Why Ukraine’s AI Drones Aren’t a Breakthrough Yet
Meanwhile, both sides were racing to develop autonomous drones, which, by making their own judgements of what to do, would need neither radio links nor optical fibre. Max Makarchuk, AI lead for defense tech accelerator Brave1, said last year that drone hit rates had dropped to between 30 and 50 percent, and as low as 10 percent for novice pilots. He expected that adding AI could raise accuracy to around 80 percent.
However, setbacks have slowed adoption. Early AI-guided drones performed poorly, disappointing Ukrainian army units that had paid for them. Few wanted to keep paying.
In interviews for this article, managers at AI-drone developer Twist Robotics gave insight into the challenges in developing the technology.
‘Ukraine was the first to widely use small FPV drones with [autonomous] guidance systems. Russia also seems to be developing similar technologies and is preparing to scale their use,’ says chief executive Viktor Sakharchuk.
Since 2022, Twist Robotics has worked on developing AI aimed at bringing autonomous drones to the front line. Sakharchuk says the software needs components for visual navigation, for visual detection and tracking and for trajectory planning. Each component is trained separately.
The firm relies on a mix of real and synthetic data to train visual AI systems, starting with photorealistic simulation and refining in live trials. ‘The simulator developed by our company is also widely used for generating synthetic data,’ he adds.
‘The training process for autonomous drones begins in simulation, where we use Oberih, our in-house developed software with a photorealistic environment. Once the models are trained in simulation, they are fine-tuned on real drones and customized for specific models.’
Rostyslav Olenchyn, an executive director of Twist Robotics, emphasises the importance of autonomous navigation to ensure the drone reaches its target area.
No AI system can be successfully deployed on the battlefield without direct interaction with end users throughout the development process and frontline experience, Sakharchuk says. ‘They all have limitations and application features that are not obvious without training.’
Large-scale use of AI-guided drones by Ukrainian forces began in March 2024, he says. Then interest sharply declined within three months. The producer of this first batch of drones had made and sold them cheaply—attracting orders from some army units. Moreover, it had offered no training. Results were poor.
‘When a large number of low-quality systems hit the market, the military saw that the guidance didn’t work,’ Sakharchuk says. ‘Therefore, interest disappeared.’
Meanwhile, Russia has deployed one-way drones equipped with AI and machine learning, allowing them to identify military vehicles on highways and evade interceptor drones. Recently observed flying in a group of six with distinct wing markings, these drones may be testing swarm coordination. Each carries a 4G telecommunications modem, so they can send pictures back to the ground, fly under operator control, or both.
David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
