By: Benjamin He
I think we’re all familiar with the sudden rise of AI and technology recently. If you’ve been living under a rock instead of under a screen, let me catch you up. AI is the new craze for all the websites out there. ChatGPT is becoming a new search engine, an alternative to Google or Firefox. Google made its own AI, Bard. Khan Academy made Khanmigo. Grammarly created Grammarly-Go. JasperChat. Socratic. Heck, Meta even made two: Llama and Llama 2. These websites specialize in the assistance of humanity alike, whether it’s teaching kids math or trying to replace all search engines, they all try to help out in their own unique ways.
Machines are taking over the world, whether supercomputers, robot vacuums, or our relevant topic, drones.
Drones have proven to be pretty useful. And they are everywhere; from comic appearances to TV shows. People fly drones in parks, watch them through special goggles, form drone clubs, and film middle school trailers with them (what? Just my school? Oh. Alright then).
They often make appearances in Spy Movies, are commonly associated with robots and futuristic stuff, and was shown in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books hand-delivering Gregory a hamburger…then getting the order wrong. But never have I thought that they would make yet another debut in times of war.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Recently, Ukrainian elite forces have been found, not in the front lines surprisingly, but just a bit behind, fiddling with drones. They’re quite useful, now that new Russian defenses have been countering Ukraines counterattacks(confusing, I know), Ukraine is trying to see if drones can give them a hand.
Last month, a three man team was found cleverly directing a drone to take down a bunch of antennas on a tower in Polohy, a town occupied by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The Russians were using the electronic warfare system to spoil the work of Ukraine’s satellite-guided rockets.
The drone, which was made of some sort of Styrofoam material and cost somewhere around 1,500 dollars, slammed into an antenna and exploded on impact. The Russian’s plan to jam the missiles were suddenly foiled, and Ukraine blew the tower to smithereens with a strike from a U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. Had the drone not been there, the missile would most likely have missed.
The war is currently mostly being fought with artillery, in contrast to the brutal trench style warfare we’ve seen in WWII pictures. The artillery then evolved into a war of technology, with arsenals of drones-go-boom and drone experts to control them.
“What is the problem with going behind enemy lines? Total mining,” said Oleh, the first deputy director of the Alpha forces who asked to be identified only by his first name for security reasons. “It’s almost impossible to go somewhere secretly. You have to use some kind of demining equipment. This means you will already be identified.”