigation system without GPS. One of them has just returned from tests in special forces, which with the help of their system destroyed 10 armored vehicles of various types and Russian command staff. "If it has four bombs suspended, it can destroy two enemy vehicles during one mission," Oleksandr said.
Their drone has another important advantage. While artillery has serious problems with destroying objects in motion, a drone can do so. "If the commander decides that the object is important enough, he will switch the drone to kamikaze mode with one button," oleksandr says, noting that this option is in the refinement phase.
Their drones also give the military time. "If on the front 50 drones fly only for an hour, then people have 50 hours of movies to watch and carefully analyze," says Mykhailo. "Our drones give the military a complete report of such videos with marked objects for possible attacks in real time, during transmission to the command headquarters.
Oleksandr is convinced that only now Ukraine's drone capabilities are beginning to match Russia's, and not in every respect, because contrary to wishful press articles about Russian technological shortcomings at the beginning of the offensive, Russia has been preparing for war for years, also in the field of drones.
20 thousand engines
"When it comes to drones, when the war started in 2014, we were in a deep forest," says Mykhailo. "But the good news was that the Russians were in an even deeper one. They used Chinese drones for commercial use that did not have any radio protection. They built their own drones on publicly available systems. But we knew they were going to prepare.
And they prepared. The most famous Russian reconnaissance drone is the Orlan-10. They usually fly in groups of two to even five machines, each of which performs different tasks – from conventional reconnaissance, through electronic warfare, to data transmission, although the detailed system of operation of the Orlan "swarm" still remains a mystery to the Ukrainians. It is not known how advanced – or maybe already implemented – is the Orlan project, which is to mark targets for air or artillery missiles using laser beams.
Documenting the losses of both sides, the Oryx Blog calculated that the Russians had lost more than 60 Orlans since the beginning of the invasion. The question is how many they have in the drain. Official data says about more than 1.5 thousand units.
"Fresh Ukrainian intelligence data shows that the Russians have collected 20,000 electric motors for drones. So they can produce for a long time – says Oleksandr.
However, he adds that the Ukrainians are already working on the intercepted Orlans. And this could lead to a change in the dynamics of the drone war.
Russian unity versus Ukrainian multiplicity
"When it comes to drones, the Russians have a uniform system, while the civic movement of software professionals in Ukraine has created many independent systems, often operating on completely different principles, using completely different protocols," oleksandr said.
Which of the systems gives a better chance of defeating the enemy – a uniform Russian or a multi-layered Ukrainian?
"It is a matter of time for us to work out the Russian Orlans," Oleksnadr assures. "When that happens, we will recognize their system. It will not be so easy for them to figure us out, because each of the civic groups has created a separate system for their drones. Working out one or two will not do them any good, especially since they do not know which individuals use which system.
The Russian system is dangerous, but it has a low potential for development. In turn, various Ukrainian teams are constantly working on improvements. Also Mykhailo, Oleksandr and their team of several people. Their drone today has the ability to take on board only 3 kg of cargo and can fly a distance of up to 10-15 km.
They are currently working on an improved version of it, which will fly up to 50 km with a load of up to 20 kg. He will no longer only drop bombs, but also shoot them. This new civic project is also based on civic financial support – they are currently raising money for a new construction on their website saker.airforce. However, small operational drones dropping bombs will not come out of their production. These are machines that not only destroy the enemy, but also save Ukrainian civilians in the areas occupied by the Russians.
Occupiers often place their armored vehicles in built-up areas, between residential buildings. In such cases, Ukrainian artillery is useless, because it would also destroy its own citizens.
There you need a precise blow from above. Then the drones of Mykhailo and Oleksandr come into play.