Ukraine drone warfare reignites the race for killer robots

The nearest the world has seen to a fully autonomous weapon in the Ukrainian conflict to date comes from Britain, according to Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He says the Brimstone missile, made by Franco-British company MBDA, operates with something approaching true independence from humans, paving the way for the weapons of the future. Describing it as a “fire and forget” missile, Bronk says Brimstone One, the first variant of the weapon which experts believe has been supplied to Ukraine by the UK, can “go and find and kill tanks in the air or other vehicles in the target grid” assigned by its operators. This means soldiers tell Brimstone an area they want it to search for and destroy enemy tanks, which the missile then does. “Not only do they go and find and kill tanks … or other vehicles in the target grid that you've given them,” says Bronk, but they “also communicate between each other to make sure that they don’t double up on targets.”