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Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
(www.newscientist.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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Yeah, let's hope we don't make a habit out of this. Landmines are already bad enough.
Instead of stepping in the wrong place, someone runs an antivirus on an old system in eleven years and accidentally triggers a murder bot to fly out and pop some music teacher walking their dog
The only thing that could have stopped this would have been the lower classes, worldwide, becoming a unified front for the last century or more. These killbots are not only here, already and being used, they will become the default within 5 years. Watch.
None of the world's governments have lifted a finger in the last year of continuous, televised genocides of civilians, women, the elderly, and children. They certainly aren't going to draw a line in the sand for unseen killbots that nebulously might be responsible for some civilian deaths at some point in the future.
Not only will these be used in war, these will be used in civilian life too. How do you think the world's wealthy plan to stay that way?
They know very well that in the past when inequality has risen to these levels, they fall. They know it's because no guards will chose them over the mass of, now angry, people that the guards were birthed from and spent their lives with.
The killbots are for you and me baby. It is already written.
Hey, weapons have been banned before. (And continuous genocide is kind of just the normal situation globally)
That being said, yes, a fully autonomous, self-supporting army would have massive, terrifying social implications. Few people are talking about it, but it has to be the biggest existential threat we're facing over the next century or two.
This sounds like it's just a drone that chases anything that moves wherever it's deployed, though, not something more nefarious. Against a known, unarmed target shelling would achieve the same thing.
Weapons have been banned before, but nukes are the only things that actually don't get used. A ban on automous weapons will require the same situation. A country is going to have to kill hundreds of thousands, or millions of people at once, and then everyone will have to stockpile these as a deterrent against use.
Even then, that's just against other countries. Nobody stops nations from doing anything and everything to the citizens they own.
To your second point about shelling, I disagree. This is different in extremely important ways. These are cheaper to create, easier to run in undetected, and do far far less collateral damage.
They are also a relatively new technology. You could have looked at the first muskets and said "definitely an advantage, but not an insane amount compared to seasoned archers and siege equipment. We can't really compare unguided munitions in their highly evolved form, to autonomous drones that are just getting started.
Well, you don't hear a lot about blinding weapons or biological agents these days.
That's a great example. You know what happened after muskets fully took over? The age of absolutism gave way to the age of revolution.
Like, both drones and muskets are real, game-changing innovation, but how they effect the geopolitical equilibrium is a complicated question. I'm reminded of some of the WWI-era designers who though a more deadly weapon would mean a shorter, more humane war. In practice it meant a very different, long-standoff battlefield, and a much slower war.
To that point:
Shells are really cheap, like as cheap or cheaper than a drone, undetectability is valid, but actually favours the little guy, and collateral damage depends. Some shrapnel marks on one hand vs. a localised explosion on the other. You don't want to shell a big thin-walled tank or pipe, but on a normal building the drone may actually be more destructive.
So basically, this is an interesting development and different from a shell for sure, nobody's denying that. But, that it favours central, autocratic power does not directly follow.
You are an incredibly optimistic summer child.
Blinding agents aren't that effective in warfare. Chemical agents do get used, especially on civilians. Biological weapons are a big risk relative to much more tested, targeted, conventional munitions. At the end of the day, flying an explosion at the other guy has always been the winning strategy, and still is to some extent.
Ah yes, when you could drop off a few boxes of guns to some revolutionaries and they would be near untrackable in dense urban or wide rural settings.
Now, your revolutionary drone operator saves you the trouble of tracking by broadcasting his location, assuming he hasn't already been sighted on your universal surveillance cameras or been swept up by irregular purchasing habits.
By dollars per kill, drones blow them out of the water. You need a big, pricey, vulnerable piece of machinery to target your shells. Your target will more than likely move or take a covered position once the shells drop. And obviously you need a spotting system for this as well (probably a drone anyway).
On average, for your light artillery it might take 8-10 shells to kill a target. That's why they're not precision killing equipment and are better used for flattening defenses or pinning down groups of people.
A drone just needs some piloting, human or otherwise. So you're comparing 10 shells from a trained team out of specialized firing position with a calibrated gun vs. one guy with two drones in a backpack.
So when you stack up any belligerents [state vs state/non-state], the key math is who can deploy more drones from better positions with better range/targeting, better tactical intelligence and keep pressure over a longer period. A state actor will always have the advantage there.
Thing is that both are currently being used it droves in Ukraine. About anything bar chemical or nuclear has.
The problem with land mines is that they exist after the conflict.
And now... they can fly
They can turn them off though right?
Right?!
Easier to spot than one underground.
TBF land mines that deactivate themself after a few weeks are a thing now as well.
I guess a market killbot field wouldn't be too much different during the conflict. It has the same indiscriminate nature for sure, though, and soft targets with no point defences like civilians will be extra vulnerable.