Ex-defense minister Fedorov announces new ‘Army of Robots’ initiative in latest move since leaving office

Literally AI slop he is spreading now.

>Even in famous cases of all-UGV “assaults,” described by some of Ukraine’s top units, ground was not yet considered taken until it is done so by human boots on the ground.

So Fedorov’s plan is to just … what? Redefine what it means to consider territory under control? Then declare success?

The thing itself has already been done. All-robot assaults have already happened. Adversaries have been surrendering to drones since the 1990s. What has always prevented us from putting robots in charge is not some missing technological capability, no lab or factory is going to suddenly change that. What has prevented us has been a firm refusal to replace actual human accountability in the real world with heuristics written on some whiteboard by some huddle of techbros.

And why should anyone want to suddenly enable that? Is Ukraine suffering in the battlefield from an overabundance of human responsibility? Are soldiers clamoring for their field commanders to be less accountable? Are they pleading for the judgement of experienced veterans to not guide decision-making so much?

Autonomous robot weapons have been around for something like 30 years now. In every case where military forces have experimented with them, they have decided to turn full automation off. Not because they are scared or backward-thinking or don’t understand AI or whatever the fuck. But, rather, because they all understand that, fundamentally, the purpose of a soldier is to kill on command for the state. Emphasis on *on command*. No military in the world goes around arming and equipping soldiers and then sending them out with instructions to go wherever and just start shooting at whomever, don’t bother checking in again. If they don’t do that with humans why would they want robots to do that instead?

It’s possible that some people don’t grasp that. Certainly some people with a lot of money don’t seem to grasp it. But having a lot of money doesn’t mean the rest of us have to listen to them.