Killer robots are coming: can we let them?

The Uran-9 can be remote-controlled up to a distance of 3 kilometers, or operate in autonomous mode. Kalashnikov published videos showing, according to the Russian company, an automatic target detection system (human forms) capable of opening fire and eliminating them. Officially, this autonomous mode would never have been used against Syrian targets. But the boss of Kalashnikov judges that "Syria is an excellent training ground for revealing the weak and strong sides of any weapon".

"It's a field that is changing very quickly and where information is filtering out bit by bit", acknowledges Stan Brabant. "By scratching, we obtain certain pieces of a puzzle which gives us a general picture of the situation which is particularly worrying."

The Russian agency RIA Novosti acknowledged that "the robot showed the unstable operation of the 30 mm automatic cannon, the untimely triggering of the launch circuits and the failure of the thermal imaging channel of the optical aiming station".

The technology is therefore not yet fully developed, but we are fast approaching. China is developing an autonomous warship to monitor the coasts, the JARI.

Automatic target recognition

The Israeli manufacturer Rafael is working on the miniaturization and interconnection of military robots. “These largely autonomous machines are powered by artificial intelligence systems, allowing them to carry out missions on behalf of their owners independently, writes The Times of Israel. This ability to identify potential threats, categorize them and prioritizing them, called 'automatic target recognition', is already used in a number of Rafael systems, including the SPICE 250 missile, where advanced electro-optical sensors identify targets and aim the projectile at them."