The average life expectancy for a Russian soldier in Ukraine is between 20-30 minutes, CIA director John Ratcliffe said. Speaking at a defense summit in Pennsylvania, he attributed the deadly conditions for Vladimir Putin’s forces to Ukraine’s combat drones equipped with AI. “What I would say is, our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine,” Ratcliffe said.  “So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit, right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.” “And that’s because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. And it’s why we’re now four and a half years into that conflict,” Ratcliffe added. Ukraine said this month that Russia has lost about 1.4 million soldiers since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with over 1,000 of the Kremlin’s troops killed or wounded almost every day.  In May, Ukraine’s defense ministry said it was killing roughly 200 Russian soldiers for every kilometer of territory that Moscow claimed.

  • Regrettable_incident
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    8 days ago

    This is great for Ukraine, but not so hot for the future of warfare. We may have to get good at building EMPs for when the urban pacification terminators come.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      but not so hot for the future of warfare.

      Maybe the future of warfare is to figure out a better way for people to settle their differences.

      That would, of course, mean we would first have to figure out how to prevent narcissistic megalomaniacs from being in positions of power.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      yeah I can’t help but read all this as very bad news indeed in the longer term. There’s nothing stopping Russia, North Korea, or indeed any random manchild billionaire deploying this tech within the coming months or years and deciding who they think should die. It’s not like nukes which are difficult to get material for and difficult to build. Most of the advanced stuff is the software, which can be easily copied.

          • outerspace@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            What i mean is they know about it and had opportunity to do it too, but they didn’t. That means there is something else they are missing

            • plyth@feddit.org
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              7 days ago

              Or they miss nothing but they are not as cruel and dystopian as our media presents them.

          • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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            7 days ago

            This isn’t AI related. Russia was counting on a fast win to steal the resources they would need to lock it in. They didn’t get one.

            • plyth@feddit.org
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              7 days ago

              Why? I haven’t heard about existing autonomously flying killer drones yet. Why should Russia have them?

      • Mihies@programming.dev
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        8 days ago

        You’re confusing communication with what EMP is really good at - frying digital circuits

        • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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          7 days ago

          Fibre optic drones are usually carbon fibre shielded - which can’t easily be used with traditional radio operated drones because it blocks the communication

          Carbon fibre would seriously attenuate an EMP in the same way as a Faraday cage

          EMPs also usually require detonation of a nuclear device

      • busted_Anoose@aussie.zone
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        7 days ago

        EMP destroys electronics. The fibre optics, plastic and metal will all be ok. the circuit boards will all be fried. Future drones will no doubt have emp protections, but its still early days

      • Evotech
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        7 days ago

        Emps are good, but they don’t care if you are friend or foe, or civilian infrastructure and it doesn’t stop when it hits its intended target. So itll probably take out the next few Km’s

        So you can probably just shoot it forward on the frontlines. But thats not really how drone warfare works alot of the time