{"slug": "ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance", "title": "AI Goes to War: Ukraine AI Autonomous Drone Guidance", "summary": "Ukraine is deploying AI-guided drone autonomy in two forms: \"last mile\" guidance, in which a human pilot flies a drone near a target and onboard AI takes over for the final stretch, and full \"mission autonomy,\" in which a drone flies to a target without GPS or radio input. The last-mile capability is already fielded at scale and is credited with strikes on Russian refineries, while mission autonomy remains in development and testing, with swarming as the anticipated next step.", "body_md": "Hey, dear readers, I am trying to conduct an experiment. **Would you please RESTACK this post?** There is something goofy with my distribution I am trying to sort out. Thanks.\n\nUkraine is making gigantic strides in AI autonomous drone guidance. There are two specific areas of focus:\n\n- **Last mile AI autonomy** — a human pilot flies the drone to the target area and then AI takes over for the last 500 meters of flight guiding its warhead to exactly where it can do the most damage. BOOM!\n- **Mission AI autonomy** — once parameters of the mission are set, an AI assisted drone flies without GPS/radio guidance to the target with no human involvement, Fire and forget. BOOM!\n\nThere is, like all things military, particularly tech based, a lot of different and, sometimes, confusing terminology and jargon. I have tried to clarify it.\n\n### What is AI’s role, Big Red Car?\n\nAI is the game changer.\n\n- In the instance of Last Mile, the human pilot flies the drone to within some short distance — 500 yards is the distance most often discussed — of the target whereafter the onboard AI is armed with the target image and just flies to the target. That target is loaded into the AI or the AI is able to identify what a tank or other target looks like and flies to it.\n- In the instance of Mission Autonomy, the onboard AI is armed with the route and flies to the target with no human involvement.\n\nLast Mile is in service today at scale and is able to operate without Russia knocking the drones from the sky easily. Turning the Last Mile guidance over to onboard AI prevents Russian EW and other countermeasures from being effective.\n\nIf there is no communication connection — because AI has all the info and has taken over — there is no communication for the Orcs to sever.\n\nMission Autonomy is still in feverish development, but getting very close. It is the subject of demonstrations, competing claims, and combat trials.\n\n### Mission Autonomy unique considerations\n\nMission Autonomy opens a complete footlocker of complications:\n\n1. What if the designated target is not present? The general sense is that AI will pick the best available target. In effect, it looks for Plan B.\n2. What if the target area presents 4 tanks and a medical ambulance? AI has to be able to differentiate. That’s why it’s bloody AI in the first place. AI can tell a tank from an ambulance and hit the tank.\n3. Does Mission Autonomy even require a target? Can it just be sent to a target area and find its own target — freestyle? Great question. Mission Autonomy drones could be sent to a specific area, ordered to loiter for some time, and only then pick a target and strike it. AI will be able to differentiate amongst a tank, a bread truck, a howitzer, a truck full of Sisters of Charity nuns, a Pantsir anti-air radar, or other not-so-innocent target.\n\n### So how big is this stuff, Big Red Car?\n\nThat’s the thing all of this guidance gear can be really small. How small? Cell phone size.\n\nSo, what’s the next step after Mission Autonomy?\n\nIn the drone racket, the next big thing is swarms wherein swarms of drones appear at the same time with a single controller — whether human or AI — and huge targets are hit by hundreds of drones simultaneously.\n\n### Bottom line it, Big Red Car, a Highlands band is practicing tonight in the park\n\nOK, that’s a new one, amigo.\n\n1. Right now the Last Mile is real, deployed, and being produced at scale. Refineries near Moscow are ablaze because of this technology.\n2. Soon, Mission Autonomy will be combat tested and follow the same deployment and production at scale.\n3. This same Mission Autonomy tech will be adapted to intercept Russian drones and missiles attacking Ukraine. There are already companies demonstrating this capability. This is biiiiiiig.\n4. After than, it’s going to be swarms that overwhelm “normal” defenses and destroy targets with AI coordinated and controlled multiple drones far beyond the ability of current Russian anti-air capabilities.\n\n[Help Received: ChatGPT drone swarm graphic, created by BRC’s prompts. IYKYK.]\n\nBut, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance", "canonical_source": "https://jeffreylminch.substack.com/p/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous", "published_at": "2026-09-22 23:35:20+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-22 23:53:42.639997+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "autonomous-vehicles", "ai-agents", "robotics"], "entities": ["Ukraine", "Russia", "Moscow"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-goes-to-war-ukraine-ai-autonomous-drone-guidance.jsonld"}}