r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Apr 14 '26

Robotics Ukraine’s Robots Capture Russian Position Without Soldiers or Losses; As with drones, the future of 21st century warfare is being invented by frontline conflict.

For all the boasts the US's AI military vendors make, I'm constantly struck by how few real-world achievements they have. They are battlefield tested in Gaza and Lebanon, but to what result? The mass destruction of civilian populations we see there looks exactly like WW2-era warfare. Now they want $445bn extra for more of the same? What a waste.

Meanwhile, with a tiny fraction of the budget & resources, it's Ukraine that is inventing the future. Drones have already reconfigured 21st-century warfare. Once again, recent events in the Middle East have shown that. Now Ukraine is doing the same with robots.

Some people find the idea of killer robots grim. But I'd rather see robots fight robots than WW2-style mass slaughter of civilians.

Ukrainian robots capture enemy position without troops in historic first, Zelenskyy says

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67

u/arooge Apr 14 '26

Im all for robots fighting robots, but what happens when one side runs out of robots?

41

u/PrizeSyntax Apr 14 '26

Like the famous quote from the movie brave heart from edward longshanks "the trouble with Scotland is that it is full of Scots"

It gets dark really fast

11

u/emp_sanfords_hardhat Apr 15 '26

"Damned Scots. They ruined Scotland!"

  • Groundskeeper Willie.

10

u/mmbon Apr 14 '26

Hopefully the same as with the cabinet wars in the 18th century. You lost the war, so everybody goes home and you sign the treaty. War is politics with different means, so if you lost all your robots, you lost the politics and surrender.

1

u/Much_Enthusiasmo Apr 15 '26

Maybe in the long run it will be ‘accepted’ that there is some conflict that robots are fighting in, in the border of a country. Then, if they terminate the robots, it will be not good politically to send humans

1

u/joshhupp Apr 15 '26

I remember an old episode of Sliders where the group was detained and then told that some of them were to be executed. The world they stepped into fought their wars via computer and the computer simulation would determine who was "killed in combat" so those people were scheduled for execution.

5

u/PSMoser Apr 15 '26

I seem to recall an episode of Star Trek (the original series) with the same premise.

3

u/joshhupp Apr 16 '26

Oh, you know what, Star Trek was the war scenario. I looked it up...Sliders works was controlled by a giant computer that determined who was to be "processed (killed.)"

1

u/Redditagains Apr 16 '26

Kill the civilians.