Fourth Law Tests AI Drones in Fields Outside Kyiv

Yaroslav Azhnyuk claims his drones can make military units 10,000 times more effective. He runs The Fourth Law and Odd Systems, two Ukrainian defense firms that produce autonomous aircraft. Dozens of military units already use their Lupynis-10-TFL-1.

Azhnyuk, 37, is a computer scientist who previously worked in Silicon Valley. He founded Petcube, a company that sold one million smart cameras for pets. He says the image recognition technology in those cameras directly influenced the design of his current weapons. The new devices use similar tools to identify objects, but they deliver explosives instead of treats.

The Lupynis TFL-1 combines a small first-person-view drone with an autonomous terminal guidance unit. An onboard computer takes control for the final 500 meters of the flight. That distance is roughly 0.3 miles. Azhnyuk notes that this system is simpler than the AI used in self-driving cars or large data centers.

The technology relies on basic image recognition. It allows the drone to navigate and fly toward a target without a human steering it. Azhnyuk says the system uses deep-learning neural networks. These networks are trained on hours of combat footage.

A team at The Fourth Law tested the drones daily in an overgrown field outside Kyiv. Stab, the head of the test and integration team, explained the process to reporters. The microcomputer inside the drone looks for specific objects. It is designed to recognize vehicles, light-armored vehicles, tanks, and flying objects.

During a demonstration, a pilot using the call sign Professor guided the drone with a control stick. He selected a target and checked a video monitor. A red flash appeared on the screen. This signaled that the drone had locked onto an old car driven by an employee along a dirt road. Professor released the stick, and the drone flew itself to the car. The test drone did not carry an explosive.

Stab says the drones are difficult to jam. Safeguards prevent them from going rogue. Humans still select the targets. Azhnyuk rejects the label of killer robots for his devices. He calls them just sort of calculators. He acknowledges that AI is advancing quickly. He believes drones that designate targets on their own are possible within a few years.

Azhnyuk argues that survival drives his decisions. He says that if adversaries use AI for offensive decisions and Ukraine refuses to use it for defense, Ukraine has lost. Machines make decisions in microseconds. Human control can take minutes, hours, or days. Azhnyuk says that if Ukraine loses the war, there is no way to debate the ethics of AI.

The company names its weapons after Ukrainian intellectuals and artists killed or persecuted by Russians over the past century. The Lupynis is named for Anatoliy Lupynis, a 20th-century poet and political activist. He endured decades of Soviet imprisonment and psychiatric torture. Azhnyuk says their ideas are still with the company. He adds that the weapons are now fighting back.

Russia is also fielding AI-enabled drones against Ukraine. This development feeds a high-tech arms race. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that AI could be making decisions on the battlefield as soon as next year.