Ukraine is using artificial intelligence-controlled machine gun turrets on the battlefield, and it’s working well enough that Kyiv wants to roll it out faster.
While Ukraine began unveiling a prototype of the system last year, Brave1, the country’s defense innovation platform, said on Thursday that it has now become an “integral part of air defense” for its forces.
“In the past month alone, the automatic turret has destroyed dozens of enemy drones in Kyiv,” said Brave1, adding that it will start working on the weapon in 2024 as an experimental technology.
Not much is publicly known about the tower’s core capabilities, such as its range or how it is software, but it is primarily described as an air defense tool against Russian drones.
The idea is that artificial intelligence helps the turret detect, acquire, and track targets, making it more accurate than human operators in hitting high-speed aerial targets such as jet-powered Gerans.
More than a dozen of these systems are currently deployed in the Kyiv region, with eight more planned for the region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early October.
In a sign that Ukraine plans to move further into the technology, Zelenskyy later praised the system, saying on October 19 that the AI-powered towers had “proven very effective against the shaheds.”
“We are increasing orders, and it is important to speed up every process as much as possible – organizational, financial, and production,” Zelenskyy said.
One such system, the Sky Sentinel, is an M2 Browning .50-cal turret developed and operated by private air defense company Carmine Sky. It can rotate 360 degrees and lock onto the target when firing by calculating speed and trajectory.
Each costs about $150,000, Ukrainian commanders told Business Insider Jake Epstein last summer, and can tell the difference between birds and drones. The tower still requires a human operator to authorize it to fire, the commander said.
Ukraine says its AI-enabled turret shoots down Russia’s fastest attack drone. Courtesy of United24
Brave1 released a montage on Thursday showing that Ukraine is also building another type of automated tower, showing clips of some of its designs.
It said the tower had fired at least 60 targets under the Private Air Defense Project, a pilot that allows private Ukrainian companies to buy air defense equipment and train civilian staff to use it against drones that threaten factories, warehouses and other important sites.
In particular, Brave1 says the tower takes down Russia’s Geran-5 and Banderol — jet-powered drones and cruise missiles that can reach speeds of 375 to 400 mph.
A similar claim was made by Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force, in early October, when he said an AI-powered tower had shot down a Russian jet-powered drone for the first time. Ihnat did not say which system was used.
Kyiv has heavily integrated AI into many of its war efforts, using machine learning models for other functions, such as predicting enemy drone strikes and autonomously carrying out supplies with robotic cars.
The turret has a limited range, making it more useful as a last defense against drones or low-flying targets.
It will be one of the tools Ukraine is developing to counter the threat of Russian jets.
Over the past few months, the Kremlin has ramped up production and deployment of low-cost cruise missiles or drones equipped with turbojet engines. These weapons, flying at almost half the speed of sound and launched by the thousands every month, have become a major challenge for Ukraine’s air defenses.