AI and Victory in the Ukraine War

small percentage advantages can snowball

Hi All,

OK, this is the last part of my series on AI and war (for now) and I will be discussing how AI could impact the end of the Russo-Ukraine War. There is clearly an AI-race of a type going on between Russia and Ukraine, and if one side could come up with a more effective AI system, in particularly for UAVs, it could provide a small percentage improvement that would snowball into a larger one.

A Russian T-90 just after being hit by a Ukrainian UAV. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/12/7406414/

The important area could be in UAV-survivability and successful attacks. Look, I dont want this to turn into another one of the ongoing discussions about whether the UAV has become the most important weapon or not. Its impossible to say until we have data—but we can say that they are most likely the systems which have grown the most in importance since the full-scale invasion. Unlike tanks, for instance, which have not proved to be effective systems for combined arms breakthroughs (as they were widely thought to be before Feb 24, 2022) the UAV has expanded in usage remarkably. Indeed its hard to think of a job they have not been used for (especially if you add in sea drones). They scout, attack targets everywhere from the front line to deep in the rear, protect, and even have been known to ferry supplies to forward troops. They have helped sink warships, disable aircraft, damage tanks and every vehicle imaginable, and represent a constant threat to groups of infantry, even tracking down individual soldiers. Indeed, some of the most extreme footage in the war recently (see note link) has involved UAVs targeting individuals, and the human desperately tries to fight them off.¹